Minimum wage is largely an empty gesture

A bill to raise Nevada's minimum wage is the kind of feel-good legislation that lawmakers can point to as an accomplishment on behalf of the working people of the state and which, in the end, will do little or nothing to help.

In fact, some people could end up with less than they had - not in wages, but in health insurance.

Supporters of a minimum-wage increase keep quoting an estimate of 50,000 workers in Nevada on minimum wage and another 50,000 who make less than the $6.15 an hour, the new minimum if the bill is approved.

They may be out there somewhere, but we haven't been able to find them. It was easier to find 19,000 homeless people in Nevada than to locate 100,000 low-wage earners.

And while we agree with the premise that "no one in Nevada should be denied a livable wage," another comment heard frequently from minimum-wage proponents, the reality is that $6.15 an hour is not a livable wage. Employers realize that, and that's why they pay better.

Those same employers, if they're in a pinch, may pay the minimum wage and drop health-insurance benefits. It would be cheaper in the long run. Or they could hire a 17-year-old, who wouldn't be covered by minimum wage, instead of a 60-year-old, who would.

We don't really expect any of that to happen, though. We don't expect Assembly Bill 87 to do much of anything - except tie into state law (and eventually the state constitution, if voters approve an initiative again in 2006) an automatic inflationary rise in the state's minimum wage.

The symbolic value of the legislation will be lost on the public, as well. Why did we vote for an increase in the minimum wage if it did nothing?

Lawmakers who want to push working people above the poverty level should have put forth a meaningful figure - say, $7.35 an hour, like the state of Washington - and debated it up or down. Such a bold proposal may well have gone down in defeat, but it would have forced legislators to decide whether they actually wanted to accomplish something or not.