Bill Bonner's Unique Point on the "Living Wage"

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The point is at least unique to me. I've never heard any other free-market person make the following point about the "living wage":

Of course, a national living wage is absurd. It costs far more to live in Manhattan than in the Ozarks. And it is far less expensive to live with Mom and Dad than to have a place of one’s own.

But we are not so much concerned with the practical details as with the theory.

We have been told that the people who work at McDonald’s need to earn more. But what about those who write for the editorial pages? Perhaps they should earn less?

If well-educated, well-liquored, and well-paid employees can decide the wages of McDonald’s workers, surely the burger flippers should have the right to fix the wages of the chattering, meddling, and improving classes.

He goes on:

The do-gooders want to use other people’s money to raise the wages of the least well paid, but they make no mention of their own.

Nor do they even offer to pay more for their hamburgers so that McDonald’s can pay its workers more.

And what about the poor people who cannot find jobs at all?

If the minimum wage were raised, there would surely be more of them – either because McDonald’s could not afford to hire so many people at higher salaries or because it had replaced its minimum-wage employees with machines!