I'm hearing a lot of complaints about wages, which surprises me because I thought we had all agreed that everything is fine with everything and we were all going to stop protesting, get a dog and stretch more.
It seems the poor and huddled Marxists are bellyaching about their aching bellies, demanding a "living wage" that lets them "meet basic needs," but everyone's basic needs are different. I need constant praise and attention, but if everyone else got constant praise and attention nobody would be jealous of me, which is another thing I need (also a vanity license plate ["COOLVRO"], a vanity cane and a vanity pontoon boat). A definition of "basic needs" will never be perfect, and like I tell my son, if you can't guarantee it will be perfect, you shouldn't try.
The wage issue is being used to pick on companies like Walmart purely out of jealousy of their success and fashionable wardrobe. But we should be getting on our hands and knees and kissing their canvas slip-ons. The innovations of large companies like Walmart have fueled our economic growth: state-of-the-art wage theft, groundbreaking union busting and a post-modern, minimalist approach to health insurance.
Instead of trying to shame job creators, let's save our moral condemnation for conduct that actually harms others, like gay marriage or having a foreskin. Companies can't be morally obligated to pay a certain wage because the fact is they don't have any morals. That's just how they were born and we have to love and accept them for who they are. They should be free to merge with whoever they want, exploit people of any race or creed and force their servers to sing "Happy Birthday" with convincing cheerfulness several times per shift (to the tune of "Help Me Rhonda" to avoid copyright infringement).
And that freedom goes both ways. If workers don't like a job that pays minimum wage, they're free to choose another job like Homelessist, Hunger Technician or Bindle Assembler.
If workers want to be paid more, they should work harder. New research shows that if the minimum wage increased with worker productivity for the past 35 years. Today it would be about $22 an hour. That's okay, but just imagine what minimum wage could be if workers deserved $50 an hour. It could trickle down to $10.50 or $10.75 an hour. The sky* is the limit! (*sky = minimum wage)
The economy is complicated network of causes and effects. Increasing the minimum wage would have unintended consequences, like going back in time. Prices might go up, jobs might be lost, Hitler might win the Daytona 500, a married man with a loving wife might switch bodies with a single man who is at the prime of his sexual life, resulting in 112 minutes you will never get back.
It's time to stop tinkering with wages and let them be the way God intended: unregulated, unfair and a bit lower for women.