Cafe Hayek on the Minimum Wage

I believe that the last sentence of this quotation is accurate. We as an American people have lived for 100 years with a government that wrote for itself, the Sixteenth Amendment,  a means to take whatever share of our income that it chooses. That coupled with SCOTUS that waves the white flag at any legislation that infringes on personal rights; assigning the government rights to such things as the "Commerce Clause". True individual economic freedom only exists outside of the law.

The pet Democrat cause of the minimum wage, is in reality, a manner taxing businesses, with the proceeds benefiting low income people. It is evident that some of the new new minimum wage rates have outstripped the value of unskilled labor in relation to the value of the product. When this proportional inversion occurs, businesses search for cost reduction, alternative means of service delivery, to minimize the number of wage hours required.

One thing that frightens me in this scenario is the government, in seeing the business adjust to the illegitimate labor rate, will seek to regulate business staff sizes.

When that happens we will all work for the government.

Cafe Hayek — where orders emerge: where orders emerge

If we are not physically overrun by barbarians, what will destroy us?  Not learned quibbles on the nuances of what the Founding Fathers really meant.  Rather, we will ruin ourselves with minimum wage and comparable worth laws; with controls on prices of goods, apartments, and loans; with erratic changes in the price level; with government domination through the budget, environmental regulation, and antitrust intrusions; with progressive attenuation of property rights; with subsidization of inefficiency and sloth and divisiveness….

Free men require free markets.  If we lose the battle of economic freedom, we lose the entire war.

 William Allen

Economist

The Midnight Economist