The Minimum Wage Debate Isn’t Really About Minimum Wage

Hiring Hourly Employees? Understand the Real Issues at Stake.

As the nation’s workers push for a higher minimum wage, the real issues with the workforce are exposed.

The debate over minimum wage isn’t actually about minimum wage; it’s about a false economy, misplaced responsibility, and technological advancements.

Going Against the Laws of Nature

Securing our future in a globally-connected marketplace demands a basic understanding by all members of society regarding employment issues, supply and demand, and the laws of nature that drive the laws of business. 

Raising the minimum wage forces employers to pay better wages to workers, no matter the value of the job or the skill of the human.

This goes against the very laws of nature.

Basic evolutionary principles show that every species that has ever walked, crawled, slithered, or swam on this planet is subjected to one simple idea: the strong survive, the stronger survive better, and most everything else becomes something to consume or be used.

Our entire ecosphere is based on survival of the strongest and smartest. Business works under the same law. No one can dispute these basic facts.

The Logical Arguments Against Minimum Wage

It is impossible to successfully enforce minimum wage in any market for a significant amount of time—and most certainly not in the current recession that no one is confronting.

With a global debt mountain of unprecedented levels, real unemployment sits easily at 10% and is much higher for those most affected by the minimum wage conversation.

As the CEO of a company with over 300 employees, I’m significantly impacted by the minimum wage debate. However, not for the reasons most would assume. I would rather staff earn $50 per hour than be forced to pay them $15 per hour.
Low paid, under-producers are no more valuable to me than overpaid, under-producers.

A Challenge to Job Seekers

Are you looking for a job? Are you hoping your current employer will notice your worth? Here’s what you need to do.

Approach 10 businesses a day for seven days and propose the following:

•  You’ll start at a rate of $7.75-10 per hour and have the opportunity to earn more based on your performance.
•  A performance evaluation will be conducted after 90 days. If you’ve exhibited stellar performance and can prove added value to the company, you’ll receive a raise.
•  You will have the opportunity to advance and learn. For each advancement in the company, you will qualify for a bonus.

At a minimum, you’ll show potential employers that you have the ability and willingness to be creative, productive, and positive in your approach—which is valued more by every great business owner than all other attributes and education.

Every smart employer will hire you, assuming he has the capacity and the margin sufficient to hire an incremental, competent, producing asset.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter: The Real Issues at Stake

Now, we begin to approach the real issue surrounding the minimum wage debate.

Should the business hire a US resident, a foreigner, or a robot?

Would you rather push a lawn mower or ride a lawn mower?

If we are honest, does a business owner really care about the hiring decision, as long as the job gets done and it’s easier to expand?

Robots don’t get sick, take holidays, need sleep, complain, or hire lawyers.

We must educate our society on one very important issue: technology is here to stay. This acknowledgement is a step-change of monumental proportions and every facet of our lives are forever changed.

Only good ol’ fashion responsibility, hard work, and hustle will get our society employed—and only that.

Unfortunately, before society can fully grasp that idea, an attitudinal shift must occur. For that reason, I am sad to report we shall have to suffer a major global reset in order for this lesson to be re-learned.

And that is the true source of the actual symptom of anemic employment opportunities. We have become consumers, not producers—and therefore parasitic and self-cannibalistic. This is all colliding with a super-charged technology revolution, capable of faster and cheaper labor.

What can’t be replaced by technology can be undercut by over two billion willing and able people connected across the globe.

Technology has no racist tendencies, leanings, cultural bias or judgment other than efficiency. Technology will slaughter all inefficiencies, oligopolies, government institutions and corporate institutions—no matter how big, small or entrenched.

Anticipating Future Developments

Once again, we must become creative, a producing asset in humanity. Otherwise, we shall only be a consuming liability.

In no time at all, every human being on this planet will be connected, creating the largest over-supply of labor and service supply networks. This connectivity-derived overabundance will coincide with the reality of robotics and artificial intelligence. The combination of these two things shall disrupt the status quo of our entire outlook and place in the world, in ways unfathomable to most of society.

This offers a massive opportunity to those who understand this shift. MBAs and the ‘privileged’ are actually being minimized and diluted in this quest for minimum wage equality, allowing for all contestants to participate and compete equally in this new landscape.

Never before in humanity has this unique combination of developments occurred. And how are we handling the situation? We are screaming in the streets, letting pundits fuel the drama for ratings and continuing the ethos and lifestyle of consumption versus production.

Today, individuals are attending colleges in their huts. In the next 50 years, we will discover more geniuses than all other times in history combined. Never before has the future been so bright, but we must understand that the massive, global force of change that’s occurring is a shift that we have never before achieved. This type of shift, although very painful on many, offers opportunities for rags-to-riches on an unprecedented scale.

As unskilled and under-producing employees are clamoring for higher wages, those of us with a real understanding of what’s at stake must make our voices heard over the noise.

Excerpts of this article were recently published on Manta 

For more than 25 years, Gary Cardone worked in the gas and electric industry, where he joined a small startup and helped turn it into a Fortune 50 company. He’s launched five successful businesses, starting three in the depth of the 2008 great recession. Currently, Gary serves as CEO of Chargebacks911; his skillset is now used to help merchants reduce risk, prevent revenue loss, manage chargebacks, and mitigate friendly fraud.