EVEN THE FEDS ADMIT Minimum Wages Cause Unemployment.

Minimum wage advocates rarely address the issue of minimum wage exemptions. If minimum wage is supposed to help those who otherwise would not earn a “living wage,” why exempt people with disabilities — often the least productive of us all?

Ironically, Congress presumes the answer to this question is in the minimum wage legislation itself, undermining its logic in the process.

When Congress passed the 14(c) exemption along with minimum wage in 1938, they did so, as quoted above, “to prevent curtailment of opportunities for employment” of people with disabilities. The authors of the bill understood that minimum wage leads to unemployment for those “whose earning or productive capacity is impaired.” So in order to avoid the negative publicity associated with putting people with disabilities out of work, they exempted such people from minimum wage.