… is from page 161 of Princeton University economist Thomas Leonard’s important 2016 book, Illiberal Reformers, which is a study of how the scientistic pretenses of late-19th and early-20th century “Progressives” led them to endorse illiberal – indeed, often vicious – social-engineering schemes, including eugenics and minimum-wage legislation (original emphasis):
By pushing the cost of unskilled labor above its value, a minimum wage worked on two eugenic fronts. It deterred immigrants and other inferiors from entering the labor force, and it idled inferior workers already employed. The minimum wage detected the inferior employee, whether immigrant, female or disabled so that he or she could be scientifically dealt with.
How humane and scientific. I’m sure that the results of such social engineering passed someone’s cost-benefit test.
