The Folly of Michele Bachmann's Minimum Wage Campaign Bomb

Bachmann stands by abolishing minimum wage

In 2005, Republican Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann made a bold declaration. She suggsted that the United States should abolish the minimum wage.

In 2005, Bachmann declared that abolishing the minimum wage “could potentially wipe out unemployment because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”

There was plenty to object to in this statement in 2005, and there remains plenty to object to now. For Bachmann's taste for free-market economics to crowd out any role for anything as basely protective as a minimum wage signals a lack of serious consideration of the issue.

In many regards, the United States has already effectively abolished the minimum wage. In failing to properly address the issue of illegal immigration and the undocumented labour they provide, the US has opened a de facto loophole through which anyone who doesn't wish to pay a worker minimum wage actually doesn't have to.

When asked about the minimum wage, Bachmann responded by explaining her position on job-killing regulations. It doesn't seem unfair to conclude that Bachmann thinks of the minimum wage as just such a regulation.

But it isn't merely in this regard that Bachmann has mis-interpreted the minimum wage issue -- if there in fact is such an issue. But it isn't merely Bachmann who is misreading this issue.

Consider a candidate like Herman Cain, who is campaigning on an economic program that includes steep corporate tax cuts. These cuts would certainly benefit the US economy, making it more competitive with other countries for investment. The job creation benefits are clear.

But there is one criticism of corporate tax cuts that cannot be overlooked: it does absolutely nothing for a minimum wage earner.

Left-wing Democrats can be counted on to oppose corporate tax cuts and support raising the minimum wage. On each count they are miscalculating.

For one thing, a minimum rage hike actually does very little -- almost nothing -- to help minimum wage earners. Nor do higher corporate taxes do much to help the average American.

The reasoning is simple: corporations are not, by any stretch of the imagination, nice guys. They are businesses. Large, monolithic industries with an ownership structure that diffuses responsibility across various individuals and groups. Their goal is to earn profit, so they ensure they can do this by passing their costs along to the consumer.

The costs associated with a higher minimum wage are passed along to the consumer. Costs associated with higher taxes are passed along to the consumer. In each case, everyone pays. But some will pay more than others.

Minimum wage workers will see their additional costs offset by their wage increases. Those not earning minimum wage do not. Because a minimum wage increase is infationary, everyone loses. It's a social loss.

But imagine if the Republicans were to counter the Democrats offer to raise the minimum wage and maintain high rates of corporate taxation with a plan to actually increase the minimum wage, and do it in real terms by offsetting it with accompanying cuts to taxes on businesses, across the board, and to pass these changes with legislative provisions that would allow government to punish any businesses that raise prices to recoup their minimum wage "losses" with a fine or a tax increase.

There is clear peril in this. If not properly constructed, such a law could become a means by which "progressive" political forces within congress or the judiciary could increase taxes at the first sign of price increases. The idea is not to fix the price level, but to ensure that price increases are linked to actual inflation or to actual unoffset cost increases.

That would be an approach to minimum wage that is vastly superior to Michele Bachmann's reckless approach to the issue. It would be an eminently resposnible approach that nearly any Republican -- including Herman Cain, excluding Donald Trump -- could win with.

How Strong Would Michelle Bachmann's Three-Legged Stool Be?

Speaking to the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Minnesota Representative (Republican) and Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann did what anyone would expect a Republican to do: she invoked Ronald Reagan.

Bachmann declared that in order to bring Republican leadership to the White House -- something she believes the GOP has in spades, and the Democrats lack -- conservative Americans have to build a three-legged stool.

The first leg, she insisted, must be peace through strength. The second leg must be fiscal conservatism. Bachmann envisions the third leg as social conservatism.

It's no different than what anyone should expect from Bachmann, but it demands that a pivotal question be asked: how strong would this particular three-legged stool be? Could it stand?



Should the three-legged stool become the dominant meme of the Republican primary election, the question will remain how other Republican candidates envision this particuar three-legged stool.

For example, would Ron Paul -- campaigning on the necessity of defence cuts -- envision "peace through strength" as one of his legs? Would Mitt Romney, whose health care reforms in Massachusetts so closely resemble Obamacare, be so eager to make a strong commitment to fiscal conservatism?

Yet the leg that could critically weaken the Republican three-legged chair is neither of these. It's likely that of social conservatism.

Social conservatives will quickly object to this idea. But the simple fact of the matter is that some of the episodes of American history remembered most fondly by Americans -- the civil rights movement, the end of slavery -- were (at least at the time) socially progressive events that are remembered as transforming the US for the better.

Social progressivism can run amok. The US federal government's funding of groups such as ACORN and Planned Parenthood are in need of thorough review if not outright abolition. The Democrat position on illegal immigration is simply too nebulous to allow for the emergence of sound policy.

Republican social progressivism wouldn't resemble Democrat social progressivism in many regards. It wouldn't outright pander to special interests, but would embrace conservative values of freedom and equal rights for all citizens. It should resemble the vision and thirst for justice possessed by Abraham Lincoln -- himself the founder of the Republican Party.

Peace through strength, fiscal conservatism and conservative-minded social progressivism is the three-legged stool that could hold the Republican Party solidly enough to climb back into the White House.

Michelle Bachmann may not be the candidate prepared to build it.

Bachmann-Pawlenty Showdown Could Define Economic Policy

Michelle Bachmann declares candidacy for President

As the GOP Presidential field met in New Hampshire to compete for the hearts and minds of conservative Americans, Michelle Bachmann had a blockbuster announcement:

She's widening the field. The previously-six man field -- Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty -- now has a seventh member.

“This is the first day of taking our country back,” Bachmann announced. “I’ve worked very hard to bring your voice to the halls of Congress. Now, I want to take your voice into the White House, where it hasn’t been heard for a very long time.”

As it pertains to economic policy -- which will be the defining issue of the Republican primary -- Bachmann is every bit as qualified to carry the standard for the Austrian school of economics as any other candidate. This would only serve to facilitate the speculation-promised showdown with Tim Pawlenty, who favours the similar-yet-genuinely-distinct Chicago school of economics.

Austrian school economics focuses on the price mechanism. The Chicago school directs its attention toward the principles of monetarism.

The traditional battle of economists has, of course been between the adherents of Friedrich Hayek and those of John Maynard Keynes. Now, the GOP may be set to settle in for a year-long debate on who correctly interprets the theories of Hayek; a year-long debate pitting Ludwig von Mises against Milton Friedman.

Some will criticize this as distracting from what they regard as the more important Keynes-Hayek debate. But this should be considered an extremely welcome debate.

One thing that Bachmann cannot afford to do is take the Sarah Palin route. She can't fall back on intellectually-lazy "common sense" pronouncements. She needs to keep the ideas flowing. While her critics desperately try to turn the conversation toward whether or not she's stupid, Bachmann should continue to focus on something her critics don't have: ideas.

Naturally, they won't like it. People who have no ideas generally avoid -- to the point of outright refusal -- to talk about ideas.

If she takes full advantage of the advantages a Presidential run will present her with, Bachmann has the opportunity to mold the economic debate in ways that will confound these same critics. They'll rely almost exclusively on lazy ad hominem attacks. If Bachmann can stay above them, she could be the definitive candidate in the 2012 Republican primary.

But that's only if Pawlenty opts to engage on behalf of his Chicago school contemporaries. Bachmann only has the opportunity to mold the debate if Pawlenty takes her on.

This will force the other Republican candidates to sharpen their policies. Which makes the Tim Pawlenty-Michelle Bachmann showdown so pivotally important for the Republican Party.

Marriage "Under Siege": Violating Natural Law?

It wasn't just Presidential hopefuls who took to the podium at the Faith and Freedom Coalition convention in Washington, DC. It was also individuals like House of Represenatives member Michelle Bachmann.

Bachmann took to the FCC stage to declare that marriage is "under siege". Explaining the story of her opposition to court-mandated legislation that would allow same-sex marriage in the state of Minnesota. Bachmann's objection was a simple one: that citizens of Minnesota should have the opportunity to vote on whether or not the traditional definition of marriage -- one man and one woman -- will be enshrined in the state Constitution.

Bachmann notes the rising levels of divorce and family breakup. The key question social conservatives such as Bachmann need to answer is thus: how will excluding same-sex couples from marriage improve this?

Bachmann, and those who share her line of thinking on this matter, should understand that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is at odds with their notions of natural law -- the idea that rights, such as the right to equality before the law, and the right to pursue happiness -- are not granted by individuals or by governments; they are inalienable.

If same-sex couples have a natural law right to equality before the law, then the citizens of Minnesota technically do not actually have the right to vote to exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage. (Nor could court justices claim the fight to order churches to perform same-sex marriages, something that courts have never considered anyway.) This would represent a tyranny of the majority in violation of the principles of natural law the United States constitution is based on.

Tyranny of a majority is no more permissable than tyranny of a minority. Michelle Bachmann and the FFC have a great deal more thinking to do on these issues; hopefully, they will do it.