Thomas Sowell takes the pulse of America

[rigney]

I loathe minimum wage. The next line in this short preamble expresses exactly how I feel about it. Quote: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unquote.

 

My own take on it? If you don't want to fish?, starve. "Unchecked, Laziness manifests and grows much like a cancer".

 

As did I, Sowell grew up in the thirties. Even living in a coal mining camp, I had all the advantages of being white. He on the other hand grew up in Harlem; but had the staying power to make it happen.

 

Dr. Sowell has taught Economics at Howard University, Cornell University, Brandeis University, and UCLA. Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman

 

He states that: “during his 20s.", he was a Marxist. Working as a federal government intern during the summer of 1960 caused him to reject his so-called Marxism in favor of the free market economic theory. His work asserted a correlation between mandated minimum wage hikes for workers in the sugar industry of Puerto Rico and the rise of unemployment in that industry. These suggested patterns led him to allege that government employees who administered this minimum wage law cared more about their own jobs than the plight of the poor. Pro or con, what are your thoughts on the subject?

 

A bit lengthy, but very informative.

 

URL to article: http://biggovernment.com/uknowledge/2010/09/02/who-is-dismantling-america-dr-thomas-sowell-takes-the-pulse/

Edited September 9, 2010 by rigney

[Mr Skeptic]

Minimum wage is both a problem and a solution. As a solution, it can if high enough it can prevent a form of pseudoslavery where people have to overwork themselves just to live, with the wages not high enough to support them and their family. With goverment aid, it would simply mean that other people are subsidizing the low wage. On the other hand, the minimum wage makes jobs disappear. Overall, if you examine the quality of the jobs lost because minimum wage is too high, I think you'll find that there is little reason to mourn the loss of those jobs. With the advent of robotics, many of those jobs will be and are being done indirectly (and with a lot more dignity) by highly paid workers making robots to do our dirty work for us.

[Pangloss]

I loathe minimum wage.

 

People just have to learn how to do something that pays better. As I showed in a previous thread, the Wall Street Journal found that if every unemployed American were trained for available work the unemployment rate would only be 6.6%, not the 9.5% we're seeing right now. And those are highly skilled jobs that pay well, not minimum wage.

 

And stop the majority of illegal immigration. I wouldn't mind paying more for my lawn care or housecleaning at all.

 

It's not complicated. Demagogues just make it seem that way.

[rigney]

Having worked in industry my entire life, the complexity of such a dichotomy doesn't totally escape me. I seesawed back and forth many times, but never got rich on either side of the fence. Yet somehow always managed to make a living. Dad was a coal miner with the "pull" to get me a job loading coal. Think he'd do it? Naa! Told me if that's all I wanted out of life, don't bother coming to the supper table.

That was in 1948. I was fifteen, lied about my age and got a job cutting right of ways for a power company who paid me $ .60 cents an hour. Bad decision on my part! Never finished Hi School and didn't even get a GED until 1960 when Ii started working in missles. Life hasn't always been profitable, but it has always been good. My thoughts on minimum wage is that it saps the initiative from individuals while turning them into an interdependent society of clones.

But what is going to happen after the wealth of this nation has been equally distributed among the masses? Someone is still gonna have to step up to the plate, yet the majority of us will still want something for nothing. Shall we continue using the same old adage: "Let Charlie do it"? Pseudo slavery? Without it, or some semblance of it; the struggle for surpremacy goes on to eventually doom this world as we know it.

And robots? I've probably programmed enough of the damn things to start my own army.

Edited September 8, 2010 by rigney

[Pangloss]

Can your robot army patrol the border?

[rigney]

Can your robot army patrol the border?

In all honesty, as it stands right now; would it really matter?

Edited September 8, 2010 by rigney

[jackson33]

I loathe minimum wage. The next line in this short preamble expresses exactly how I feel about it. Quote: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unquote.

 

My own take on it? "Unchecked, Laziness manifests and grows much like a cancer". [/Quote]

 

rigney; While I agree with your feelings, I look at the issue from a little different angle. Whether a minimum wage, some form of welfare for otherwise capable workers or the host of ways people can subvert intent of any social program, IMO many of today's social and/or economical problems would never have grown to near there current levels, with out them. I'd go so far as to suggest, that social programs, in themselves have been the largest cause for economical class divisions in the US and around the industrialized world. Said another way, dependency on other than the person him/herself's own capabilities, in favor of accepting assistance, has created a dependency class of people.

 

To your topic; Not well known or talked about is the 'Child Labor Amendment" proposed and passed by Congress in 1924, which would have given the Federal Government to regulate all aspects of child labor, including a minimum wage. Even today, I often see where people believe the Federal is in fact authorized to regulate "Child Labor" (from the Constitution), while this is not true and the amendment has NEVER been ratified. However by 1937-38, it became apparent the States were not going to ratify (many openly refusing to) and guess what, here came the minimum wage* and by passing the very wishes of the States or a Constitutional method for change.

 

 

Congress in 1924, would have given Congress exclusive authority to enact child labor laws. It reads: "Section. 1. The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age. Section. 2. The power of the several States is unimpaired by this article except that the operation of State laws shall be suspended to the extent necessary to give effect to legislation enacted by the Congress."[/Quote]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution

 

*The first federal minimum-wage law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, with a 25-cent-per-hour wage floor and a 44-hour workweek ceiling for most employees. (It also banned child labor.)[/Quote]

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1912435,00.html#ixzz0yyb5D0FD

 

 

A federal minimum wage was first set in 1938. The graph shows nominal (blue diamonds) and real (red squares) minimum wage values. Nominal values range from $0.25/hr in 1938 to $7.25/hr as of July 2009. The graph adjusts these wages to 2010 dollars (red squares) to show the real value of the minimum wage. Calculated in real 2010 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the highest at $10.10. The real dollar minimum wage (red squares) falls during periods Congress does not raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation. The period 1997-2007, is the longest period during which the minimum wage was not adjusted. The minimum wage increased in three $0.70 increments--to $5.85 in July, 2007, $6.55 in July, 2008, and to $7.25 in July 2009. [/Quote]

 

 

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

 

 

And stop the majority of illegal immigration. I wouldn't mind paying more for my lawn care or housecleaning at all.[/Quote]

 

Pangloss; Staying on MW, since most migrant workers or illegal's, earn over MW to begin with (piece work or contract), at what point would you decline to pay for labor or do it yourself. This is where MW is flawed. Once running a reasonably large Restaurant/Motel/Marina Lodge in Texas and in the 1970's I offered .25 per hour for any kids over ten that would pick weeds out of a 10 acre lawn and about 50, not all kids, showed up. To supplement my 67.00 Monthly Military pay in the 50's, on a few occasions I picked cotton by the pound (piece work) and received about 3-4.00 for my 9 hour day. I appreciated those dollars, as did every person weeding that lawn, forgetting I also gave them a 10.00 chicken dinner after three hours work. Here is another good one, in the 1940's evenings and week ends (in school), think about 6/8 cents per line. Think about these things in today's market, a 16 pound ball knocking down (many went flying) 2-3 pound pins with a child standing by...I won't bother you with the children of farmers I've known and how hard they worked, their pride and the characters that were built...speaking of which...

 

Life hasn't always been profitable, but it has always been good. My thoughts on minimum wage is that it saps the initiative from individuals while turning them into an interdependent society of clones. [/Quote]

 

Don't kid yourself rigney, many people, Presidents to major industrial leaders had very little to NO formal education. Home Schooling to simply being self taught was and remains common in society.

Collectivism, socialism, progressivism all leading to "Social Justice", depends on leading everyone into being those clones by any means possible.

[rigney]

rigney; While I agree with your feelings, I look at the issue from a little different angle. Whether a minimum wage, some form of welfare for otherwise capable workers or the host of ways people can subvert intent of any social program, IMO many of today's social and/or economical problems would never have grown to near there current levels, with out them. I'd go so far as to suggest, that social programs, in themselves have been the largest cause for economical class divisions in the US and around the industrialized world. Said another way, dependency on other than the person him/herself's own capabilities, in favor of accepting assistance, has created a dependency class of people.

 

To your topic; Not well known or talked about is the 'Child Labor Amendment" proposed and passed by Congress in 1924, which would have given the Federal Government to regulate all aspects of child labor, including a minimum wage. Even today, I often see where people believe the Federal is in fact authorized to regulate "Child Labor" (from the Constitution), while this is not true and the amendment has NEVER been ratified. However by 1937-38, it became apparent the States were not going to ratify (many openly refusing to) and guess what, here came the minimum wage* and by passing the very wishes of the States or a Constitutional method for change.

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1912435,00.html#ixzz0yyb5D0FD

 

 

 

 

 

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

 

 

 

 

Pangloss; Staying on MW, since most migrant workers or illegal's, earn over MW to begin with (piece work or contract), at what point would you decline to pay for labor or do it yourself. This is where MW is flawed. Once running a reasonably large Restaurant/Motel/Marina Lodge in Texas and in the 1970's I offered .25 per hour for any kids over ten that would pick weeds out of a 10 acre lawn and about 50, not all kids, showed up. To supplement my 67.00 Monthly Military pay in the 50's, on a few occasions I picked cotton by the pound (piece work) and received about 3-4.00 for my 9 hour day. I appreciated those dollars, as did every person weeding that lawn, forgetting I also gave them a 10.00 chicken dinner after three hours work. Here is another good one, in the 1940's evenings and week ends (in school), think about 6/8 cents per line. Think about these things in today's market, a 16 pound ball knocking down (many went flying) 2-3 pound pins with a child standing by...I won't bother you with the children of farmers I've known and how hard they worked, their pride and the characters that were built...speaking of which...

 

 

Don't kid yourself rigney, many people, Presidents to major industrial leaders had very little to NO formal education. Home Schooling to simply being self taught was and remains common in society.

Collectivism, socialism, progressivism all leading to "Social Justice", depends on leading everyone into being those clones by any means possible.

 

It's hard to put a finger on it Jackson. But guys like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Tiger Woods and a host of others should be idolized, not demonized for their successes. Do I envy them? Absolutely! But admirably, not begrudgingly. And to not feel such would be a lie. But tell me, why do these folks give billions of dollars to charities each year instead of just putting it in a bank? Out of fear my friend! Fear, that if our system breaks down; nothing can save that wealth. Thank goodness we have not yet climbed to the sucess of an Apian Hotel chain or a Pismire farm. When it comes to that, the Gates, Buffets, Einsteins and Da Venci's will be only another body to sweep out the dead. Morbid? Yes. Factual? More than you know!

Edited September 9, 2010 by rigney

[rigney]

I know, it's hard repying to someone who doesn't seem to have a handle on the situation very well himself. But we've all seen what I'm talking about. You may be reluctant to admit it, but there were "Bullies" in your school and "Bullies you have met somewhere else in your life? Milk Duds, Cookies, Your entire lunch, pocket change, your wallet or watch? Maybe even your shoes or jacket? Perhaps you may have even been one yourself. We have lived through the KKK, Black Panthers and several other maniacle groups trying to change the structure of our government. But today, we live at a time where someone with a truncheon can stand in front of a polling place and intimidate anyone other than another thug himself. Better take our country back people, before the tide goes out. Unchallanged, this kind of cancer can grow until it eats up an entire nation. Don't blame those making the challange, only the rest of us wringing our hands and moaning, "Woe is me"!!

Edited September 10, 2010 by rigney

[jackson33]

rigney; Even with today's media, there are 10's of millions feeling as you do and millions of them had never discussed politics, as they are today. In my years with a basically US History education, I've never seen such an overall interest in the Constitution, the principles the Country was founded on or such a rejection of socialism. To be fare, much of the same was going on during the Johnson/Carter era, FDR's reign, Wilson's tenure, but we as a society always had felt the next bunch would lead us back to some sense of sensible order. The unfortunate truth is, History is no longer taught the way it was until the 1960-70's, we have a truly Dependency Class of people unknown before 1970 and our overall demographics are changing.

 

Glen Beck, whether he drew 400,000 or more likely 500,000 plus thousand to the Lincoln Memorial on 8/28, continues to draw 3-4M to is daily TV show (5PM ET, most competitive hour) is only one example. Palin, from accepting the Republican VP nomination in 2008, has tremendous drawing power and people and Chris Christie (New Governor of NEW JERSEY, of all places) is now classified a rising CONSERVITIVE star. Blue Dog Democrats, several pundits and loyal economist are throwing Polosi/Reid/Obama and their policies under the bus.

 

With all this said and maybe 20 other items, I could bring up two things are really bothering me.

 

1- Obama got elected in my opinion, because he WAS Black, had a Muslim name and was just not another GWB, which media and the Administration continue to run on, not the policies. As it should be, there are and have been millions of minority children and adults, that were and many remain proud of this regardless their well documented economical problems, which I feel his policies are going to hurt the most. He encompassed many minorities and are not going to take any defeat in his policies (understood or not) lightly.

 

2- And possible most important. I don't see ANYONE on the horizon (Republican/Conservative/Libertarian or whatever), with the possible exception of Christie (unelectable on a National Level) that might even comes close doing what's needed to return Government to Constitutional adherence or briefly said "THE STATES", or even if that's even possible. Then I understand numbers (I think) and what's waiting out there in the future are simply not sustainable and if you get right down to it, many STATES are already past recovery, IMO. In case you haven't already seen this "Debt Clock" site, take a look at a few things. The National Debt...13.5T$. Expected Federal Revenue Fiscal Year 2010 was 2.5T$ and that year ends in 20 days, 350B$ short of expectation and the clincher, US UNFUNDED DEBT (not including States) 115T$.

 

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Edited September 10, 2010 by jackson33

[rigney]

rigney; Even with today's media, there are 10's of millions feeling as you do and millions of them had never discussed politics, as they are today. In my years with a basically US History education, I've never seen such an overall interest in the Constitution, the principles the Country was founded on or such a rejection of socialism. To be fare, much of the same was going on during the Johnson/Carter era, FDR's reign, Wilson's tenure, but we as a society always had felt the next bunch would lead us back to some sense of sensible order. The unfortunate truth is, History is no longer taught the way it was until the 1960-70's, we have a truly Dependency Class of people unknown before 1970 and our overall demographics are changing.

 

Glen Beck, whether he drew 400,000 or more likely 500,000 plus thousand to the Lincoln Memorial on 8/28, continues to draw 3-4M to is daily TV show (5PM ET, most competitive hour) is only one example. Palin, from accepting the Republican VP nomination in 2008, has tremendous drawing power and people and Chris Christie (New Governor of NEW JERSEY, of all places) is now classified a rising CONSERVITIVE star. Blue Dog Democrats, several pundits and loyal economist are throwing Polosi/Reid/Obama and their policies under the bus.

 

With all this said and maybe 20 other items, I could bring up two things are really bothering me.

 

1- Obama got elected in my opinion, because he WAS Black, had a Muslim name and was just not another GWB, which media and the Administration continue to run on, not the policies. As it should be, there are and have been millions of minority children and adults, that were and many remain proud of this regardless their well documented economical problems, which I feel his policies are going to hurt the most. He encompassed many minorities and are not going to take any defeat in his policies (understood or not) lightly.

 

2- And possible most important. I don't see ANYONE on the horizon (Republican/Conservative/Libertarian or whatever), with the possible exception of Christie (unelectable on a National Level) that might even comes close doing what's needed to return Government to Constitutional adherence or briefly said "THE STATES", or even if that's even possible. Then I understand numbers (I think) and what's waiting out there in the future are simply not sustainable and if you get right down to it, many STATES are already past recovery, IMO. In case you haven't already seen this "Debt Clock" site, take a look at a few things. The National Debt...13.5T$. Expected Federal Revenue Fiscal Year 2010 was 2.5T$ and that year ends in 20 days, 350B$ short of expectation and the clincher, US UNFUNDED DEBT (not including States) 115T$.

 

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

Hope you're right Jackson. But we either need to get back on the road that our founding fathers understood, or have another system in place to placate the malcontents as they take over. And giving the chance now offered, they damn sure will unless America is very careful.

Edited September 11, 2010 by rigney

[lemur]

Ignoring the ethics of wage rates, it is an interesting question of how minimum wage setting along with subsidies for housing, health care, and other basic necessities influence economic activity and price-levels generally. A property-owner who rents to a section 8 tenant receives slightly higher rent than they could get in an open market. The question is whether this discourages price-competition among such land-lords. Right now there is a glut in both the rental and sales markets due to oversupply and reluctance to sell or rent real estate for increasingly lower prices. This reluctance is surely related to the unwaivering inflation of CPI products as well as other expenses that property-owners have to shoulder, such as insurance, taxes, fees, and their own bottom line due to their living expenses. If the free market were really free and competitive, I would expect dwindling sales and rental tenants to drive property owners to the point of needing to sell or lower their rental prices to whatever level the demand side would shoulder. Minimum wage keeps the level of rent that people can afford artificially higher than it would be if low wage jobs paid, say, $2/hour. What some people do, stereotypically those who work in unregulated sweat-shop or other lower-than-minimum-wage jobs, is to crowd into low-cost housing to share the costs. Local governments try to prevent this because of infrastructural stress and other problems it supposedly creates, but such regulations are yet another barrier to totally free market behavior.

 

The question is whether it is a natural development of free market economies for ghettos to form with overcrowded low-cost housing while housing in other areas inflates to high levels due to protected wages of people with privileged positions/incomes. Imo, this kind of market stratification is due to insufficient competition at all levels of economy. Theoretically at least, if everyone was subject to wage-competition due to relentless cost-cutting at all levels by every business, it would be impossible to maintain high rents and sales prices for any properties, not just those in certain areas. Of course, this also assumes a very classical model of free market capitalism in which individuals do not consume profits but continue to save and re-invest them in the strictest fiscally conservative enterprises. This type of capitalism would not generate the high levels of consumption-driven revenues that characterize contemporary consumption-capitalism.

 

Although people complain about socialism, it is ironically the socialist critique of capitalism that helped transform capitalism from its rigorously frugal form to the fiscally liberal version known today. Charles Dickens and others were very critical of scrooge-type investors who would pinch every penny and even themselves live in a cold room burning minimal amounts of coal to maximize their wealth instead of spending it. I don't know when the ideology arose that people who worked hard deserved to spend their income and live well, but it was surely not separate from the rise of labor unions and labor laws that negotiated higher pay and benefits for workers. What has essentially evolved is a form of capitalism where the middle and working classes enjoy socialist levels of consumption, while a certain amount of people are relegated to poverty and/or working-poor income levels in undesirable jobs like food-service, which provide the kinds of consumption opportunities that would never have been available during the time of early capitalism when Dickens' scrooges dominated fiscal activity and kept the entire payroll on a very short leash.

[rigney]

Ignoring the ethics of wage rates, it is an interesting question of how minimum wage setting along with subsidies for housing, health care, and other basic necessities influence economic activity and price-levels generally. A property-owner who rents to a section 8 tenant receives slightly higher rent than they could get in an open market. The question is whether this discourages price-competition among such land-lords. Right now there is a glut in both the rental and sales markets due to oversupply and reluctance to sell or rent real estate for increasingly lower prices. This reluctance is surely related to the unwaivering inflation of CPI products as well as other expenses that property-owners have to shoulder, such as insurance, taxes, fees, and their own bottom line due to their living expenses. If the free market were really free and competitive, I would expect dwindling sales and rental tenants to drive property owners to the point of needing to sell or lower their rental prices to whatever level the demand side would shoulder. Minimum wage keeps the level of rent that people can afford artificially higher than it would be if low wage jobs paid, say, $2/hour. What some people do, stereotypically those who work in unregulated sweat-shop or other lower-than-minimum-wage jobs, is to crowd into low-cost housing to share the costs. Local governments try to prevent this because of infrastructural stress and other problems it supposedly creates, but such regulations are yet another barrier to totally free market behavior.

 

The question is whether it is a natural development of free market economies for ghettos to form with overcrowded low-cost housing while housing in other areas inflates to high levels due to protected wages of people with privileged positions/incomes. Imo, this kind of market stratification is due to insufficient competition at all levels of economy. Theoretically at least, if everyone was subject to wage-competition due to relentless cost-cutting at all levels by every business, it would be impossible to maintain high rents and sales prices for any properties, not just those in certain areas. Of course, this also assumes a very classical model of free market capitalism in which individuals do not consume profits but continue to save and re-invest them in the strictest fiscally conservative enterprises. This type of capitalism would not generate the high levels of consumption-driven revenues that characterize contemporary consumption-capitalism.

 

Although people complain about socialism, it is ironically the socialist critique of capitalism that helped transform capitalism from its rigorously frugal form to the fiscally liberal version known today. Charles Dickens and others were very critical of scrooge-type investors who would pinch every penny and even themselves live in a cold room burning minimal amounts of coal to maximize their wealth instead of spending it. I don't know when the ideology arose that people who worked hard deserved to spend their income and live well, but it was surely not separate from the rise of labor unions and labor laws that negotiated higher pay and benefits for workers. What has essentially evolved is a form of capitalism where the middle and working classes enjoy socialist levels of consumption, while a certain amount of people are relegated to poverty and/or working-poor income levels in undesirable jobs like food-service, which provide the kinds of consumption opportunities that would never have been available during the time of early capitalism when Dickens' scrooges dominated fiscal activity and kept the entire payroll on a very short leash.

 

Presenting it so elequently as you have done, I find it very difficult to reply without feeling angry at both sides of the ledger. While I have never been so rich as to consider myself wealthy, my worst plight in life has never caused me to consider begging or becoming a ward of society. I suppose you might say that I have been lucky, fortunate, blessed or perhaps all of the above. Maybe even being ignorant or stupid of a simple situation? But honestly, I see no way for me to equivocate an answer without seeming cold to either one side of the issue, or the other. As of now, I live on a minimal income and we'll just leave it at that. But, if someone needs their booze, drugs, a new outfit to look chic in, or a home they cant afford? Hey! they need more money than I do. I have never been so reluctant as to help the needy, but a greedy person or persons; I just can't go there. Today, we seem to have far more greedy than we have needy. Thanks for your input.

Edited September 12, 2010 by rigney