Lawmakers are once again taking up the issue of increasing the minimum wage. I think compelling an employer to pay a certain wage is wrong. Free markets can set wages and freedom of choice allows an employee to choose a different employer if heisn’t being paid what he thinks he’s worth. To artificially set a number is counterproductive. It doesn’t provide an employee any incentive to work harder to earn a higher wage, it merely forces an employer to pay a higher wage to an employee that might be underperforming.

Now the issue of “tips” has entered the debate.

Tip money earned by waitresses in Las Vegas, manicurists in Hollywood and bartenders in Seattle is on the table in the nation’s capital, as lawmakers scrap over an election-year minimum wage bill.

Nevada, California and Washington are among seven states where workers get to keep their tips on top of getting paid their state’s full minimum wage. In other states, tip-earning workers get paid less and make up the difference with tips.

A provision in GOP-written minimum wage legislation passed by the House and under consideration this week by the Senate could change the law in those seven states — the others are Montana, Alaska, Minnesota and Oregon.

It’s one thing to artifically inflate base wages without tying them to performance, but tips are directly reflective of performance. And those who takes jobs knowing they’re “tip” jobs, know that it’s a pay-for-performance arrangement. As such, those who work in jobs supported mostly by tips have a great deal of upside potential… but they also understand that if they don’t perform, if their service is lacking… then the tip should be reflective of that failure. But artificially inflating the base wage reduces the incentive to perform well.

And artificially inflating wages hurts small businesses. As small businesses drop out of the economy, so do the jobs they created. Is an employee better off with a low wage, or no wage at all?

It would be one thing if people were forced into certain jobs. If people were unable to choose their employer or their line of business, it might make sense to artificially set a minimum wage so those employees wouldn’t be taken advantage of. But you can’t argue that employees are being taken advantage of in a free market if they have the choice of which employer for which they’ll work.

Of course, the irrational arguments will live on:

“Everything that has been achieved in seven states to support low-wage workers who earn tips is destroyed by this bill,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “This bill would slash the salaries of thousands of workers.”

This is such typical irrational, liberal rhetoric. Tip earners can still work hard for big tips. The fact that their hourly wage is lower provides more incentive for them to offer service worthy of a large tip. The pro-minimum-wage-increase movement justifies their position by arguing that employees must make a minimum amount of hourly wage to live. Well, if you’re working a job where you earn tips, and you can’t earn $5.12 an hour in tips ($7.25 proposed minimum wage minus $2.13 base proposed by the Republican bill), then you’re probably in the wrong line of work to begin with.