Two prominent topics in the American political realm. In recent times, we’ve been told that minimum wages must be increased because we were seeing a widening gap between rich and poor, two Americas, yadda yadda yadda.

“Americans believe that no one who works hard for a living should have to live in poverty. A job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. He said a worker paid $5.15 an hour would earn $10,700 a year, “almost $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.”

A minimum wage increase was passed into law in March of this year. Now with the hot topic being the illegal immigration bill, Senator Kennedy is saying something interesting. He’s discovered market forces.

“I would like the chicken pluckers to pay $10 or $15 an hour. They do not do it. They are not going to do it. Who are you trying to kid? Who is the Senator from North Dakota trying to fool?

These are the realities, the economic realities. No one has fought for increasing the minimum wage more than I have. But you have got realities that employers are not going to pay it.”

If economic realities are that certain jobs just won’t demand higher wages, why did we mandate the lowest wage an employer can pay for having work done? Let me ask this in a different way: Why is it ok for American workers to not take certain jobs at certain wages, but it’s perfectly fine for our brown-skinned neighbors from the south to do the low-paid work? Why is Senator Kennedy seemingly comfortable with the illegal immigrant working class being paid a much lower wage than Americans?

This seems to create a class structure, almost like it was, oh, I don’t know, two Americas.

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