Numbers never lie

I was sitting in the Kansas State Capitol building this afternoon, listening to our House of Representatives debate raising the Kansas minimum wage from $2.65/hour to $5.15/hour. I heard different statistics from different representatives, and it seemed that the same numbers were being used but in different ways, depending upon which side the representative was going to vote.

The best argument I heard came from Representative Combs, who stated that raising the minimum wage was a moral issue. Another representative stood at the podium and broadly stated that the minimum wage more severely affected women, as 55% of all people earning minimum wage were women... Sir, respectfully... did you realize that 54% of the population is female? So we should expect about that percentage, it does not reflect sexism in the corporate world.

I am ambivalent about the minimum wage. I believe in helping those who need help, while I also believe that a free market will set the appropriate wages levels.

For those who want to raise the minimum wage, I would like to ask one thing, please make sure that we are talking about the TOTAL wage, not simply the base wages. If a person gets $2.65/hour in wages, and another $7.00/hour in tips, that is NOT $2.65/hour.