This week I received an email from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, about the federal minimum wage, which currently is $7.25.
Senator Brown supports raising the minimum wage for several reasons. First, a minimum-wage worker would earn $14,500, which does not allow families to make ends meet and would put a family of four below the poverty line. Second, the minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2007. Third, 30 million people are paid the minimum wage, and Senator Brown describes them as hard-working people who “bring in the same paycheck year after year” while the price of other goods increases. Fourth, Ohio and other states have slightly higher minimum wage rates. Finally, he says a raise is a “good, common-sense idea” because “[t]he more money in people’s pockets, the more they’ll spend.”
I don’t buy the arguments. By definition, the minimum wage is reserved for low-skill, entry-level jobs — the kind high school kids get as their first work experience. Workers then move up the scale as they gain experience and skills. I’m skeptical there are many families of four whose income is wholly dependent upon one minimum-wage worker, or that such people are paid the minimum wage “year after year.” Even if those families exist, we shouldn’t build federal economic policy around such outliers. The fact that the minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2007 also means nothing. Since 2007, America has been mired in a brutally long recession, and unemployment still remains far too high. There’s nothing in our economic performance since 2007 that supports raising the minimum wage. To the contrary, with employers already skittish about the economy and nervous about hiring — particularly given the still-uncertain impact of the Affordable Care Act — the likely effect of raising the minimum wage will be to discourage hiring. In short, far from putting money in people’s pockets, raising the minimum wage is likely to make it even harder for kids to find that first job and to leave more people unemployed.
If Ohio and other states want to require employers to pay a bit more, that’s fine — but it doesn’t mean the federal wage must follow suit. If the stronger economies and hiring patterns in some states warrant higher rates, let the state governments that are more familiar with local conditions make that decision. We don’t need edicts by the faraway federal government to control every aspect of our economy.
I think raising the minimum wage right now is a bad idea.
Normally a Senate race is a big deal, but this year I’m not hearing anyone talk about the Brown-Mandel contest — and I work in an office where many people, from both parties, are very interested in politics. The candidates have had three debates, but only one was broadcast on TV and I don’t know anyone who watched it. I’m sure that all of the debates were fully covered in the daily newspapers, but Kish and I don’t subscribe to a daily newspaper any longer, and I haven’t seen any coverage of the debates when I’ve visited state news websites. As a result, I assume that not much happened — no gaffes, no knee-buckling zingers, and probably not much of in the way of any kind of news.
Sherrod Brown
It’s an election that will present some sharp contrasts of liberal versus conservative and experience versus youth. With Republicans trying to regain control of the Senate, the race has attracted enormous attention and buckets of money from outside the state, which means we’re already seeing lots of negative ads about both candidates. The early polls show Brown in the lead.
Yes, Mr. Webner. 
The bill is a response of sorts to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which struck down limits on independent spending by corporations and unions. Senator Brown’s most recent email, sent Saturday afternoon, says that such special interest money is having a “distorting effect” on elections and that the “flood” of money is “is threatening to wash away the voice of America’s middle class.” (Of course, because we don’t know the identity of the donors to these groups, we obviously don’t know for sure whether those donors are members of the middle class or not.) Not surprisingly, Senator Brown views all of this through the lens of his own experience; if you read his emails, they all discuss, in great detail, how much groups opposing his reelection are spending on that race.
I’ll write more about the race as we get closer to the election. For now, I’ll just say that I’m mystified by the tactics of the Brown campaign. I get their e-mails constantly, and they all are about money. How much money Mandel is raising, how much money “special interests” are contributing to support Mandel’s candidacy, how many TV ads have been purchased as a result of the money contributed to the Mandel campaign, and how much money the Brown campaign needs to make up for the cash landslide that is tumbling into Ohio.
In 2011, a surprising number of Senators announced they would not run for re-election. The last was Senator Ben Nelson — the Nebraska Senator who was criticized, here and elsewhere, for shabby politicking in connection with the passage of the “health care reform” legislation. In all, 
