California legislators made headlines Monday when they passed a $15 per hour minimum wage that marks the largest deal to date in the national fight for higher working wages.

The thinking is that legions of poorly paid workers will be able to suddenly afford a higher standard of living and pay their way through life.

No doubt, that’s appealing.

Unfortunately, that’s also complete poppycock.

Today I’m going to tell you why and back up my case with plenty of cold, hard data.

Then, I’m going to share an investment recommendation with you that’s perfectly positioned to profit from the reality distortion vortex that higher mandated wages represent.

The Argument No Politician Can Stomach in the Name of Profits

Let’s get something out of the way first, though.

I’m not playing politics. In my capacity as Chief Investment Strategist, I don’t have that luxury. My job is to help you make money – and that means giving you the facts behind the events of our day even if they run contrary to prevailing wisdom or popular thought.

Studies show conclusively that very few people actually receive truly low wages. Moreover, they make up a smaller segment of the workforce than they have historically.

That’s because minimum wage earners fall into two primary groups that are hardly representative of the broader swath of the American public worker advocates and vote hungry political types in both parties want you to believe – younger, usually school age workers and those who have left school.

But more to the point, according to 2013 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, there were 1.532 million hourly workers earning the federally mandated minimum of $7.25 an hour. Add in another 1.8 million tipped employees, students, disabled workers and others and you come up with 3.3 million workers at or below the federal minimum or roughly 4.3% of America’s 75.9 million hourly workers.

But get this.

More to the point, only 0.8% of all Americans over the age of 25 are earning minimum wage, hardly the vast majority current political campaigns seem to suggest.

To put those same figures in context, those figures stood at 13.4% of hourly workers and 7.9% of all wage and salaried workers in 1979, which means that minimum wage workers are quite literally earning their way up.

You can argue that raising the minimum wage by legislation – as opposed to market demand – doesn’t have much impact if it happens slowly. Which is, of course, exactly what many politicians and advocacy groups are doing.