We don’t like to see anyone living in poverty, but making employers pay their employees a higher minimum wage of more than $10 an hour really won’t solve the poverty problem.

That’s because most people who earn minimum wage don’t live in poverty in the first place. They actually live in homes where at least one or two other people work… like a teenager whose parents have jobs.

Or they are retirees who have savings accounts and Social Security as their main income. In fact, only about 1 in 10 minimum wage workers lives in a household that the government would consider poor.

Does it make sense to try to solve the right problem the wrong way?