Thinking Outside the Wage

Those on the left love the minimum wage and always seem to want to raise it. Those on the right quite frequently feel the exact opposite (some even going as far as to want to abolish it). Might I propose to my colleagues a compromise of sorts. Yes, we do away with the minimum wage, completely. But then we replace it with a form of negative income tax, possibly along the lines of what Milton Friedman first suggested. That way we a) allow the market to set the true value of labor and b) are still able to care for those citizens less fortunate. We already have a form of it in the Earned Income Tax Credit and, if we simply reinforced it and provided it in the form of monthly stipends (as opposed to it simply coming in one lump sum), it would more than likely be sufficient............................................................................................Yes, I understand that there perhaps could be a downside to it. Some employers may in fact be temped to low-ball workers thinking that the government will pick up the slack. But the fact that most U.S. workers already make well in excess of the current minimum wage makes me think that this factor probably wouldn't be much of an issue. Hell, if anything, it will probably help to employ our younger workers at a much faster clip; their entry into the labor force not having as much of a barrier to it, etc. (the current black male teenage unemployment rate currently hovering around 50%).