Thomas Sowell:
There is no way to know what is going on in someone else’s mind. But sometimes his behavior tells you more than his words.
The political Left’s great claim to authenticity and honor is that what they advocate is for the benefit of the less fortunate. But how could we test that?
T. S. Eliot once said, “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
This suggests that one way to find out if those who claim to be trying to help the less fortunate are for real is to see if they are satisfied to simply advocate a given policy and see it through to being imposed — without also testing empirically whether the policy is accomplishing what it set out to do.
The first two steps are enough to let advocates feel important and righteous. Whether you really care about what happens to the supposed beneficiaries of the policy is indicated by whether you bother to check out the empirical evidence afterwards.
Many, if not most, people who are zealous advocates of minimum-wage laws, for example, never check to see if these laws do more good by raising some workers’ wages than harm by preventing many young and inexperienced workers from finding jobs.
One of my own pieces of good fortune, when I left home at age 17, was that the unemployment rate for black 17-year-old males was in single digits that year — for the last time. The minimum-wage law was ten years old, and the wage specified in that law was now so low that it was irrelevant, after years of inflation. It was the same as if there were no minimum-wage law.
Liberals, of course, wanted the minimum wage raised, to keep up with inflation. The result was that, ten years later, the unemployment rate for black 17-year-old males was 27.5 percent — and it has never been less than 20 percent in all the years since then.
As the minimum wage kept getting raised, so did the unemployment rate for black 17-year-old males. In 1971 it was 33.4 percent — and it has never been under 30 percent since then. It has often been over 40 percent and, occasionally, over 50 percent.
But people who advocate minimum-wage laws seldom show any interest in the actual consequences of such laws, which include many idle young males on the streets, which does no good for them or for their communities.
Advocates talk about people who make minimum wages as if they were a permanent class of people. In reality, most are young, inexperienced workers, and no one stays young permanently. But they can stay inexperienced for a very long time, damaging their prospects of getting a job and increasing their chances of getting into trouble, hanging out with other idle and immature males.
Terrific article.
Unemployment aside it also decreases the value of everyone else’s wages effectively giving them a pay cut
This is the actual goal in making those at top make less trying to live their liberal Marxist dream of wage parity regardless of productivity or ambition by any individual
Those that believe it is a wonderful idea to just raise the minimum wage have NEVER had to make payroll. They have zero idea of what it is to run a business, even a lemonade stand or mowing lawns and make a success of it. Anybody with half a functional brain knows that if you price yourself out of the market you and your employees are out on the street. I seriously doubt that we will ever find out the true cost of this insanity. The number of businesses closed and the actual loss of income to the workers even if they’re still employed due to hours being cut. The Left truly love the poor, they make so many of them and I’ve got some serious doubt about the GOP now too.
Another of the unintended consequences of raising the minimum wage is that workers have to cut THEIR OWN hours back so they don’t make too much money, causing them to be cut off from ”freebies” like totally subsidized ObamaCare or child day care, rent subsidies, food stamps, etc.
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2015/07/25/careful-what-you-ask-for-workers-get-15-minimum-wage-beg-for-fewer-hours-to-keep-welfare-228745
And this:
Raising minimum wage is just a band aid on a problem, and it’s not even one that’s going to stick. The vast majority of those in minimum wage jobs are right where they belong; a job that requires no training or skill. Right now, there are far too many of that category available, a problem made worse by the influx of illegal immigrants. Too many in school today or entering the work force have no desire to exert themselves to hone social or working skills; they are satisfied with just enough to squeak by.
Raising the minimum wage will only make that problem worse, rewarding a lack of planning and preparation for future needs.
@upChuck.Liberals: Note that most of those pushing for passage of such a law have not voluntarily raised the wages of their OWN employees to the proposed wage. Apparently, they have to be mandated to do what they are saying is the obvious, apparent right thing to do.