There’s doing something in a financially-savvy way, and then there’s doing something in a financially-incompetent way. What you “deserve” is irrelevant.

(2) Hiking the minimum wage is socialist, any way you cut it. It forces money out of employer’s pockets (higher-income individuals) and hands it to employees (lower-income individuals), regardless of who deserves what. In fact, it’d be more accurate to call it communist.

(3) You talk about teachers not caring, students getting knifed, no one expecting them to succeed– Okay. You paint a provocative picture, but what solutions do you propose? I hear a bleeding-heart story, but I don’t hear a practical way to remedy the situation.

The typical liberal response is to throw money at the problem, but we’ve been sinking government funds into inner-city schools for years on end without seeing any results. It seems to me that this is not a situation that our government can reconcile by forcing charity in the form of taxes out of the rest of us.

(4) America was not made great by social engineering and Robin-Hood-style economic redistribution. It was made great by people who, despite the hardships they started with, took it upon themselves to be successful, and upon achieving their success, gave back to the country that enabled it, and faded from the limelight thereafter.

Pick your favorite “rags to riches” story. Such people didn’t ask for handouts; they didn’t receive handouts. Upon taking personal responsibility for their situations, they prospered nonetheless.

As for the value of minimum wage…I have occasionally been jealous of people I see doing manual labor (painters, mowers, field-hands). When I get stressed out at work, tired of the daily grind, it would seem like a vacation to spend all day outdoors doing something “easy”. And then I realize why I get paid so much more. My job requires that I have original thoughts every day. This is much more difficult than minimum wage jobs where you are paying for labor, not skill. This is what drives the value of most jobs in this country.

Finally, when I get concerned about those unfortunate individuals who do live in poverty I think about this. Every social creature on this planet has a natural pecking order, there always has to be someone at the bottom. If we throw all of our resources at eliminating the bottom rungs of society, we’ve become a socialist nation, which has been proven not to work. A 5% unemployment rate, and roughly 10-12% who live below the governments poverty line is doing pretty good. Furthermore, people in the US who are considered poor, have a far higher standard of living than poor and middle class people in other parts of the world. I’d much rather be poor in the US than in China.

(2) I can agree that, in some instances, the value of a job is skewed. (e.g. I’m not so sure athletes need to be making millions of dollars to play games for a living.) However, I still believe that our free market, in general, fairly dictates the value of employment. I realize that just about everybody thinks that they should be making more money, but, that’s human nature and that doesn’t change my outlook.

(2) The 95 percent employment rate refers to documented (i.e. legal) American citizens. And even if it DID include illegal immigrants, my argument still holds. 95% is, historically, very high, and shows that people in this country are, overwhelmingly, finding jobs.

(3) Employers choose the lowest bidder to get work done. That’s how the free market operates, so you can’t fault them for that. You CAN fault them, however, for hiring people who aren’t supposed to be in this country to begin with. So if our government comes around to enforcing immigration laws and employers get burned for hiring illegal workers– well, they had it coming.

(4) Let me talk in a broader sense about tinkering with the free market, education, and ‘the opportunity to succeed’ in general–

It’s not for us to legislate “fairness”. That’s misguided. Life, in about a million ways, isn’t fair, and no series of laws is going to change that.

Some people are born into wealth while others are born into poverty. Such a situation isn’t necessarily ‘wrong.’ Suppose one set of parents worked hard all their lives to provide a good living for their children, while another set of parents didn’t work hard at all to provide anything for their children. For the children in the latter case, the situation is ‘unfortunate’, but it is not ‘wrong’. As such, the situation is not for society to correct– it is for the individuals in the situation to overcome.

I insist on being precise with terminology here for the sake of clarity. When a situation is wrong, there is a moral imperative for society to advocate for something better. When a situation is unfortunate, it is primarily the responsibility of the individual in the situation to surmount it. Sure, as a Christian, I believe in providing charity on my own account to help people in such need, but I do NOT believe in passing laws that take money from other (more economically fortunate) people in order to equalize everybody’s economic situation. That’s indirect theft. THAT is ‘wrong’.

(5) I don’t have a great solution to the situation either. Although, I do favor concepts like school vouchers — putting more power (i.e. money) in the hands of individuals — so that people can pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and succeed or fail by their own merits.

(2) Student loans are burdensome, but why should the government pay for anyone’s education, considering that the money used to do so is being taken from other taxpayers? That’s Robin-Hood-style robbery.

(3) Let’s be careful with our vocabulary. Having the opportunity to raise a family is a right; having the know-how or the resources to do so is not. If you can’t budget your finances accordingly, you can’t raise a family.

(4) To clarify, I’m not saying that the minimum wage was set up for summer workers, etc. I’m saying that’s how it should be used today: in a transient sense, by workers that are either going to move upward or outward.

(5) Increasing the minimum wage hurts the very people it’s designed to help. When employers are forced to pay employees more, they compensate for the cost by cutting the jobs of the lowest-paid employees. Those who try to support families on minimum wage are playing a dangerous game. They need to find a way to make themselves more marketable. Even burger-flippers can learn on-the-job and eventually apply for management positions. Upward mobility exists, even for those without a college degree. People have to keep their eyes open and learn how to be at least a little bit shrewd in job-related matters.

(6) The general economy dictates the fair market value for a job, including employers. If there’s more or less demand for a particular type of work, pay increases or decreases respectively. If consumers are willing to pay more or less for a particular type of product, the salaries of the workers who produce it will be higher or lower, respectively. If an employer wants to hire more people than his competitor, he’ll offer more money to potential employees. If he wants to pay employees less because his budget is strained (or for whatever other reason he might have, like not wanting to lay people off), then that should be his prerogative.

(7) The current employment rate in this country is 95%. Going by that statistic, this surplus of people waiting for menial labor jobs that you’re talking about doesn’t exist. If it did, yes, that would screw with the free-market principles that I just talked about. But it doesn’t. I’m fully aware that there are pockets of unemployment scattered around the country, but there are not so many unemployed people that they trip over each other whenever they try to find a job somewhere else.

I agree that we should give to our less fortunate bretheren. I’m all for people volunteering their time, money, and efforts– families helping other families; neighbors and friends pitching in to help others get back on their feet. I am, however, in cold opposition to any government mandate that redistributes income. And that’s exactly what socialist institutions like welfare programs and minimum wage laws do. They take a greater amount of money from those who have more of it available to them, and they give it to those who have less of it — without respecting the free market, without requiring the self-discipline of true selfless giving, and without determining who deserves what (which is a decision that is much better left up to small communities).

I can see how one’s ethics, empathy, and religion might compel a person to give more of himself and his possessions to others, willingly. I do not see how one’s ethics, empathy, and religion necessarily compel him to force resources out of others by law.