Minimum wage law increases are popular, but so is ice cream. That doesn't make them good for you.

A California bill would increase the minimum wage from $8.00 per hour to over $9.25 and provide for future increases to keep pace with inflation.

I want people to make more money, but a minimum wage is not the way to do it, particularly if your labor is worth less than $9.25 an hour.

If a worker's labor is worth $6 an hour--say he's unskilled or inexperienced--then a business isn't likely to employ him at $9.25. The worker will quickly find himself making $0 an hour since he won't have a job.

That's hard on high school kids trying to get a job to get some experience under their belt. Why would an employer hire an inexperienced student for $9.25 when a more experienced adult could have the job and have more to contribute? The student will have a harder time getting experience so he can one day make more than minimum wage.

Nor is it good for unskilled adults. Why hire an unskilled adult at $9.25 (or $8, for that matter) when a more skilled one will also work for that wage?

Minimum wage laws negatively impact the very people politicians say they are trying to help. After all, they don't have control over the real minimum wage, which is always $0 an hour--the wage someone gets when they can't find work.

America's youth faces an "unprecedented" situation in which they might be the first generation not to have it better than their parents.

A broad range of economic factors has conspired to suppress wealth-building for younger American workers; the trend predates the Great Recession. Younger Americans are facing stagnant pay -- the median income, when adjusted for inflation, has declined since its 1999 peak -- as well as a housing collapse and soaring student loan debt.

Each of those three burdens--stagnant pay, housing collapse, and student loan debt--were caused by liberal policies.  I'll examine each in detail, starting with the latter.

Student Loan Debt

Economics 101. When demand outpaces supply, prices increase. Even tuition.

Generous student loan terms of low rates and long terms made it possible for more people to "afford" school--afford the payments long enough to attend a university, that is. After all, everyone has a "right" to higher education that the government must provide, correct? Well, when anyone can qualify for a low-interest loan of tens of thousands of dollars with no money down, lots of people will sign up, especially when they can delay adulthood for four more years. More people means more demand. More demand means higher tuition prices.

Coupled with the liberal obsession with soft social sciences, students don't learn productive skills. They graduate in massive debt and without any job prospects.

Housing

A big cause of the wealth disparity between the younger generation and their parents is home ownership. Baby Boomers have houses, and they quintupled in value over a decade, for much the same reason tuition increased. Easy loans. Little down. Low interest rates. All leading to more demand and therefore higher prices.

Through bailouts, refinancing, and lax foreclosure rules, the financial and public sectors conspired to artificially keep housing prices from collapsing as far as they would have in a free market. The result was that Baby Boomers kept their houses and their children were kept from getting them.

Stagnant Pay

Apart from attacks on job creators, progressives also hurt those seeking jobs--particularly the young. Not only do they learn impractical soft sciences in high school and college, preparing them poorly for the real world, but they are hampered when they try to get job experience as well.

Minimum wage laws hurt young people disproportionately. Inexperienced and low-skilled young workers typically take low-paying jobs where they accrue experience and skills. However, if minimum wage laws make low-paying jobs higher-paying ones, then those jobs go to more experienced workers. If a working student's labor is worth $5/hour but minimum wage is $9/hour, the business will opt to hire an employee whose labor is worth $9/hour--that is, an older more experienced one.

Nevertheless, young people are the most enthusiastic supporters for progressive policies, despite all the damage it does to them.

After Newsweek published a rare cover story criticizing President Obama, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman sprang into action and criticized both the author, Niall Ferguson, and the publication over the story's claim that Obamacare is not deficit neutral.

"We're not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here -- just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers. The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through. Will Newsweek?"

Krugman pointed to the CBO analysis that said the Affordable Care Act would reduce the deficit as the final word on the matter. However, the CBO tends to optimistically assume revenue streams that will in reality never materialize. For example, the CBO estimates that $107 billion will be raised from "changes in taxable compensation and penalty payments," which I take to mean the new tax on Cadillac insurance plans. When taxes are calculated, there is a tendency to underestimate human response to increased taxation, which is avoidance. If there are x current Cadillac plans, and the tax rate is y, the government's revenue will be x times y. There, it raised a hundred billion dollars on paper. However, if Cadillac plans are going to get taxed at 30%, guess what--the real life response is that people are going to drop those plans or find some other way to avoid that tax and the government will never see that money.

The CBO can't accurately quantify how people will avoid the tax, but common sense tells us they will. Niall Ferguson apparently understood that, and for his recognition that the CBO estimates aren't the final word on the matter, he was smeared as unethical.

Now, let's put aside that fact that Paul Krugman, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Princeton economics professor, can't understand the concept that taxes affect people's behavior. For the sake of argument, we'll say that the CBO is the final word on the matter and Ferguson is dead wrong.  Should Krugman be the one casting stones about the "misrepresentation of facts with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers." Remember, he said the Times "would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through."

Would it?

Krugman's most recent column in the august New York Times seems to show that he himself misleads readers.

In it, he criticizes Paul Ryan's budget as "a con game."  

On the tax side, Mr. Ryan proposes big cuts in tax rates on top income brackets and corporations. He has tried to dodge the normal process in which tax proposals are "scored" by independent auditors, but the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math, and the revenue loss from these cuts comes to $4.3 trillion over the next decade.

While Krugman assumes rosy revenue projections by ignoring real human responses to tax increases, he also is eager to assume big drops in revenue from tax decreases. It shouldn't take someone like me to teach him something about economics, but when tax rates decrease, economic activity can increase resulting in more tax revenue.  If we thought like Krugman, a business that offers a one-day 20% storewide sale will have 20% less revenue that day than they would have without the sale. To him, a lower price means lower revenues and lower taxes mean lower revenues. To people with common sense, however, lower prices could mean higher revenues, and so can lower taxes.

 But that's beside the point. It's not unethical for Krugman to be wrong about economics, even though that's what he's immersed in.

The unethical part is how he described the "nonpartisan" Tax Policy Center. That group is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institute.

The Urban Institute is a "leading liberal think tank," according to the Los Angeles Times, and Krugman's own employer calls the Brookings Institute "liberal."

Did Krugman lie? Not technically--both groups call themselves nonpartisan, which makes it easier to pretend it's true. But Krugman's standard for Ferguson wasn't that he out-and-out lied, it was that he misled readers. That's exactly what Krugman did when he tried to pass off an ideologically biased group as an objective one during his criticism of Ryan's plan. And he did it in the august New York Times.

So not only is Krugman wrong about economic principles, he unfairly accused Ferguson of being unethical simply for disagreeing with the CBO estimates. Furthermore, Krugman himself really did mislead readers when he tried to cloak a biased group as an objective one in his latest column.

I wish Earth Day and May Day were on the same day, because then it might be easier to persuade liberals of the errors of their ways.

It's sometimes hard to get through to people with a different ideology than yours, so sometimes it helps to speak to them in their own terms. Since Earth Day environmentalism and May Day anti-capitalism go hand in hand and the two days are close together on the calendar, let's discuss capitalism in terms of environmentalism.

Environmentalists don't want delicate ecosystems impacted by mankind's intrusion into nature. One small environmental change brought on by humans may impact the mating habits of some rodent, which causes fewer rodents, which impacts the eating habits of an animal one link higher on the food chain, and so forth until the ecosystem is destroyed.

Almost all organisms enter into relationships with one another where their growth and survival often depends on other their symbiotic relationship with other organisms. Flowers are colorful to attract bees, and bees spread the pollen to other flowers. The bees flourish and so do the flowers.

 Humans also enter into symbiosis with other humans. Two people, two groups, two classes, or two nations may work together to advance mutual interests, even the "99%" and the "1%". Poor and middle-class people are typically paid by rich people to perform some function at some company, a company that usually makes ever-more affordable items that the poor and rich people can buy to further enhance their quality of life.

Both groups benefit, like bees and flowers. However, those in the Occupy Movement and other socialists see this relationship as exploitative. They view the relationship between the wealthy and the non-wealthy in terms of parasite and host. One takes from the other without providing any benefit.

Ironically, there's ardent support on the Left for those that take much from others but don't contribute much themselves-- the chronically unemployed, chronically dependent, criminals, and regulators.

Instead, the view the parasites as those that started companies that employ many people and create products that people want at prices they are willing to pay for them.

Their solution is to upset that ecosystem with a heavy hand, something they would never do to other natural relationships, completely oblivious that when you impact one link of the food chain you impact them all, often to the detriment of every organism in it.

In introductory biology classes we learn that ecosystems are made up of producers and consumers. It's no coincidence the same terms are used in economies as well. Progressives would do well to take their conservationist approach to the environment and apply it to the economy.

I don't often see a letter-to-the-editor in the "most viewed" section of the Star's home page, but one entitled "Conservative thinking" made its way up there over the weekend.

To summarize the letter, the writer cites the problem of high gas prices and urges voters to "wake up" and "vote for those who have conservative thinking."

The first commenter advised the writer to get out some popcorn and "sit back and enjoy the liberals bad mouthing you."

It didn't take very long for "teabaggers" and home schoolers to be ridiculed by subsequent commenters.

Conservative comments tended to defend George W. Bush's energy policies while liberals countered that the price of oil rose under his watch. An example:

Conservatives are "the thinkers"? One of the most clueless letters in years. It is "conservatives" who are refusing to regulate speculators while they sit on the Commodities Futures Board.

FACT: Highest domestic oil PRODUCTION since 2003.

FACT: Lowest US DEMAND since 1997.

FACT: There is NO doubt the speculators are to blame as they PURCHASE 81% OF ALL OIL FUTURES.

So let's get educated folks and stop all this stupid clueless garbage.

I wonder if the author of that comment stopped to consider if inflation plays a role in the price of oil. Certainly, if the dollar's value fell by half, all things being equal, oil's price in terms of dollars would double.

Inflation is a tool used by the powers-that-be as a better solution politically than raising taxes. When a government spends too much money, it faces pressure to try to generate revenue by increasing taxes, or by borrowing, or by printing more money. Politicians respond by desperately avoiding raising taxes on the voting public (unless it's  on the relatively few-in-number rich) and instead reverting to borrowing, until they borrow so much they realize other adverse consequences like having to commit a huge portion of the budget to servicing the debt or facing a credit hit.

Since they can't raise taxes and they can't borrow, they print money. When money gets printed out of thin air, the value of the dollar plummets and inflation increases, which increases the price of gas in terms of dollars.

So, we can directly link high gas prices to spending too much money, which means blame can be assigned to both the Bush and Obama administrations.

However, it cannot be assigned to conservatives, at least fiscal ones. President Bush was definitely not a fiscal conservative, and we're reaping the benefits of his and Obama's progressive spending policies.