| In a story about welfare, labor law, economics and those with disabilities, the Left has shown how their desire to help, matched with terrible philosophy is doing considerable damage. Sheltered workshops are fading away, along with a job Chris Cook had for 25 years By Elizabeth Simpson - The Virginian-Pilot - July 3, 2017 |  |
 | This story is horrifying. I do not know where to begin. How many wrongheaded ideas and fallacies need to be corrected? First, stop making it illegal for people to work! The minimum wage is a law that makes it illegal to work if your productivity is not high enough for the ‘do-gooders.’ This story deals with people with limited abilities that make it tough for them to produce much wealth. Requiring higher pay than they can produce means the business must acquire money elsewhere to employ these people. If not, the job goes away. |
| Some great people want to help these disabled people. They search for employers for them. They start businesses that require low skilled labor and plead with other businesses to use their services that might be a little less efficient because of their low productivity. They even plead with the public to donate to their business or use it to give these people a chance to earn part of their cost of living. They explain how it brings these people self-worth and pride. |  |
 | Do-gooders come in and claim exploitation and BAN their jobs. They BAN their opportunities. They BAN their business models. These disabled people are now losing their jobs, their pride, and their self-worth. Maybe these do-gooders wanted the pay to go up; however, if the productivity is not there, pay cannot go up without major subsidies. The result is the loss of thousands of these jobs. The minimum wage does not force incomes up; it just eliminates the pay range of $0.01 to the minimum wage. |
| A big part of this story is our welfare system that is doing much harm and not using the tax money wisely. Consider an alternative of allowing people to use the money that would be otherwise taxed for welfare and contributing it to charities. It is a full system that would yield better results. |  |
 | Too often people claim that someone cannot live off minimum wage. They start listing all the expenses of rent, medical, transportation, food, among others. We all need to fully understand that a person’s needs are not the determining factor in pay. |
| Certainly, when one searches for a job, they need to consider how much they need. People are perfectly free to set their own minimum wage. However, they need to find someone willing to pay them that amount. Everyone has the authority and right to start their own business and sell their goods and service directly to the consumers. |  |
 | That fact alone keeps businesses honest with their pay structure of labor. Any employee having the right to quit and compete directly with their former employer by selling the same product or service is a check on unfair exploitation. If an employment field or sector is not paying as much as others, everyone is free to change fields of employment. |
