This afternoon, the President signed an executive order raising the overtime pay level for working Americans. The President did this to combat what he calls income inequality.

So here's the deal. Right now American companies are not required to pay overtime if a worker on salary makes more than $24,000 a year. Now that threshold could rise to $50,000 with the President's action today.

So if you're earning less than 50 k, your employer has to pay you time and a half if you work more than 40 hours. Liberal Americans see this as a great thing. Today "The New York Times" editorial quote "By reasserting a meaningful right to overtime the order could lift pay for an estimated five million workers a week in the process help to mitigate the wage stagnation and income inequality that increasingly plague the American economy", unquote.

Well, that's not true. As "The Wall Street Journal" points out today the likely outcome of the federal mandate on overtime pay is a cut back of hours and a loss of jobs.

Companies have three options if they want to sustain their current profits. One, hire fewer employees on salary. Two, cut back their hours so they don't work overtime and three pass the overtime cost to consumers in the form of higher prices.

So while in theory the President's helping workers he may be actually hurting them. Talking Points does support a rise in the minimum wage if we want to get people off welfare, we should pay them $10 bucks an hour. That's an incentive. It's good policy. Of course there would be exceptions for teenagers and restaurant workers who get tips.

But on the overtime the President is once again trying to manage the private economy. As everybody knows, that effort has failed for the past five years. The economy is stuck. Many corporations are not hiring. Companies are hoarding money overseas to avoid taxes. And the social justice taxation system in general means consumers have less money to spend.

But President Obama is a theoretician, a man who looks at the world through the lens of what should be. And so the unintended consequences of his economic policies have held the American economy back big time.

Talking Points wants American workers to makes as much money as possible. And the way to do that is job creation by the private sector. The more good paying jobs the more competition for good workers. You've got to fill them. So salaries rise. That's how you overcome income inequality.

And that's "The Memo."

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