“Nice work, if you can get it…”

Excruciating…

Even though I tried to tune him out; I think I heard President Obama call for an increase in the minimum wage during his State of the Union speech last night.

I am sure this idea sounds great to those of his supporters who are attracted to speeches that sound good rather than ones that are grounded in reality. After all, the President’s call really gives an unthinking person the feeling that he, President Obama, really must “care” about those poor people at the bottom of the economic ladder.

For those who believe in this fantasy, I have a question: The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate in January for Black teenagers was 37.8% and a staggering 43.3% for Black, teenage males. My question is: How will raising the minimum wage help these teenagers find a job?

Answer: It won’t. In fact, raising the minimum wage will increase teenage unemployment. If many business owners cannot afford to hire and pay Black teenagers in their communities the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour why would anyone with an ounce of intelligence think that the same employers would jump at the chance to hire Black teenagers for the higher mandated wage of $9.00 an hour?

President Obama’s call for an increase in the minimum wage is nothing but pure feel-good politics and it is proof for me that even though African-Americans twice voted overwhelmingly for this man, the first Black President does not really care about what is in the best interest of his own people. If he did, then he would not be pushing a minimum wage increase which will make legitimate jobs increasingly unobtainable for many of America’s  Black youth, and White ones, and Hispanic ones and Asian ones too. If President Obama gets his way, maybe the new minimum wage law should be named the “Teenager Job Prevention Act” or the “Nail in the Coffin of Small Businesses Act,” because these would be truthful titles.

In the alternate universe embodied in President Obama’s rhetoric, bad ideas prosper and are lovingly supported by people who cannot, or who refuse to, grasp reality.

Unfortunately, the young people who are and who will be prevented from entering the workforce by unwise, “progressive” policies will truly end up being the “lost generation.” That is not good.