Hillary Clinton Criticizes Unpaid Internships, Doesn’t Pay Her Interns

Hillary Clinton wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.  At a speech last year, she said,

Businesses have taken advantage of unpaid internships to an extent that it is blocking the opportunities for young people to move on into paid employment.  More businesses need to move their so-called interns to employees.

Yet her foundation doesn’t pay its interns; neither does her campaign.

Same old tune.  The left is happy to be “generous” with other people’s money (which they take by force of law), but not their own.

NRO’s Deroy Murdock remarks,

If it’s okay for these bleeding-heart employers in the public sector to pay their interns no money whatsoever, who are they to tell private-sector employers what to pay their employees? Anyone on Capitol Hill who does not pay his interns at least the minimum wage has zero moral standing to lecture other people about what they should pay their employees.

Read the whole thing.

Second, the minimum wage is self-contradictory. No wage at all would be okay. But, somehow, a less-than-minimum wage is illegal.

It is perfectly legal for Jackson to have an intern and pay her $0 per hour. However, if he tells her, “I cannot afford to pay you the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. But I can afford to pay you $6 per hour. What do you think?”

The intern replies, “I would prefer $6 to $0. So, great.”

Well, that’s illegal. How does that make any sense at all?

Also,

Fifth, why stop at $15 per hour? Who is to say that $7.25 or $10.10 or even $15 is the correct minimum wage? Indeed, why not raise it to $100 per hour? This policy would have enormous economic benefits . . . .