Lots of minimum wage talk lately. Stealing an idea from columnist Walter Williams, if raising the minimum wage is the answer to poverty, then why don't we just convince all the poor countries in the world to have a minimum wage of $5/hour? The answer to that is that deep down higher minimum wage opponents know that all it does is slow growth and cause higher jobless rates.

Besides, most of the people earning minimum wage are teenagers. Few min. wage earners are heads of a family, and if you are the head of a family and earn only minimum wage, then maybe you should have thought about how you could possibly support a family on your income before you started a family. Even if I had a wife right now, I wouldn't want to have kids yet, because I don't feel like I have enough income/capital to do it right. I'll wait until I know I have enough money to support a family decently. And if I never get there, then I won't have kids. It's incredibly irresponsible, I'd even go so far as to say disgusting, to have children when you can't afford to feed and clothe them properly, or send them to daycare, or buy them books, whatever...