Minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, welfare should be turned over to the 50 states

Reader comment on: Ladder Versus Safety Net

Submitted by Mark Michael (United States), Feb 10, 2014 23:34

This is hardly an original thought, but IMO wage levels vary so much around the 50 states that setting a national one makes no sense to me. Let the states decide if they want to pass laws dictating minimum wages and at what level they are set. (There really shouldn't be any minimum wage laws IMO. In a well-run country, in prosperous times, anyone with employable skills and a good attitude should be able to find a job. The supply and demand should set the level of wages, not some politicians thinking about how many votes they can buy by what wage level they set.)

Similarly, states should each provide their own unemployment insurance IMO. It hardly justifies a national program. (Truth be told, I strict reading of the Constitution would not find a provision to provide charity to laid-off workers in it. But those interpretations were blown away over 70 years ago by the SCOTUS of course.)

Of course, given our current huge federal (means-tested) welfare system, it would be a huge change to turn all of those programs over to the states to either continue funding or phase out, but IMO that should be done also. The federalization of welfare, especially the 1960s Great Society anti-poverty programs and their progeny, was a huge mistake. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was a ministep in the direction of fixing it, but the Obama administration is doing its best to wipe that reform out - and then some.

Keith Hennessey is an earnest, diligent moderately-conservative economist who makes modest, logical points, but he essentially just trims Leviathan around the edges with his suggestions. (Of course, the George W. Bush administration hardly was frugal with the federal tax dollars during their 8 years. Medicare Part D drug benefit comes to mind as an example of that lack of frugality.)

With the current GOP leadership in the Congress, we'll be lucky to just hold the growth in federal expenditures to modest levels this year. Maybe if the GOP wins back the Senate this fall, they can be bolder in 2015. More realistically, we'll have to take back the White House in 2016 and hold both houses of Congress to do much to put our fiscal house in order.

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