Writing in today’s Baltimore Sun, Marta Mossberg correctly argues that a proposed “living-wage” bill for Baltimore will hurt the poor. This unintended effect is the inevitable result of prohibiting workers from accepting any wage lower than $10.57 per hour – a wage well above the hourly value that many unskilled workers are capable of producing for employers.
So why are so many people enthusiastic about statutes such as this one?
Proponents of such legislation are economic creationists. They do not grasp the fact that beneficial economic arrangements emerge – and emerge almost exclusively – without being designed by an altruistic higher power (supposedly, government). Widespread prosperity and economic order are taken on faith as resulting from the conscious intercession of a sovereign superior whose incantations, ceremonies, and commands work miracles. And, too often, persons who challenge this creationist dogma are accused by its True Believers of being devils sent from the underworld to disrupt the heavenly work of the creating angels.
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YOU are scary…
This is the game we are playing now?
Thanks for the recommended read. Shed new light on my urban studies hobby!
Exactly. Brazilian governments are quick to raise minimum wage as a way to get popularity easily, not to mention the kafkaesque internal revenue system, with rules changing on average once each 26 minutes (not kidding, link in Portuguese: http://bit.ly/9rW57t)
And they can't figure out why the informal economy represents half our PIB.
This is a subsidize on intellectual capital, which the poor lack. I believe anyone needing food and without any valuable skill will tell you they prefer a mind numbing, lousy paid work to unemployment (unless the government pays you to be a skill-less unemployed).
Maybe you´re inverting cause and effect: what if it was the surplus population that led the Ming dinasty to get lazy and use cheap peasant labor instead of innovating and investing in technology?
I agree, BUT
In the debate context, you are, actually, not being serious… If you wanna engage someone on a debate you have to take their arguments seriously, as wrong as they might be, and show how wrong they are with facts. People won't scratch their heads and change their minds bases on a joke about their ideas. Believe me, I have tried.
PIB = GDP… sorry
Ming dynasty
From what I have read I agree with J. Diamond (Guns, Germs & Steel) that the Ming government felt threated by the class that was profiting from exploration and innovation. The government won and society suffered.
A very good reason to avoid strong central government.
Banning the poor from productive work is monstrously inhumane. These advocates of minimum wage laws are horribly cruel and indecent people who are not fit for civil society.
And if that's a good thing, why not just ban work for everyone? I mean, why just pick on the poorest and most vulnerable? Really, is there any lower form of human life than a person who supports minimum wage laws? Such beasts are total sociopaths.
People who support minimum wage laws hate poor people. It really is as simple as that. No, it isn't that they are ignoramouses. The damage minimum wage laws cause are not an esoteric theory. It is the result of the most basic and uncontroversial economics.
People support minimum wage, because they want to savage the nonunion poor in order to benefit their union masters. That is it. Period. Such cruelty deserves no respect.
I'm sorry, what is the going wage for a slave? If you don't want to sound like an imbecile, then why do you use phrases like “slave labor wage”? There has never been a person who was not a complete moron, or a lying propagandist, who used that oxymoronic phrase. Which are you?
Governments may THINK they can regulate wages. All they really have the power to do is to create shortages or surpluses of labor. And in either case, employment is reduced.
I get mugged every April.
That $380 figure is the MAXIMUM unemployment a Maryland resident can get. Actual payments vary between $25 and $380, depending on a person's previous pay for the job they worked, http://www.dllr.state.md.us/employment/claimfaq...
By a wide variety of measures and for several years running, Maryland has been one of the wealthiest states in the country:
http://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/money/inves...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_...
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