Posted on 10/08/2016 4:32:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
This November, voters in Colorado are asked to vote on Amendment 70, which will raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.31 an hour to $12 an hour by 2020. But some groups couldn't even wait until November. On September 12, some local religious leaders, unions and minimum wage workers staged the "Denver Fight for 15 rally" and called for Colorado to adopt a minimum wage of $15 an hour. The rallywas part of the “Higher Ground Moral Day of Action” organized by the Rev. William J. Barber II, After the rally, a group of protesters presented a “moral declaration” to Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office.
It seems that "moral" is the key word that supporters of the minimum wage have been throwing around a lot lately. Anyone who opposes either the minimum wage hike or the concept of the minimum wage itself are called "immoral" and someone who "hates minorities and single moms." Many people who oppose the minimum wage seem to accept their opponents’ moral high ground, but argue against the minimum wage from the sheer economic standpoint, the "unintended consequence" ofhow the minimum wage has failed to lift the poor out of poverty and how it ruins employment opportunity for the youth.
Maybe it's time to reexamine the history of the minimum wage to validate whether it deserves the moral high ground as it supporters claim.
In the early 20th century, there were several major social and economic phenomenon in the U.S. First was the large influx of immigrants. Between 1880 and 1920, America received more than 20 million immigrants, mainly from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, including four million Italian immigrants. These immigrants were often regarded by native-born Americans as unwanted competition for jobs, especially low-paying jobs.
Around this time, the eugenics movement was riding high, supported by the Surgeon General and some senior officials from the Public Health Service (PHS) as well as powerful labor unions, who wanted the government to keep immigrants out in order to maintain high wages for American workers. In 1920, Harry Laughlin of the Eugenics Record Office testified before the U.S. Congress Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. He argued that “the ‘American’ gene pool was being polluted by a rising tide of intellectually and morally defective immigrants—primarily from eastern and southern Europe.”
The early 20th century also saw women constitute about 25% of the industrial workforce and close to 50% of the agricultural workforce. Many female workers tended to concentrate in a few industries where the working conditions were harsh and pay was low, such as the garment industry. For example, average hourly earnings of women in cotton dress factories was 35 cents. Women were expected to quit their jobs as soon as they got married. Of course, there were a few exceptions. According to Alice Kessler-Harris, professor of American History at Columbia University,"most white women who earned wages were unmarried or widowed or separated. That was less true for women of color, a large proportion of whom earned wages even after they married because their men had a much harder time making a living."
In 1929, the U.S. was hit by the Great Depression. The decade that followed saw the unemployment rate stay above 15% (it reached 23.6% in 1932). Labor unions, anti-immigrant groups and progressive economists believed that if they could push the "unfit" population such as immigrants, minorities and women out of the workforce, the unemployment rate of white Anglo-Saxon men would drop, while the standard of living would go up.
Dr. Milton Friedman called the minimum wage laws racist at least in effect if not in intent. But according to Thomas C. Leonard, a professor at Princeton, that racist intent of the minimum wage laws was pretty evident from the very beginning. In his paper, “Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era,” professor Leonard provided some chilling quotes from leading economists in the early 20ths century:
Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist who served as Woodrow Wilson’s U.S. Commissioner of Labor, wrote that "it is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work…Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.”
Harvard’s Arthur Holcombe, a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, praised Australia’s minimum wage law’s ability to “protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese.”
These progressive economists had no illusion that a minimum wage law would cause unemployment. But they regarded such unemployment as a social benefit because it performed their desired "eugenic service" by protecting "deserving workers from the competition of the unfit by making it illegal to work for less." (Thomas C. Leonard)
As the saying goes, the rest was history. Congress instituted the minimum wage in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and President Roosevelt signed it into law. The first minimum wage was set at 25 cents an hour. Since then, the federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times by 12 different presidents. As predicted, the minimum wage laws have hurt the most vulnerable segments of a society: the unskilled and least educated, which is largely constituted of minorities and youths.
Many of today's minimum wage supporters probably are unaware of the racist intent of the early supporters. But it is inexcusable that they continue to advocate for something so deeply rooted in discrimination, while ignoring its damning economic impact on minorities and youth. The only "moral declaration" of the minimum wage debate is to declare that a legal minimum wage is immoral. A free human being should have the liberty to decide how much his labor and talent are worth on his own and through a negotiation with an employer.
Even “conservatives” vote when they can to raise minimum wages. They really think it means more money in their pocket.
35 cents an hour! Very good wages in 1920. The standard pay for a farm laborer was $1 a day, and not an 8 hour day.
That is what my father was paid for picking rocks out of fields.
Of course, a dollar was 1/20th of an ounce of gold back then, which would be $60 today!
There is no need for a minimum wage. Let the market decide.
The minimum wage argument is pure, stupid, AnCap mental masturbation.
No one who can’t get elected has a chance to make policy. The minimum wage, and raising it periodically, is overwhelmingly popular. Standing against it is political suicide.
Leave it alone.
Let’s make it illegal for low skilled people to work. Unless you are here illegally of course.
That doesn't work when the market can decide to import cheap labor from all over the world and to export jobs.
Amazing how many people think money is an unlimited resource and it’s ok to raise wages as long as somebody else pays it. We have a huge unemployment problem in America. It’s not just about wages but also about the amount of idle time individuals have, especially the young. Starter wages are a good thing as it brings the young into the market and hopefully teaches life skills. And don’t forget small business owners who frequently avoid paying themselves to ensure their staff is paid. Why do you want to punish or push them out of the market entirely?
That’s the message most miss about this.
Minimum wage makes it illegal for people to work if they can’t produce more than $X/hr of value.
Absolutely. We need to do just ONE thing to improve the economy: Apply more liberty.
Eliminating the minimum wage would be a good first step. It would bring millions of jobs flooding back in. But to make it work, we have to re-think things a lot. We have to separate what people REALLY NEED and what they merely want and create a situation in which low-wage workers can survive.
China and other countries can undercut us because their economies are SET UP to accommodate low-wages. They don’t have all the regulations and building codes that make live so EXPENSIVE in the coddled, entitled Western world.
People in some parts of the world live on $1 or $2 per day, yet they don’t starve. How do they do it? First, they don’t feel entitled, so they don’t expect as much. Second, they can and do get housing and food they can afford. That stuff doesn’t meet “modern Western standards,” but guess what... they survive just fine.
What’s wrong with an outhouse if you can’t afford a house with a septic tank? It works. But the almighty government won’t let you have it. Want a car without airbags or nonsense emissions controls? Sorry, not allowed. Oh, and all your food need expensive government controls, too. So you “need” $15 an hour or more to live here.
That’s why job creators prefer to open up in places with a more business-friendly environment. We need to change all that and make the US competitive again.
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Some people are overly generous with other people’s money.
Meanwhile DUMBO is doing an end run around this do noting congress
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3477979/posts
Minimum wage is for teens who never had a job before. It is meant for teens (such as baggers, cashier) to learn about hard work and the value of money. It is not for raising a family of 4...
Anybody with no skills and/or no motivation shouldn’t have 4 kids.
We currently pay women with zero skills to have kids. It’s like pouring Miracle Grow on weeds.
According to the administration cost of living hasn't went up, but a few years back McDonald sold their breakfast sandwiches 2 for $2.00 they are now 2 for $4.00, some may not figure out that that is a 100% increase with no inflation.
The wage matters not, the cost is the thing.
It is unlimited, the value however is not.
Colorado will join other states in attempting to eliminate the scourge of unsightly fast food restaurants. It will be only partially successful in Colorado as it has been only partially successful in other states. Some fastfoods will close. Others will automate. There will be considerable success in eliminating those horrible low wage jobs, however, and that is a plus. Those fast food workers will all be enfolded in the welfare system to forever vote Democrat.
The house I stay in when I am there was about 200 sq ft in 2003 and would not have passed any American inspection. Thông now has a house that is close to 1800 ft. He added on and revised, doing the work himself with his wife and children, from time to time.
There are informal bribes that must be paid but that is so far less onerous than the official bribes we have to pay before we can stick a shovel in the ground and we had best not build it ourselves unless we get a contractor's license. In 2003 Thông's income worked out to about $40 a month. He is a hard worker and eft sharecropping when an opportunity came up to be a security guard at a beach resort nearby at which he made $110 and another 40-50 subbing on all his days off for other guys who wanted days off. At that level he was the economic equivalent of someone in NW Florida making perhaps $2500 a month and much is due to the fact that the government doesn't drain off so much of his income with requirements and codes. He has a nice house but it still would not pass any codes here. If a storm wrecks his roof he can afford to fix it much more easily than I could afford to fix mine.
True...a living wage of $15/hour, won’t be because a living wage will be more than $15/hour because EVERYTHING WILL INCREASE due to educated folks (who is now getting $15/hour) will charge $25/hour. Me, I charge $9/hour for mowing lawns and cleaning pools, I might up my prices to $13/hour, because of inflation.
If you do a good job I’ll pay you $15 an hour to do my lawn!
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