Democrats want to raise the minimum wage to $15 or $20 an hour. Republicans want to leave it as it is. Maybe both are wrong. Although this will seem counter intuitive, perhaps it would be better for the poor and middle class if instead of raising the minimum wage, we lowered it. I can hear the boos in my imagination. Let's look at some basic economic reality. People are in business to make a profit. So if a company has to raise its wages then it also has to raise its prices otherwise it will lose money, not make it. The same workers who got raises now, as consumers, must pay higher prices, so their gain in wages is illusory. In fact, it's worse. They actually lose more money tan they gained. Why? Be cause the business man or woman has to project what the trend is into the future and posit that the labor costs of today will be even more next year so prices aren't elevated just to cover today's costs, they are raised to address the projected costs of next year. Hence, the poor worker comes out with even less real purchasing power than she had before her wages were raised. When minimum wages are raised, other workers, understandably, seek a raise, too. So all raises get higher which means all prices get higher. Those higher prices demand more wage increases which then require even higher prices. We end up with hyper inflation. Think United States of Zimbabwe. So what might happen if we lowered our wages. Think People's Republic of China. More workers would be hired which would augment production and real spending in the aggregate. That would spark more real growth, not paper growth, but more actual materials and products and services to accompany those products. Such increased real tangible growth would then spark an increase in wages as businesses seek more workers to increase production. Such real production would not spur on hyper inflation as the increased earnings would be pegged to increased production.