Notable Quote - Thomas Leonard - Granite Grok

Notable Quote – Thomas Leonard

For progressives, a legal minimum wage had the useful property of sorting the unfit, who would lose their jobs, from the deserving workers, who would retain their jobs.  Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist who served as Woodrow Wilson’s U.S. Commissioner of Labor, opposed a proposal to subsidize the wages of poor workers for this reason.  Meeker preferred a wage floor because it would disemploy unfit workers and thereby enable their culling from the work force.

-Thomas Leonard (“Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era” )

Prof. Don Beaudreaux adds:

Few policies have origins as ugly as that of the minimum wage.  “Progressive” intellectuals in the early 20th century supported the minimum wage because they believed it to be an effective policy detergent to help cleanse the gene pool of ‘undesirables.’

 By pricing low-skilled, ‘undesirable’ workers out of jobs, ‘undesirables’ are less likely to successfully pro-create and to immigrate.  The fact that the minimum wage, by pricing ‘undesirables’ out of work, thereby artificially raises the incomes of white workers was considered to be an added benefit of this social-engineering device.

And Progressives today continue their racists ways and willingness to continue to hurt the poor by continually jacking up the minimum wage.  Oh, they say, it will reduce the price of Government in not paying out so much in welfare, food stamps, and the like.  Yeah, they’re playing magician.

When you really examine it, we taxpayers are still going to pay.  What’s the difference between subsidizing someone not working via higher taxes or paying higher prices?  None – it’s still coming out of our wallets.

And oh, btw, when is the last time you saw the size and cost of Government go down?  Minimum wage boosters want to give us the impression that we can “save” money as this would eliminate government programs.

Yeah, when is the last time we saw that happen – that a program was shut down AND the workers were let go (as they would be in the private sector)?

Yeah, me neither.  We end up with both higher prices and taxes (because Statists will never let any tax dollar escape their clutches).

 

(H/T: Cafe Hayek)

>