All work matters, but not the same. That’s why the market pays a drive-through clerk $100 and a neurosurgeon $4,000 for the same day of work.

It costs almost nothing to land an entry-level job. Most high-wage earners invested in education or training, often borrowing to do so. Their war stories reveal how low-wage jobs were the low rungs on a ladder to high-wage jobs.

In addition to investing in knowledge and skills, high-wage workers typically endure sleepless nights and frightening responsibilities. One wrong move and the patient dies, a client goes to prison, or a building implodes. For mom-and-pop shops, there’s the concern of getting sued or not making the payroll.

No one needs to pity or look down upon full-grown adults of average ability who earn low wages long term. Most of them chose not to pay tuition or read endlessly to learn a profession or trade. Typical checkout clerks at Walmart could learn to run the company but have no interest in the rigors and stress it would entail.

The high demand for low-wage workers has fast-food shops begging for them. Americans see drive-thru signs offering up to $20 an hour, a first-day paycheck, and benefits — no experience required.

With employers competing for unskilled labor, we don’t need Congress and the Colorado legislature to raise minimum wages. When they do so, they kill good, unskilled jobs for people who are happy and willing to work them.

Colorado’s minimum wage increased from $13.65 to $14.42 on Jan. 1. Denver’s minimum went from $17.29 to $18.29. The congressional Raise the Wage Act of 2023 brings the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 and $17 by 2028.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal increase will cost 1.4 million jobs over 10 years. Wage mandates kill the lowest-wage jobs first because they are the most expendable.

Politicians pass minimum wage laws to signal concern for low-wage earners. They know it won’t make headlines each time a café lays off a dishwasher and line cook, or the supermarket forces everyone through self-checkout. It will put people out of work quietly while reducing or eliminating what they did for consumers.

The next million-plus minimum wage victims show up in the CBO report as $46 billion in new deficit spending to support them.

Each person kicked aside by the minimum wage is someone with diminishing hopes of climbing the ladder to becoming a physician, scientist, engineer, lawyer, CEO, or entrepreneur. Each is someone told they no longer matter because they’re not worth minimum wage.

Meanwhile, our state and national economies struggle with a shortage of qualified applicants for high-wage jobs. It means waiting weeks or months to see doctors, dentists, electricians, plumbers, and other highly skilled workers.

As reported in The Gazette, Colorado’s veterinarian shortage has people euthanizing pets for lack of access to care. An article by the American Medical Association declares the physician shortage “an urgent problem we need to address today.”

By killing low-wage jobs, the government devalues people and the work they do. It deprives them of hope and the lower rungs of the ladder to success.