Minimum Wage Misunderstandings: Incompetence Or Dishonesty
Submitted by Walter E Williams via The Burning Platform blog,
Michael Hiltzik, a columnist and Los Angeles Times reporter, wrote an article titled “Does a minimum wage raise hurt workers? Economists say: We don’t know.” Uncertain was his conclusion from a poll conducted by the Initiative on Global Markets, at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, of 42 nationally ranked economists on the question of whether raising the federal minimum wage to $15 over the next five years would reduce employment opportunities for low-wage workers.
The Senate Budget Committee’s blog says, “Top Economists Are Backing Sen. Bernie Sanders on Establishing a $15 an Hour Minimum Wage.” It lists the names of 210 economists who call for increasing the federal minimum wage. The petition starts off, “We, the undersigned professional economists, favor an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as of 2020.” The petition ends with this: “In short, raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour by 2020 will be an effective means of improving living standards for low-wage workers and their families and will help stabilize the economy. The costs to other groups in society will be modest and readily absorbed.”
The people who are harmed by an increase in the minimum wage are low-skilled workers.
Try this question to economists who argue against the unemployment effect of raising the minimum wage: Is it likely that an employer would find it in his interests to pay a worker $15 an hour when that worker has skills that enable him to produce only $5 worth of value an hour to the employer’s output? Unlike my fellow economists who might argue to the contrary, I would say that most employers would view hiring such a worker as a losing economic proposition, but they might hire him at $5 an hour. Thus, one effect of the minimum wage law is that of discrimination against the employment of low-skilled workers.
In our society, the least skilled people are youths, who lack the skills, maturity and experience of adults.
Black youths not only share these handicaps but have attended grossly inferior schools and live in unstable household environments. That means higher minimum wages will have the greatest unemployment effect on youths, particularly black youths.
A minimum wage not only discriminates against low-skilled workers but also is one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of racists.
Our nation’s first minimum wage came in the form of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which sets minimum wages on federally financed or assisted construction projects. During the legislative debates, racist intents were obvious. Rep. John Cochran, D-Mo., said he had “received numerous complaints in recent months about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South.” Rep. Miles Allgood, D-Ala., complained: “That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.” Rep. William Upshaw, D-Ga., complained of the “superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.”
During South Africa’s apartheid era, the secretary of its avowedly racist Building Workers’ Union, Gert Beetge, said, “There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances, I support the rate for the job (minimum wage) as the second-best way of protecting our white artisans.” The South African Economic and Wage Commission of 1925 reported that “while definite exclusion of the Natives from the more remunerative fields of employment by law has not been urged upon us, the same result would follow a certain use of the powers of the Wage Board under the Wage Act of 1925, or of other wage-fixing legislation. The method would be to fix a minimum rate for an occupation or craft so high that no Native would be likely to be employed.”
It is incompetence or dishonesty for my fellow economists to deny these two effects of minimum wages: discrimination against employment of low-skilled labor and the lowering of the cost of racial discrimination.
(12 votes)
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Or better yet, house and feed your workers and pay them nothing?
But, everyone gets a fucking trophy..
$15 is ridicules. It should be $200/hr as of 2050.
After the Fed's QE 25, it probably will be.
~"Minimum Wage Misunderstandings: Incompetence Or Dishonesty?"~
One has to bear in mind that most of the "economists" today are products of the government-owned unionist-run education "factory" serving only to the lowest common denominator. So the correct answer is... both.
The Protocols says...
7. To complete the ruin of the industry of the go yim we shall bring to the assistance of
Speculation the luxury which we have developed among the go yim, that greedy demand
For luxury which is swallowing up everything. We shall raise the rate of
Wages which, however, will not bring any advantage to the
Workers, for, at the same time, we shall produce a rise in prices
Of the first necessaries of life, alleging that it arises from the
Decline of agriculture and cattle-breeding: we shall further
Undermine artfully and deeply sources of production, by
Accustoming the workers to anarchy and to drunkenness and
Side by side therewith taking all measure to extirpate from
The face of the earth all the educated forces of the "goyim. "
"In our society, the least skilled people are youths, who lack the skills, maturity and experience of adults."
Used to be...now the 'least skilled' are MexicAnts.......amerikan yoof can now be found slouching mook style against a liquor store wall, tipping back energy drinks or 40 ouncers, comparing tats...
aint globalization great?
QE Brawndo Twist
In the past many journeymen learned their trade while living with their employers as one of their family, and compensation consisted of room, boards -and training in craft.
These relationships were often quite congenial and resulted in marriages between journeyman and the progeny of the master.
You're stuck in the past and that arrangement is not coming back.
Employers must pay their employees more than the cost of being alive.
Else their employees are really slaves.
I'm not a slaver and I'm not going to let others in my country get away with being slavers.
What?
WANT MORE MONEY? LEARN A SKILL.
Take in some responsibility.
Real wages for the private sector have sunk.
Minimum wagers get huge raises?
They are the only ones.
But why? Vecause they whine the loudest?
No raise for sicial security.
One serious problem is that 'progressivism' prey's on the young, the vulnerable, the ignorant, the captured population.
They need slaves.
But you don't need to be Black.
Just a slave.
Minimum wage can go up instantly just need to hang top 200 rich head to the street lamps.
Pooooor babies. Orphans.
Pooooor babies. Orphans.
It's all rather brilliant, actually.
6. Fiddle as it burns!
7. ????
8. Profit!
Minimum wage, save the whales, ozone holes, women's liberation, black lives matter, rainbow coalitions... maybe it is all one giant ruse.
nuke the horn headed black lesbian whales! (& dock their salaries while you're at it)
The minimum wage inflation-adjusted peaked in 1967. Back then the burger flipper worked about 20 minutes to buy the Big Mac, today over 40 minutes of flipping to buy the Big Mac. Maybe part of the reason the economy sucks is because people don't have enough money to buy the burger. Higher wages are inflationary in a consumer economy. Maybe raising the minimum wage is an easier way to get some inflation than QE. For those who want low prices and inflation at the same time, I don't know what to tell you.
When i hear about racord profits and trillions offshore to save tax money i think you forget some of the equation .......... there is one other choice ........ maybe billionairs could just get a lil less............
Yeah, I have a hard time getting my arms around the idea that major economic problems stem from workers making the least, actually make too much.
Maybe that makes perfect sense to finance experts, but to muppets like me, it sounds pretty silly.
a poor family at the end of month spend 100% of their income back to economy. A rich fuck give back to economy only 3 percent of his income.
actually it might be negative...tax credits are awesome...so is free unlimited money
only problem with your opinion is the poor family's 100 percent may equal 3k or less while the rich 3 percent could equal 30K or more, so who is doing more for the economy? the poor guy spending 3k or the rich guy spending 30k?
That's what I'm saying. Rich take out from economy $970,000 and give back only 30k. That's why dollar has lost its 97% value
http://tinyurl.com/9fbugyj
So, how many washers, TV's, etc does the rich guy buy? How many loaves of bread? The rich guy does not buy enough to impact the economy.
Once we accept the idea govt has a right to tell us what to pay for anything, we deserve what we get. Minimum wage laws are unconstitutional if reasoned by a sane, logical man. But our constitution is now deemed to be only understood by a few black robed flacks.
Employers must pay employees more than the cost of being alive. Slavery will not be allowed.
You may continue with your 'blah blah blah....'
As the accumulated debt rises the prosperity of most people declines. Don't vote for politicions who run deficits or your standard of living will decline.
As a grocery store clerk, then liquor store clerk in the late 1980's and early 1990's I got $10.50 and $11.15 per hour.
The pay now, in 2015, is THE SAME. Housing, utilities, healthcare, food; all up 2X or 3X or more.
A higher minimum wage may not fix it, but getting rid of the FED and sound money might.
Arresting the crooks on Wall Street and in D.C. would help too.
Instead we get hackneyed articles about politics.
Politics is the distraction, morality is the issue.
I think you are right mr EB...morality is the issue. Our money is immoral because the people who creat it and run it are immoral. I used to blame myself and my fellow humans for being immoral for not putting a stop to it. Now I see we are fooled, albeit some more easily fooled than others.
BTW today I noticed an old photo from 1980 where a gallon of milk sold for 1.95. Front and back set of Pioneer speakers for $89.
College is another one. In the '80s 4 years of state university cost $20k and a starting job with a degree was around $25k. Today, state university will run you about $125k and a starting job might pay $60k.
Yeah, but who can pass up the chance at winning a BEER PONG NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP?
Crazy right? I showed my son the receipt for my spring 1981 semester at SFA in Nacogdoches TX. 256 bucks for 18 hours credit.
I joined the USAF because neither I nor my parents could afford to send me to Iowa State University for four years. My guidance counselor gave me no information on scholarships.
I spent almost 11 years in the USAF to earn that four year college degree, but I was also trained in a foreign language, and I got lots of good experience as well.
In 1984, it would have cost $10,000 to attend ISU for tuition, room, board, and fees... FOR FOUR YEARS!
You did what I did. Participated in the enforcement forces for possibly the most evli empire that has ever existed to get college money. I will never forgive myself.
My bachelors degree in engineering at our state university (1982-1986) cost my folks right at $25k total for tuition, books, room and board. Right now I have one in school and it is running me about $11k per semester tuition, books , room and board. I will have spent over $80k for her bachelors when done.
the pay is the same because the skills required to do those jobs is THE SAME. I have no more skills today then I had 10 years ago but you should pay me more cause the price of tea in china went up. Sorry NO,you want to make more, get more skills. been that way since the beginnig of time.
It's amazing how ZHers complain about welfare but want more money for doing the same or less work (minimum wage) which is just as LIBERAL a concept as welfare. and just like the left you oppose the MIC, your're anti-semitic, anti-black (the left is killing blccks left and right in PP clinics, you just want to lynch them) you hate Israel, you're pro-drugs, the list goes on and on. You folks should all just vote for Hillary or maybe better yet 15 buck bernie sanders
In the beginning we had anarchy, then we had a lot a lot of land claimed by force, then the ones who exercised the most force declared themselves to have the divine right to own the land.
Nothing much has changed, but now some want to call the one granting that divine right NAP instead of God. The peasants are still not very pleased about it, even with the name change.
Do you really want to go all the way back to the beginning, ie. anarchy?
"They" have 100 reasons for not paying you and no excuse to pay you.
Go work day labour for 8 hours, get your 76 dollar cheque at the end of the day, after tax and pension, subtract vehicle and lunch expenses thens save for school out of the rest. Easy right? I know no-one said it would be easy, but dont act like I'm lazy if all you want to do is treat me like a chump.
The early 90s were 25 years ago. We're probably too close to not having those jobs anymore to worry about their appropriate minimum wage.
The biggest problem is government education that continuously provides fewer and fewer with adequate education. At the same time the adequately educated achieve more and more due to exponential growth of the technological tools they use.
Government attempts to legislate a cover up only make it worse. Watch videos of college youth incapable of demonstrating any useful level of education. These are the high school graduates that are attending college. Imagine the incompetence of the rest of their class.
I would estimate only about 25% of high schoolers are being educated. Good luck legislating an equitable wage for the remaining 75%.
A small semi automatic pistol in an off caliber will set you back $325.00 from your buddy.
It will be hot, wear gloves.
Both
If the government is involved in any way - both.
The politicians lie.
The gov. bots mostly are incompetent.
ISSEIT said it best. The ProgFucks and Demoshitheads need those dumb fucking millennials; the stupids. The ones that they have indoctrinated over the years with the fucked UP educational "system" of revisionist history, the condemnation of former "facts" - now morphed into whatever their sick assed NWO/Kumbaya agenda is.
Take one look at the young going for Bernie Satch Sanders. I've encountered some face to face.
Fucking idiots - the lot of them
15 bucks is about 7 bucks short ........ but Jamie Diamond needs MOAR HITLARY needs MOAR Dont ask wht your government can do for you, ask what you can do for your government !!!!!!!!
Well I've hired a couple of black kids over the years. My experience was that they were so lazy and stupid that wouldn't have been worth keeping if they were free.
If you could just break out the whip... huh.
By the time they get 15 bucks it will buy half what it will today. That still beats NOT raising it. When you can print free money, what do you care what your servants cost? Servants are the ones working for minimum wage. Sorry if you have to pay your maid more.