Who would have thought that Senator Sanders (I-VT) hates young people? That is the only conclusion I can make from his recent op-ed advocating an increase to the immoral and impractical minimum wage, which will result in higher youth unemployment which in turn tends to trap them in poverty.

Man is called the rational animal, meaning his mind, his ability to think, is his sole means of survival. One only has to look around to see that everything that enables a man to live as a man required someone using their mind to create it. Man requires shelter, food, medicine, art, education and more to live as a man and none of this is provided directly to him. Even food, which you might think you could possibly find freely in nature, requires an active mind to know what is good to eat and what will kill you.

Thus a fundamental requirement for a man to live as a human being is to be free to use his mind and act on the product of his reason.  He has to look at reality, choose which action is best for him, and be free to take that action, with the caveat that the action cannot violate the equal rights of others to act. Using force to prevent a man from doing this is to prevent him from living as a human being, which is to say, immoral.

The minimum wage does exactly that. By restricting what wages can be offered or accepted, the government prevents some men from acting on their best judgment in regards to employment. In many cases, especially for young people, accepting a low wage in return for gaining experience is the best course of action an individual can make in their long-term interest. They understand that by gaining experience they improve their chances of getting a better job and eventually becoming successful. Internships are an example of this, Many students in all areas of study not only work without pay, they actually pay, via tuition, for the benefit of gaining real work experience. This is something Senator Sanders must be aware of as two-thirds of his colleagues in the Senate, though not Senators Sanders himself, have unpaid interns who are seeking just such experience.

A minimum wage is at root a price control and price controls always fail. The government simply cannot determine what  correct prices are. Basic economics tells us if the price is set too high then a surplus results as more people want to produce than want to buy, while if the price is set too low then shortages result as everyone wants to buy but no one wants to produce. Examples range from the gasoline shortage in the United States in the late 1970s to the current shortage of toilet paper, among many other shortages, in Venezuela. In terms of employment, if the wages are given a floor that is higher than the market wage, more people will want to work but fewer employers will want to hire people. In other words, unemployment rises.

In his recent op-ed calling for a raise in the minimum wage, Senator Sanders claims that this will be beneficial for low wage workers. While it is certainly possible, although not certain, that those who have, and can keep, minimum wage jobs will be better off, this is certainly not true for those who will now find it more difficult to get jobs as the pay would be even further above the value they can provide an employer. A 2011 study came to the following conclusion:  “Minimum wage increases boost teenage wage rates and reduce teenage employment. But, evaluating the welfare implications is beyond the scope of this paper.” As to the welfare implications, a 2001 study from University of California-Berkeley stated: “These results confirm that the minimum wage lowers average income and increases inequality according to all standard measures.”

If Senator Sanders truly was concerned with low-income workers, especially young people, he would advocate reducing and eventually eliminating the minimum wage while additionally reforming, and eventually eliminating, the welfare system. As the Berkley study cited above concludes: “The greatest gains in welfare for most welfare measures could be accomplished by a 10% reduction in the minimum wage…” in addition to reforming the welfare system to remove the disincentives to work, which act to trap people in the system.

The government should be protecting the rights of the individual to think and choose his best course of action rather than passing laws that further restrict their, sometimes limited, options.