You wouldn't expect a question about the minimum wage to result in one of the best, brightest and most inspiring statements from the FOX Business Network & Wall Street Journal GOP Debate on Tuesday night, but that is exactly what happened when Neil Cavuto asked Marco Rubio if the wage should be raised.
Rubio's answer was a clearer, more accurate, and more hopeful message for the future than so far has come from any candidate, or even from Hope 'n' Change himself in 2008. What Senator Rubio does is speak first to the reality that raising the minimum wage simply is not going to give minimum wage earners the prosperity they are hoping for. He goes into the dream for a better life that every American has, and touches on the extremely important point that skilled workers and vocational education are immensely underrated and unfairly stigmatized. "Welders make more money than philosophers," he says.
There is nothing really to add to his answer, so here is the transcript in its entirety, via Fox Business Network.
RUBIO: Well, let me begin by answering both the first question and this one, because they’re related. As I’ve said many times before, my parents were never rich people. My father was a bartender. My mother was a maid. They worked for a living. But they were successful people, because, despite the fact that they weren’t well educated and had those jobs, they made enough money to buy a home in a safe and stable neighborhood, retire with dignity, leave all four of their children better off than themselves.
We call that the American dream, but in fact, it’s a universal dream of a better life that people have all over the world. It is a reminder that every country in the world has rich people.
What makes America special is that we have millions and millions of people that are not rich, that through hard work and perseverance are able to be successful.
The problem is that today people are not successful working as hard as ever because the economy is not providing jobs that pay enough. If I thought that raising the minimum wage was the best way to help people increase their pay, I would be all for it, but it isn’t. In the 20th century, it’s a disaster.
If you raise the minimum wage, you’re going to make people more expensive than a machine. And that means all this automation that’s replacing jobs and people right now is only going to be accelerated.
Here’s the best way to raise wages. Make America the best place in the world to start a business or expand an existing business, tax reform and regulatory reform, bring our debt under control, fully utilize our energy resources so we can reinvigorate manufacturing, repeal and replace Obamacare, and make higher education faster and easier to access, especially vocational training. For the life of me, I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education. Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.
(APPLAUSE)
If we do that — and if we do this — if we do this, we will be able to increase wages for millions of Americans and we will be able to leave everyone better off without making anyone worse off.
