Economy, Culture & the Family

SQ 832: A recipe for greater inequality and generational hopelessness

October 30, 2025

Byron Schlomach, Ph.D.

Visit www.sq832killsjobs.com to learn more about SQ 832.

One reason people claim to support the minimum wage is that it supposedly equalizes income. 

Whether or not this is a good thing in itself is not the subject here. Instead, it is to argue that if a more equal distribution of income is important, raising the minimum wage is not the way to achieve it. In fact, the minimum wage will only make the problem of income inequality worse.

State Question 832 would raise the minimum wage in Oklahoma to $15/hour by 2029 and, worse yet, mandate automatic increases in the future by tying our state’s minimum wage to a national index. 

Slated for a vote on June 16, 2026, in what will likely be a low-turnout affair, the usual arguments in its favor make it sound like a wonderful way to level the economic playing field, support families, and build a stronger economy. But many evil things are dressed up to look attractive. In fact, as I’ve explained in earlier blogs, unemployment will increase and the minimum wage encourages greater low-wage competition from illegal immigration.  

The minimum wage mainly impacts low-productivity workers, mostly teenagers, whose skills have not been fully developed. As explained in an earlier blog, the demand for low-skill employees falls when the price of such labor increases as a result of the minimum wage. The supply of low-skill workers, however, at least remains the same. In fact, it increases. More low-skill teenagers actually enter the market, spurred by the higher wage. You might wonder who these teens are who weren’t interested in working before, but find work attractive with the increased minimum wage.

This is one of those ways the minimum wage creates a perverse and pernicious effect, one that its supporters ignore and purposefully dismiss. The teens spurred to enter the labor market with the higher minimum wage tend to be from better-off families who would never have found it necessary to depend on a teenager’s income to support the household. With lower wages in the low-skill jobs they could qualify for, these teens focus on school activities, studies, hobbies, and being with friends. But when the wage for their skill level artificially rises, a boring hobby, a sport they’re not good at, and time whiled away with friends are all easier to give up, perhaps for the sake of helping pay for a better car to drive themselves.

Coming from a better-off family background is a competitive advantage in the low-wage labor market. There tend to be two parents, so the likelihood of receiving life lessons from working adults is greater. A higher income generally means attending a better school, fair or not. This means such a teen is more likely to be well-spoken, at least understand the benefits of a strong work ethic, and have good community connections with potential employers.

Now suppose you’re a potential employer of a low-skill teen and you have two identical youths in front of you, except that one has a reliable car, speaks good standard English, is clean cut, and is well-coached in answering interview questions. The other speaks with a heavy dialect, relies on public transportation, and lets the occasional curse word slip in when answering questions. Who would you choose? This is the choice that more often confronts employers with an increase in the minimum wage when the first teenager would not have even applied for the job before the minimum wage was increased.

If the minimum wage in Oklahoma is increased, it’s not the teens from unfortunate circumstances who will benefit. They will likely lose their jobs. And where the jobs don’t disappear altogether, less fortunate teens are likely to be replaced by the more fortunate. Consequently, on the whole, more fortunate households’ incomes will rise while the less fortunate households’ incomes fall, increasing income inequality, not decreasing it.

It's not hard to imagine a likely very real scenario of a teen desperate to help the family with its circumstances applying for a job that an older sibling once had no trouble getting, and being turned down. Even if the teen, desperate for work and income, is willing to take a lower wage, the minimum wage not only makes it illegal for an employer to pay it, but it’s also illegal for a worker to accept it. Meanwhile, a relatively well-to-do teen who otherwise would have stayed home walks in later and gets the job. This creates a feeling of hopelessness and dependence that translates for generations.

Think I’m kidding? It’s a state requirement that all Oklahoma high school seniors fill out a FAFSA form, a federally promulgated application for scholarships for post-high school education. My wife was put in charge of seeing that this got done at one school before she retired from teaching English. One student came to her and said that the project didn’t apply to her. “My career,” she said, “is going to be having babies, just like my mother.” Her “career” was going to be living on the government assistance provided for the children she would produce, just like the generation before her. 

The minimum wage is part of the institutional structure that produces the hopelessness that results in such a lack of aspiration. And it will only be made worse if State Question 832 passes.