Most states legally mandate minimum wages. But Colorado, Florida, and New Jersey have actually amended their constitutions to impose minimum wages.
Any government action to impose mandatory minimum wage rates is not only economically destructive but fundamentally immoral, because such measures violate employers’ and job-seekers’ moral rights to freely contract.
But as if Minimum wage laws are not bad enough, using the constitution to impose minimum wages, on whatever governmental level, compounds the evil. Such political tactics subvert the very crucial role of constitutions in protecting our liberties from governmental encroachment.
There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two—by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first.
The government was set to protect man from criminals—and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government.
These principles necessarily apply to government at any level. Otherwise, if the federal constitution protects rights, but the state constitutions can violate rights with impunity, then the federal constitution is in essence a hollow document. It is not. Though our constitution was approved on a state-by-state basis, it was instituted by “We the People,” not “We the States.”
Under minimum wage amendments and like “economic” constitutional provisions, man’s protection from the government vanishes. Rather than limiting the government to protecting individual rights, such provisions invert the constitution, turning it into a rights-violating tool of economic aggression at the behest of any victorious voting bloc.
As stated in the Declaration of Independence, the philosophic blueprint for the constitution, “. . . to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” If liberty is to be preserved and fully restored, Americans must rediscover the vision of the Founding Fathers as regards the proper role of government and purpose of a constitution.
Related Reading:
Minimum Wage Issue is Not "about what it’s like to live on $7.25 an hour"
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