Discussing a Colorado ballot initiative to increase the state's minimum wage, on his August 29 radio show, Newsradio 740 KVOR host Dr. Joseph Michelli asked, “I mean, is that the way it works -- is just life is what it is? Life is what it is. You get dealt a hand, and some people are going to get squat, zero, nada. And because of that we should lift the minimum wage just to compensate for the fact that they're dumb and incompetent. Is that it?” Michelli added, “I mean, because that's not the free enterprise system. That is communism, isn't it?”

Michelli was referring to Amendment 42, a proposed constitutional amendment that would increase Colorado's minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.85 per hour and would adjust the minimum wage annually for inflation.

Michelli is an organizational psychologist, a Colorado Springs-based radio personality, and a motivational speaker. His “training, consulting, and keynote presentation company,” Lessons for Success, describes Michelli on its website as “a psychologist and part-time clown, [who] is neither a conservative nor a liberal ideologue. Rather, he's an issue-by-issue commentator, who eloquently expresses his opinions without shoving them down our throats.”

From the August 29 broadcast of Newsradio 740 KVOR's The Joseph Michelli Show:

MICHELLI: Will you vote in support of increasing the state minimum wage by about $1.30 from its current level? And if you will, do you think it's going to mean more children will have health insurance? I mean, think about the illogic of some of these statements we're hearing tonight from people who say, “Well, there's so many people in poverty and there's a lot of kids who don't have health insurance and” -- so what, we're going to increase the minimum wage by $1.30, and what's that going to do for kids in Colorado?

I think if you were in a minimum-wage job right now, gosh, you got to hurry up and get out of it, don't you? How can you support a family on a minimum-wage job? Or is this really the reality? There's just some people who have so limited skills. Let's just be honest. They have such limited skills they cannot possibly make it in a competitive marketplace. You know, the intellectual curve is evenly distributed, right? So, you got some Albert Einsteins, like my producers, and you got some me's. And, you know, between those Albert Einsteins and me is like a vast cavern of intellectual power. So they will always make more than I will by dint of their intellectual ability; and me, with the limited skills that I've been given -- just a mouth, basically, connected to seemingly nothing -- that would cause me to be always on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic perspective.

I mean, is that the way it works -- is just life is what it is? You get dealt a hand, and some people are going to get squat, zero, nada. And because of that we should lift the minimum wage just to compensate for the fact that they are dumb and incompetent. Is that it? I mean, because that's not the free enterprise system. That is communism, isn't it?