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Guest Post: How Stupid Is The American Public?
The cruelest law of all is the minimum wage. It is the most basic law of economics: if the price rises on a good (ceteris paribus, of course), then less of it will be purchased. Labor is no exception. When you raise the price (i.e., the minimum wage in this case), less labor at the low end of the skill scale will be employed. For a thorough discussion, see here.
In a time when our economy is struggling and teenage unemployment is through the roof (especially minorities), raising the minimum wage is the worst thing that can be done. This price control hurts the most vulnerable in society and those most in need of jobs. Yet the political class knows they can depend upon the ignorance and stupidity of the voting public. By appearing to be compassionate, they gain favor and votes. This move is not compassionate, it is harmful and destructive. There is nothing more harmful to low-skilled workers than raising the minimum wage. If it benefits politicians they don’t care what havoc and destruction they impose so long as enough of the people can be fooled.
The reality is that Government schooling produced this situation of zero to low skills. Now government rides to the rescue by making laws that make it illegal for their damaged output to be hired. No employer will hire an employee that costs him money. Unless the employee has a reasonable chance of contributing more than he costs, he has no hope of escaping unemployment. Unskilled workers are capable of doing productive work, but not at a beginning wage set too high by politicians looking out only for themselves. If the minimum wage is so good, why not raise it to $20.00 per hour or $50.00? Wouldn’t that erase poverty?
The answer is an emphatic no! The higher the minimum wage the more poverty and unemployment results. This “feel-good” legislation will raise unemployment. Sadly, it will also destroy lives. It effectively makes it a crime to higher willing workers with low skills. These are people who deserve better than what they received from government schools. Entering the workforce at any wage would provide the work habits and skills that would enable them to quickly go beyond their entry levels. These low-skilled workers are no different than MBAs who enter at lower wages than they will earn after training and gaining experience.
The tragedy of the minimum wage is that it ruins lives. It condemns many to a lifetime of unemployment, welfare and living a life equivalent to a ward of the state. These “compassionate” politicians don’t care how much damage they do so long as you are too ignorant to see through their scheme. They want your vote. So long as you are ignorant enough to believe they are doing compassionate and generous things, they will continue to destroy lives.
This survey from Rasmussen is confirmation of the appalling economic ignorance of the American public.
54% Favor Raising Minimum Wage to $9 An Hour
Most voters don’t think the minimum wage is enough to live on and support President Obama’s proposal to raise it from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour. They’re more narrowly divided, however, when asked if hiking the minimum wage will be good for the economy. Read More
With every passing day, the American public makes H. L. Mencken appear to have been more of a genius than he possibly was. His evaluations of the public were merciless. Here are but a couple of his pronouncements:
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Mencken must be chuckling from his grave at the situation we allowed our criminal class politicians to impose on us. Even he probably could not have imagined how dumbed-down the government has made recent generations. Make no mistake, it is government and its policies responsible. Despite all the blather about education, our criminal class is quite content with having stupid constituents. An educated public would have ridden these crooks out of town on a rail.
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it's the bankers that do God's work, that's what justifies their massive *earnings* - the sheep at the feet of the Shepherd, it's all according to God.
can't mess with the Plan.
Overheard at Goldman Sachs:
Banker #1: AAPL says they can't find Americans with the skills needed to build iPads.
Banker #2: Yeah, it takes a lot of skill to survive on seventy cents an hour.
How stupid is the American public?
I don't know but pretty much average I guess.
BUT
I have emigrated from 2 countries (socialist in ZH opinion) and, surprise, they don't want to tax me!
And I have denounced 1 citicenship without any problems.
If I have understood this right,
1. You Gringos can live anywhere in the world, but have to pay the taxes for the imperial forces, it's not free as you know.
2. If you denounce your citicenship, you must pay ransom.
Damn, give me the number to Al-Cia, I hate your FREEEEEDOOOMS!
I was resently in US delivering some fuel, on the cistern was a huge logo:
"FUELING THE AMERICAN DREAM" with a big ass flag.
Yeah right, the trade deficit fueling the American dream, sound right.
What the fuck happened to your country?
We just changed our priorities around a bit. It's profits vs. wages, and we chose the "profits" route.
A problem, when 99% are piss poor, where the fuck are the profits coming from?
Hope?
the Farmers have many fields to harvest, and some are to lie fallow in the future.
stay nimble, you appear to be smart enough to realise this.
We're reaching that tipping point now.
The higher the minimum wage the more poverty and unemployment results.
The lower the minimum wage, the more well-to-do and the higher the employment rate.
In Rome and pre-revolutionary America, the minimum wage was zero, and unemployment was zero because it was illegal, on pain of whipping and death. Everybody was well-to-do. If we lower the minimum wage-rate to that prevailing in India, all the jobs will come back and we will be just as wealthy as people there. If people are desparate, they can always let their children work for even less, thus becoming ever wealthier.
As for the government as the great evil-doer, how long do you think the income earning assets of the wealthy in America would last in a society free of a government monopoly on violence?
slip of the pen, in pre-civil war America
The govt. monopoly on violence is bad for America. Military and police duties should be privatized. Like everything else, there should open free market competition when it comes to security and the use of deadly force.
How Stupid is this Author?
This is the biggest schmuck ZH has ever run.
We've got a government whose incompetent employees get paid 150% of their private sector counterparts, raises and retirement plans while running trillion dollar deficits. But hey, when government spending accounts for 40% of GDP right off the top, there is no private sector anyway, just a not-so-well-connected sub-division of the government, masquerading as capitalists. Counterfeit money sloshing all through the system, boosting egos in a broke country.
Apparently none of this bothers Monty.
Nope. What he considers Tyranny is not being allowed to starve others into submission.
I can hardly wait for Monty's piece on why child labor laws should be abolished.
Get on it, Fucktard
Eliminate deficit spending and I'll support abolishing the minimum wage. 'til you can do that, shove your "free market" hypocrisy up your ass, retard.
It's like saying Jeffrey Dahmer was a bad guy because he used the wrong fork with dinner.
"I can hardly wait for Monty's piece on why child labor laws should be abolished."
+1 here. Children are perfect for assembling I-Phones and the like. Chinese women and children have small hands that are good for assembling the tiny connectors on the small I-phone/pad displays. It is one of the bottlenecks on the Foxconn line.
Sure to be followed by: "You know, if you go to places where people don't have jobs, and give them chains to wear, they'll work for FREE!!!!"
Shame the fucking asteroid missed us....
"The cruelest law of all is the minimum wage."
The quickest non-read in ZH history. One sentence and done. Don't need to waste my time on this drivel.
A large percentage of Americans are as dumb as a bag of hammers
Which is exactly how the TPTB gets away with all their bullshit
It's hard to watch
I dunno, how big is the universe?
American public believes what their government tells them. They don't understand economics, or causal relationships. They only see what's within their bubble. Minimum wage is actually one of the dumbest laws around. I can cross to Mexico, and there is shoe shiners at the local plaza. Go to the other side of the border, they are all extinct. Why is that? Well welfare, and minimum wage in my view. Minimum wage law is akin to controlling a price of a good, that's like raising the prices of goods to consumers. There is no empirical evidence that minimum wage actually benefits an economy. Despite this, politicians like to claim it is beneficial, & good.
When FDR aimed to destroy jobs for non-adults, he aimed at it with minimum wage laws.
On the other hand excluding logic I can find evidence that minimum wage does destroy low skilled jobs. Why in the world would anybody want to destroy low skilled jobs? Your first job is usually a entry point to higher skilled jobs, or higher wage jobs. Like this...which low skilled jobs, the very people who politicians like to pretend they help the most, actually have no job. I guess it's better to have no job than low paying job. Heh.
"Chicken of the Sea, the tuna company, has just announced the closing of its canning plant in American Samoa in September. The chief culprit is 2007 legislation in Washington that gradually increased the islands' minimum wage until it reaches $7.25 an hour, effective July 2009, almost double the 2007 levels."
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/05/the_minimum_wage_and_it...
Charlie the Tuna and the Minimum Wage
One of the most noticeable things here in Pago Pago is the fishing industry. There are many tuna fishing boats, a large-boat service yard, and several tuna canneries in the harbor. However, the industry is not what it used to be. There is only one cannery currently operating - the Starkist plant. The Bumblebee Tuna plant closed several years ago, the Chicken of the Sea plant closed a year and a half ago, and word is that the Starkist plant won't make it through next year. As these plants leave, so does the primary source of income for the island.
We visited the tuna plants and spoke to several workers and managers. We asked why the plants are closing. The answer is unanimous: the minimum wage.
In 2007, the US Congress attached an amendment to a bill that gradually raised the minimum wage in American Samoa until it would reach the minimum wage in the mainland US. Wages before 2007 were around $3.25 per hour, while the minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour.
Support for the minimum wage is low in Samoa. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the unemployment rate has risen from 10% to 30%, and real incomes have dropped 6% as a result of the job losses. The tuna companies that have closed have shifted their operations to Thailand, where they face wages of under $1 per hour.
What has occurred is a phenomenon covered early in introductory economics. The diagram above is known as a Supply and Demand graph, which represents the relationship between the quantity and price of a good for both consumers and suppliers. The supply curve is upward sloping (indicating a positive relationship between price and quantity supplied), while the demand curve is downward sloping (indicating a negative relationship between price and quantity demanded). The intersection of these two lines is the resulting open market equilibrium.
The minimum wage is known as a 'price control.' The price of labor is set above the market equilibrium price. Employers demand less labor at this higher price while additional suppliers of labor (workers) enter the labor force (those choosing to seek a job, new immigration, etc). The quantity supplied exceeds the quantity demanded. This difference represents a surplus of labor (e.g. unemployment).
So what's the solution? This is a place where political and economic opinions may differ. Some might argue for eliminating the minimum wage. Wages would decrease, possibly bringing employers back.
Others might say that with ever-diminishing trade barriers, the factories would have left someday anyways.
The Samoan government is trying hard to hang onto the last surviving tuna cannery. They have requested $18 million dollars to try and attract more businesses.
Where is this money best spent? Trying to hang onto the canneries may be a lost cause, however there could be great value in retraining the cannery employees into a new, higher-skilled workforce. American Samoa has great infrastructure, an English speaking population, a fast internet connection, and free and easy access to the domestic US market.
Forgot the graph.
http://www.eyeotw.org/2010/06/charlie-tuna-and-minimum-wage.html
Let me guess: written by a Jew?
The minimum wage increase is a wedge issue that Obama will use to take back the House in the 2014 electiosn. Unless there is some kind of external shock that saps profit margins before then, the election is guaranteed to go to the Democrats. Why? Corporate profit margins are at record highs - fueled by Federal deficit spending - and we know that corporate profits are mean reverting. But what is the physical mechanism of mean reversion? Politics. Record corporate margins provide the room for labor costs to be boosted, and in an environemnt of high unemployment, the only way that can happen is by collective action (politics). Obamacare is functionally a large increase in labor cost, and a minimum wage increase will be another part.
Bwaahaaaahaaa....I haven't seen an affront to logic this blatantly stupid pimped on ZH in awhile.
Small businesses actually care about their workers, unlike the asshole who wrote this piece, as well as the many publically traded companies on Wall St:
Higher Minimum Wage? Small Business Doesn't Mindhttp://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-21/higher-minimum-wage-smal...
You might as well ask how stupid are children and adults for being abused, raped, conned, beaten, burgled, fooled, etc. There are people who decide to harm others and they will always attack weakness no matter what it is, and it would be a shame to blame people for having weaknesses when they will always have weaknesses and these weaknesses will always be targeted no matter how smart they are. The truth that all these lies in the world are meant to cover up is that evil people can choose not to do evil but they do not.
A solution is know one's own weakeness and strengths and one's enemy's. No use focusing on just one's own weakness.