Right now, Congress is deciding on whether to raise the minimum wage for the country and by how much. I don’t think they should raise it at all and here is why:

We want to raise the minimum wage to help out those that are trying to make a living on minimum wage but raising the minimum wage will not help a thing because raising the wage raises inflation.

Don’t believe me?

How do you think McDonald’s and other places that pay minimum wage make their economic model work? Their business plan is based on making low cost food by utilizing low cost labor. You raise the labor you raise the food prices. Same thing happens for groceries because if it costs more to stock and bag groceries, who do you think will pay the extra? The consumer of course.

Many of your large franchises depend on cheap labor to be successful. From Wal-mart to Wendy’s , if you raise the amount they have to pay their workers, you effectively raise the cost of the goods they produce.

So the average middle class person won’t mind paying an extra 10 cents for a cheeseburger from McDonald’s, but your lower class people trying to make it on minimum wage sure will. Every cent they make in a wage increase will be spent on the added costs to commodities. Add in the extra tax for the inflated goods and now you just made your poor more poor.

But, there may be an answer. Even though I don’t believe in raising the minimum wage, I do think there are things we can do to help the lower class without affecting the cost of goods too much.

So here is my plan:

Let’s make the minimum wage based on age and merit just like everything else in this country (the right to vote, legal age to drink, smoke, amount of financial aid given for college, etc).

Let me clarify that a little bit. The wage would be configured so that older people with more dependents qualify for a larger minimum wage. Teenagers would start at the current minimum wage and as you had more mouths to feed or got older, you would qualify for a higher minimum wage.

Now I realize that this may cause some influence in hiring, by employers looking for cheap labor, so we would just have to whip up another equality law to align the hiring rules to not be prejudiced based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and now minimum wage level.

I think it’s worth a shot, if you are looking at really helping the poor. That or just do away with taxes for anyone that makes less than a certain dollar amount per year.

Thoughts anyone?