Welcome back to the great debate countdown! In honor of the weekend, brought to you by unions, we’ll be talking about the minimum wage.

I’ve held my fair share of minimum wage jobs since I turned 12 and got the then-prevailing wage for children of small-town newspaper editors ($not getting yelled at per hour) to fold papers. I’ve also been paid the federal minimum wage for tipped workers, which was, still is and has ever been $2.13 an hour. At that rate, taxes, which also apply to tips, are often higher than the pay. There’s something amusing about getting overtime pay that’s less than $4 an hour. Amusement quickly turns to rage when you work five 12-hour shifts in a row slinging burgers at ungrateful tourists and then get a negative paycheck.

The minimum wage for all other workers has been $7.25 since 2007, when a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco went for about $1,500 a month. Here in California, we get a whole $9 per hour.

Now, there are some people who claim that’s too low. These wild-eyed communists point to studies showing that Americans are increasingly more educated, more productive and living in a generally wealthier country and allege that the minimum wage should reflect that. Then these disloyal internationalists point to other countries and say that our minimum should be more like those in such epicenters of unmitigated tyranny as Ireland and New Zealand.

Well, excuse me, but I refuse to have my economic policies dictated by the Marxist pigs who edit the Economist. Or by the three out of four Americans who would like the minimum wage to rise to the unconscionable Cadillac rate of $12.50 an hour.

That would be far too likely to lead us down a path that ends in a democracy.

You can read about Bernie’s position on the minimum wage here.