Best idea since ...

Www.SinceSlicedBread.com recently held an innovative competition. The Web site claims its project "is a national call for fresh, commonsense ideas. A call for ideas that will strengthen our economy and improve the day-to-day lives of working men and women and their families." \nAny American was eligible to participate, and more than 22,000 ideas were submitted, which were discussed and then narrowed to a field of 21 finalists by a panel of judges ranging from former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley to Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp.\nVoting was then opened to the public, and the winning idea will receive $100,000 -- and some free press -- for its owner. The voting period has ended, so you can no longer fill out your own ballot. However, while the winner is already decided and will be announced Feb. 1, you can still go to the Web site and look over all the finalists.\nI cast my own votes last week. The Web site required me to vote for three finalists, but I really only supported one of them. It proposes that we tie the minimum wage to the cost of living.\nInterestingly, this idea was submitted by Fillipo Menczer, an associate professor of Informatics and Computer Science at our very own IU. Small world.\nLet me begin by saying that I have never been a huge fan of the existence of any minimum wage at all. To justify this, I used to employ the often-used but intellectually dishonest example: Imagine what would happen if the government were to pass a new law mandating that all businesses pay each employee $1 million per hour as a minimum wage? All companies would fold because they could no longer afford to employ any significant work force. In a more practical scenario, nearly 90 percent of economists agree that any increase in minimum wage results in an increase in the unemployment rate among low-skilled workers, which is hardly admirable. \nBut whatever my misgivings, I find it difficult to disagree with the premise of Menczer's idea. While cities and states are free to pass their own minimum wage laws, and many have set their own wages above the national level, the fact remains that the federal minimum wage as been frozen at $5.15 since 1997, and the previous raise before that was 11 years earlier. While the value of the wage remains frozen to inflation-bound dollars, the purchasing power of the wage decreases. And it sure has lately. The current federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is more than 40 percent below the 1968 level adjusted for inflation. \nIt is easy to dismiss minimum wage workers as a group composed entirely of high school kids working part-time summer jobs at movie theaters. But this isn't true. Many of these people are working these jobs to support their families and it hasn't gotten any easier lately.\nI would never call for huge increases in the minimum wage, coercing business and raising unemployment. But this idea almost seems too fair, obvious and simple: tie the minimum wage to its purchasing power.