Free Republic

Pennsylvania and Virginia recently passed legislation to increase their minimum wage to $15 per hour, closing the gap with Oregon ($15.55 as of July 1) and California ($17.90 in some places). In all, 34 states mandate a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The potential economic detriments of a minimum wage — namely, job losses — are well known. But the trend toward higher and higher minimum wages ought to prompt us to reconsider their purpose. The standard assumption about progressivism is that it’s intrinsically good — after all, who would oppose progress? Progressivism...

During my transcription process of the book Fabian Freeway, I would sometimes go through the footnotes and see what I could verify, when one thing in particular caught my eye. (Chapter 17) The fact that an old-line southern Democrat had been induced to sponsor the basic legislation so ardently desired by all spokesmen of gradual Socialism was an early and notable example of success for the Fabian technique known as permeation. This concept is actually used extensively throughout the book, but for whatever reason, it caught my eye in the current context. The Fabians turned "Permeation" into a policy because...