Desperate for an agenda, Presidential wanna-be John Kerry is ramping up the class warfare. Apparently the government is just giving away money to those evil, hated rich people while poor folks are rounded up and forced into servitude to Bush campaign contributors like McDonalds and Wal-Mart.

"If a president can go out and fight for four years to provide over a trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America, we can fight for a few months to raise the minimum wage for the poorest people in America," Kerry told an audience at Northern Virginia Community College.

Kerry preys on economic ignorance and class envy to get people to vote for him. I had thought that tax cuts were just a way of the government letting taxpayers keep more of their own money, but according the Kerry the government is apparently just giving away trillions of dollars. And while Bush is giving all this money away to rich cronies, minimum wage earners (who don't really pay much income tax any way) are left to fend for themselves.

Kerry said three of four women who would benefit from the increase are adults. Such a boost in the minimum wage, which has not changed from $5.15 since 1997, would provide a family with enough money to buy 10 months of groceries or pay for eight months of rent, he said. [...]

Kerry said Americans are "living with a minimum wage that is lower in value that it's been at any time since 1949 when Harry Truman is president.

People aren't really meant to "live" on minimum wage. Minimum wage workers are low-skilled people who don't yet have enough training or experience to earn more. People who are "stuck" in a minimum wage job, are those who aren't doing enough to get ahead. (Or they keep doing the things that hold them back.)

Then again, there are other side-effects of minimum wage laws. The great Dr. Walter Williams explores what he calls racist policies that kowtow to big labor unions.

One effect of minimum wages is that of discrimination against the employment of less-preferred workers. A worker might be less-preferred in the eyes of a particular employer in a number of ways. He might be low-skilled, less intelligent, or a different nationality or race. Put yourself in the place of an employer, and ask: If the law requires me to pay, say, $9 an hour, no matter whom I hire, does it pay me to hire someone who has skills enabling him to produce only $5 worth of value per hour? Most people would view hiring such a worker as a losing economic proposition.

Are low-skilled workers made better or worse off as a result of the $9 minimum wage? It's almost a no-brainer to conclude that being hired at $5 an hour puts more food on the table than not being hired at $9. What's more, minimum wages reduce training opportunities. Most of us gain skills through on-the-job-training. Minimum wage laws deny that opportunity.

Plus there is also the overall effect on unemployment. If an employer has three workers making $5 an hour, and is suddenly forced to pay them more, he may lay one of them off and expect the other two to pull up the slack. While the two guys making more money are better off, it's little consolation to the guy that got laid off to pay for their raises.

Still yet, you could look at it this way. Lets say a guy is getting paid $8 an hour to sweep the floor. Here you come, fresh out of high school looking for a summer job, and offer to sweep that floor for $6 an hour. Why should the government be allowed to tell you that's illegal for you to work for that little bit of money? When you don't have very many skills and you're out there competing for work, sometimes your price point is the only competitive advantage you have. John Kerry hopes to take that away, and something tells you that his big union contributors will be happy to reward him for it.