… is from pages 43-44 of my colleague Walter Williams’s splendid 1999 collection, More Liberty Means Less Government; specifically, it’s from Walter’s April 1995 essay “Free Markets and Blacks”:
Setting minimum wages is one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of racists everywhere. South Africa’s racist Mine Workers Union discovered that years ago, saying, “When the minimum wage is introduced we believe that most of the difficulties in regard to the colored question will automatically drop out.” Of course the motivation for the minimum wage in the U.S. is different but effects are identical – unemployment for the least skilled and least preferred worker.
