The intent behind having minimum wage laws is a desire to see social justice. While I couldn't agree more with the intent, the mimium wage as a policy is a failure just like many other similar well intentioned interventions into the free market. It actually hurts poor people.

The result of having a minimum wage is to cause inflation, lower job growth, reward bad service, punish virtue, and hurt all people who rely on fixed incomes, such as the elderly. Let's stop subsidizing people who really don't want to work.

You have to use the power of everyday obervation and common sense rather than dealing in abstract theories. The academic doesn't jive with reality.

Have you noticed the attitudes of most minimum wage earners in service jobs? You can't fall below it and one minimum wage job is equal to any other. You basically can't be fired from the minimum wage so there is not incentive to provide good service. Let's not be politically correct here.

Shifting the conversation to your personal generosity and the circumstances of a few does not relieve the situation or do anything to eliminate the need for entitlements to America's working poor.

I'm not claiming exceptional generosity here: We're paying the going rate. We've got a large Latin American immigrant population, which drives wages for these jobs down, but there's a strong demand for these services.

The working poor aren't entrepreneurs but rather low skill employees in the service sector. But dishwashers and stockers and the like simply can't command $20 an hour salaries. It's not a matter of rich people hording the money for themselves, it's simple economics: You can't pay an employee more than he generates in revenue.

It's a truism that the poor will always be with us. The information age economy probably makes that more true than ever because there will be a segment who simply can't acquire the necessary skills. But simply decreeing that every job, now matter how little it contributes to the bottom line, should merit enough pay to live a middle class lifestyle won't work.

Minimum is what..less than $8.?

It's $5.85, actually. I'm paying multiples of that, though. (The work is on a contract basis rather than an hourly basis, but that math isn't that complicated.)

The couple who cleans our house have managed to put their kids through college, as has the man who owns the lawn service company we use, as has our painter-handyman, and our exterminator. People who do good work can make a decent living and, more importantly, give their kids a leg up on getting more fulfilling, higher paying jobs.

You have made my point. Minimum wage is so far below an actual "living wage" that the boast "I pay more than minimum" is easy to make and meaningless. Try covering housing, transportation, food, medical care, clothes, etc. on $10 or $12 per hour and see how it works out. Minimum is what..less than $8.?

Some rich families might have to get by on just one private jet, and the working poor might disappear. No more gardeners, dishwashers, and nannies whose wages have to be supplemented by welfare.

Your contention is that most minimum wage employees are doing personal services for the hyper-wealthy? Don't almost all of them work in the service industry, often for small businesses? Heck, even McDonald's pays more than minimum wage just to attract teenage workers.

The people I know with nannies are paying far, far more than minimum wage. Granted, the cost of living in the DC Metro area is high and there's a scarcity of people available for nanny duty. But most are making quite decent incomes.

I don't have a full-time maid or gardener but I do pay people to do house cleaning and to mow the lawn once a week. They're making a heck of a lot more than the minimum wage, believe me.

If true, then our national debate is essentially and argument over whether to drive off a cliff at 35 mph or 65 mph. If that is the case, what's the argument for continued involvement in politics at all?

"Railing AGAINST limited government," indeed. Even the unconscious has turned against them.

Heh. I changed the sentence around but screwed up the editing.

Another problem is that the permanent bureaucracy functions as inside salesman. Administrations come and administrations go but the bureaucracy remains forever.

My own view is that the policy position should be towards accountable government rather than small government and that, in turn, IMO requires devolution. The sorry state of state and local government makes that a hard sell.