This was a nice little article from BlogsForBush.com

Today, raising the federal minimum wage is a bad idea whose time has come, for two reasons, the first of which is that some Democrats have New Deal Nostalgia. Witness Nancy Pelosi’s “100 hours” agenda, a genuflection to FDR’s 100 Days. Perhaps this nostalgia resonates with the 5 percent of Americans who remember the 1930s.

Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum live in families with earnings below the poverty line.

Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and are earning tips - often untaxed, perhaps - in addition to their wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, be earning 10 percent more. Raising the minimum wage makes work more attractive relative to school for some teenagers, and raises the dropout rate.

But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities’ prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly. But that is a good idea whose time will never come again.