My first job was a part-time retail sales position during high school. It paid $3.75 per hour. Even those many years ago, it wasn’t close to what the political left today terms a “living wage.” The cash component was indeed modest. I could do it only because I lived with my parents. The real “wages” were the intangibles my employer imparted, sales skills and basic business savvy and social manners that I’ve applied throughout my working life. The shopkeeper paid me what he could afford, and passed on so much of what he knew. I did very well in the bargain.

Today’s political drive to raise minimum wages will make countless mutually beneficial arrangements like the one I had illegal. Wherever the higher wage policy is applied – such as in the City of San Francisco, where I’m writing this column – businesses reduce services or operating hours, or close altogether. Jobs are lost, or never created. Yet, those who brought about the policy still feel terribly good about themselves.

The drive is on now in economically battered Alberta, led by public-sector unions and the New Democratic Party government. Their online “living wage” ads, paid for by union dues funded by Alberta taxpayers, are ubiquitous. They want the minimum wage, already the highest of any province at $12.20 per hour and slated to reach $15 per hour by 2018, to go even higher. They’ve “calculated” that getting by in Edmonton, for example, takes at least $17 per hour.

Fairness is a Canadian value, and allowing greedy business owners to force helpless employees to work for far less than they need seems unfair. But when the campaign is led by people who know, or ought to know, that higher minimum wages kill jobs, then a laudable moral impulse degenerates into moral narcissism: the taking of positions that make the person doing so seem in the right, but actually harms the alleged beneficiaries. Plus, for public-sector unions, advocating higher minimums is sheer self-interest: higher minimum wages strengthen the unions’ push for higher union wages.

Living wage proponents claim that legislating higher wages won’t kill jobs and, no doubt, many people believe that. The proponents are supported by prominent economists who ought to know better and unctuous politicians who see votes in adopting that position. But every business owner knows the theory is false. In any business, the money going out needs to be less than the money coming in. In labour-intensive businesses such as retail, even slightly higher wages can erase a slim operating margin. The business owner has few choices: cut costs (i.e., kill some jobs) or shut down (destroy every job).

The fact that minimum wages even have to be legislated proves there are plenty of people freely willing to work for less. Somehow, they turn this into a “living wage”: by working two or more jobs, sharing an apartment or living with relatives. Or they’re youths for whom a first job is as much about gaining life skills, learning to live independently and testing career options as it is about cash. The “living wage” takes away their choice to work at all. There’s nothing moral about that.

More of Koch’s writing can be found at www.drjandmrk.com.

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