People who are mentally handicapped should earn less than half the minimum wage, according to one wealthy CEO.
Peter Schiff, investment broker and CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, sat down Tuesday night with the "Daily Show" correspondent Samantha Bee and gave his thoughts on why President Barack Obama should not raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, Raw Story reported.
"There's a law in economics, supply and demand, that you learn in Econ 101, and if you increase the price of something, you decrease the demand," Schiff told Bee. "The higher you make the minimum wage, the more jobs are going to be destroyed."
Schiff, an author and radio show host, said raising wages will only make other goods, like fast food, cost more. Workers don't need to make any more money, and those who are poor have enough to eat because America is a capitalist economy, Schiff said.
"Did you ever go into a McDonald's or Burger King?" Schiff told Bee, Raw Story reported. "I don't really eat there, but they don't seem desperate and hungry to me. They're young kids, they seem to be enjoying themselves mostly.
"It's socialism that creates, you know, scarcity, that creates famine. In a free market there's plenty of food for everybody- especially the poor" Schiff told Bee.
Schiff took things a step further and suggested that minimum wage should be eliminated altogether, enabling more people to be a part of the work force.
"Individuals would be able to accept jobs at whatever pay they are able to get," Schiff said.
"Paint me a picture of a person whose work would be worth $2 an hour," Bee asked Schiff.
"You know someone that might be? Maybe someone who is...what's the politically correct word, you know, for mentally retarded," Schiff told Bee.
"It's what I believe in, the principles that the country was founded on," Schiff told Bee. "I'm not going to say that we're all created equal. You're worth what you're worth."
© 2025 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
