To the editor:

A May 8 letter to this paper titled “Shameful wage” calls Kansas’ minimum wage “shameful” and says “raising the wage is the only way to bring thousands of full-time workers and their families above the federal poverty line.” There are many problems with this kind of thinking.

First, the highest aspirations for worker income should not be a minimum or living wage. Second, this presumes personal initiative and free market economies do not work. Third, the worst situation for a worker is being dependent on a politician’s vote for their livelihood. Fourth, a minimum wage maintains the vicious cycle of poverty; it is a trap.

To increase your income, improve your wage value to an employer through education and marketable skills development. Your income will increase if the results of your work improve their profitability and or sales revenue.

A free market economy where a worker can sell his marketable skills to the highest bidder is always the best way to maximize one’s income potential. This is also the only way a worker has the potential to become independent of government and their dependency programs.

Today, the minimum wage program is viewed as an entitlement. Entitlements create dependency. Entitlements do not create sustainable earnings growth potential.

We should demand and expect workers to improve their marketable skills to increase their income, not demand more worker dependency through the minimum wage trap. We should also demand our community provide an expanding diverse employment base for those skills.

David Reynolds,

Lawrence