Minimum Wage Response to Rev. Copley

Rev. Stephen Copley of “Give Arkansas a Rai$e Now” wrote on the merits of raising the minimum wage in Arkansas. He is the leader of a coalition of ministers that want to raise the minimum wage. It is not surprising that the only people that want to raise this wage are people of faith that have no training in matters of economics and business, and politicians that beg for any votes they can hoodwink people into. Copley cites many statistics that are misleading at best from sources that are partisan at worst. His study focuses on whether higher minimum wages will reduce employment in the service industry. It doesn’t focus on the speculative and transient nature of services which are always going to need mouth breathers to operate. They follow the money, they don’t create it. It says nothing of the other workers, already making higher than minimum wage to start, that will suffer as a result of business absorbing these higher costs. Does he think owners will absorb the costs? He is naïve. Just as illegal workers lower wages for all minimum wage workers, higher minimum wage workers lower the wage for all the rest. A constitutional amendment will make Arkansas anticompetitive and only redistributes the wealth, but doesn’t increase it. We already have too many impediments to business creation here and don’t need a bunch of panderers to make it worse. Copley should stay away from economic fairy tales and stick to the other kind.