… is from page 63 of the final volume – Bourgeois Equality – of Deirdre McCloskey’s vital trilogy on the essence and role of bourgeois values in modern life:
Of course, if one raises wages artificially, by union or by statute, unemployment will result. The argument one hears from, say, Paul Krugman – that raising wages is good for the company because workers will work harder as a result – seems implausible, considering that the company in such a case would already have raised wages, for its own good. And working harder worsens the conditions of work.
