Speaking of the minimum wage, Randal O’Toole correctly observes that legislatures that enact such a wage in the hopes that it will raise the incomes of all low-skilled workers are like the apocryphal legislature that enacted a statute to make pi equal to 3.000. Legislators can write whatever they please on paper – they can perform whatever incantations they wish over that paper – they can even cage and shoot everyone who refuses to act in accordance with what these legislators have written on paper. But no legislature has any more hope of repealing the realities of supply and demand than it has of repealing the realities of mathematics and geometry. Minimum-wage legislation, if it is meant to raise the incomes of all low-skilled workers, is akin to legislation that declares pi = 3.000.
George Selgin explores the theoretical case against private money. In practice, it’s wanting.
Dartmouth’s Doug Irwin – one of today’s leading trade economists – discusses trade on NPR.
Watch teens in 2016 react to Windows 95. (HT Joseph Leone)
Richard Rahn celebrates capitalism’s record at making the poor rich.
Mark Perry exposes the essence of Uncle Sam’s new steel tariffs.
