Minimum Wage = Minimum Accomplishment

We need an incentive to improve ourselves. Journalist, activist, and business owner John Hawkins makes this point. I think he is right because people relish a sense of pride and accomplishment. We improve ourselves, we increase our value to our employer, and then we have a right to demand increased pay and advancement.

Says John:

“As a conservative who has worked those jobs and now works for myself, I think we should be encouraging people to aspire to be more than a minimally-educated, minimally-working, minimally-skilled minimum wage employee. There’s nothing wrong with any honest job, but there is something wrong with people squandering their potential. As Abraham Maslow once said, “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.” Ninety nine percent of Americans are capable of doing more with their lives than settling for a job most 16 year olds can be trained to do in a week. Instead of asking the government to force businesses to pay people more than they’re worth, we should encourage these employees to build up their skills so that they’ll genuinely be worth more. We should want all Americans to be all they can be so that they can have what they deserve out of life instead of encouraging them to settle for lives they would have never intentionally chosen for themselves.”