More wage bunkum

I sent the following to the Raleigh News & Observer:

In "Paycheck parity" you praise the N.C. General Assembly for raising the state's minimum wage, stating that "struggling workers will benefit from the money." This is a very simplistic view of a more complex economic reality.

The redistribution of little green pieces of paper will do nothing, in the long run, to increase the standard of living of the people you intend to help. Only by increasing the production of goods and services can real wealth be created for the masses, and raising the minimum wage, all things being equal, does nothing to achieve this goal. As the economist Henry Hazlitt said, "The best wage rates for labor are not the highest wage rates, but the wage rates that permit full production, full employment and the largest sustained payrolls."