I was reading about economics today. I don't recommend it. I'm retired, 65, in good health and I have an internet connection. You'd think I'd be watching porn but no. I was reading about minimum wage laws. At this point I normally say something like, "It's really interesting." No, it's not. It seemed an awful lot like work. So, I took a nap. I did finish the little bit of research I'd set for myself. I'm much refreshed.
I became interested in the origin of minimum wage laws in general and in the United States in particular mainly because I wanted to advance a contrarian idea and didn't want to sound like too much of an ignoramus. I could put you to sleep with what I learned. Maybe I will. If this essay works as a sleep aid, recommend it to your friends.
One of the first things I learned confirmed my original thinking about the relations between management and labor. They're hostile; go figure. The original wage laws were actually limits on maximum wages paid. They came after the plague years when labor was scarce. Over time, those various Acts were amended to become a minimum wage. That's when Kings were Kings and legislative bodies knew their place. Not that I recommend that.
That evolution of thinking and those Acts were based in noble ideals. National minimum wage laws in the U S grew out of the revolution in thinking the Great Depression engendered. That circumstance makes a difference in conception. It saw the marriage of two ideas. 1: The value of labor needs to be recognized and protected. 2: We, as a society, do owe help and support to our fellow citizens as a way of providing for the common good. It seems so simple now but the decades of debate concerning just that issue will glaze your eyes over. Add in the recent (at the time) and final debate over income taxes and the whole thing will induce a coma. Apparently, the spectacle of the noble poor literally starving to death in the streets changed the consensus. So, the two ideas of providing for and serving the general welfare and the minimum wage were married. Like most marriages, the ideals didn't quite mesh but did get along. Let's talk about the offspring.
The offspring has been a form of socialist idea. Socialism just doesn't work. Before you start thinking about my political persuasion look up the term "Socialism". The way the term is used, at this time, in the United States is an insult to the term itself and an insult to intelligence. Puleese!
Here's the deal. Our goal is to have capitalism function in such a way as it provides profit to entrepreneurs and provides a decent living to labor. It can do that if we make it do that in the proper manner.
Here's the proper manner: ( I bet you knew I was gonna say that.) In the nearly 90 years since the Great Depression, we have had a debate about just how much help we extend to our fellow citizens to actually serve rather than harm the common good. I say it that way because that's what we have been really debating. We have realized that poverty for some of us does not serve prosperity for the rest of us.. I should say that twice but I won't. You should think about it at least twice. We have established what entitles our fellow citizens to our financial assistance in order to serve all of us. In that connection, there are inescapable questions: Why is the owner of a fast-food franchise driving a BMW while the rest of us are paying for his employee's food stamps and driving Chevys? Why are the Walton family the richest people in America while we pay for their employee's health care?
Abolish the minimum wage.
If you employ an adult at a wage that entitles that adult to so much as one dime of assistance from the rest of us you, as the employer, should be taxed dime for dime, dollar for dollar in the amount of that assistance. That would be capitalism! Things would cost what they actually cost to produce without government subsidy to payrolls. Government subsidy to payrolls and directly mandating levels of compensation is Socialism. Regulation of prices and wages by tying them directly to reality is Capitalism.
Capitalism = Good. Socialism = Bad. Corporate Socialism = an obscenity.
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