Whoopee – Raises for everyone!
So the US minimum wage was increased to $7.25, to the cheers and adulations of the nice, but economically-illiterate, multitudes. Of course, it’s never enough, so there are already calls for further significant increase; for example, a group of churches and religious leaders are calling for an increase to $10 an hour next year.
Look, I’m not a particularly mean guy, and I worked for less than $4 an hour at my first job back in the mid ’80’s — and I sure would have liked to have earned more! But, the thing is, in our still-slightly-market-based economy, wages, like any other prices, are set by the combination of supply and demand for a product; in this case, a particular set of skills, experience, and capabilities.
My first job was as a cashier at a grocery store; it was an entry level job, requiring no experience and no skills beyond the ability to type numbers on a 10-key keypad and smile nicely at the customers. There were lots of other high school kids who wanted — and were equally qualified for — the job, so the price (wage) was low.
At the other end of the scale, let’s think about neurosurgeons, the folks who do simple stuff like cut tumors out of your head, repair aneurysms, that sort of thing. After 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, an internship, and 5 – 7 years of residency, the small number of people who can actually do this job well can expect to make base salaries of about $400,000 a year; many make total compensation well above half a million.
John Stossel has a good piece on this topic:
Politicians have tried to defy the market process with minimum-wage and living-wage laws for years. The consequences are never good for the people they claim to want to help. When will we learn what workers need is not meddling politicians but free and competitive markets?
While the math of supply and demand can get complicated, the logic is really very simple. If it’s worth it to me to pay the neighborhood kid $30 to mow my lawn, and he’s willing to do it for $20, then we’re going to be able to come to a mutually-beneficial deal. If the town government says passes an ordinance that the minimum price for mowing a lawn is $50, then I’m not going to pay the kid to do it. I’m worse off because I have to waste my Saturday afternoon, and he’s worse off because he doesn’t get to earn money. The townspeople are worse off because they now have an “unemployed” kid running around making trouble and needed some sort of benefits program — leading to increased taxes.
A moment of silence
Patrick McGoohan, the star and visionary behind “The Prisoner,” passed away at the age of 80.
The show is one of the most brilliant pieces of art ever made for television, and its genius is the way it weaves the struggle between Man and the State through so many layers and treatments.
McGoohan’s protagonist, the un-named Number 6, gives us maybe the greatest rallying cry for a modern age of oppressive government with unchecked growth:
“I am not a number — I am a free man!”
Prescient, indeed.
A simple platform
I have a problem with people who want to develop political platforms. They end up messy manifestos, and by their own very nature encourage the growth of a bureaucracy that was likely never needed to being with.
A platform ought to fit on the back of a business card. Not even full sentences, just keywords that harken to principles.
- Transparency
- Minimal intrusion
- Minimal expansion
- Minimal expense
- Liberty
- Strong laws
If your platform calls for things that don’t boil back down to those basics, you’re probably doing it for the wrong reason (or the wrong people.)
Let’s look at a few corresponding examples:
- If the freezer you use to stash away your bribe money has no glass window, you’re not being transparent.
- If the law you just passed gives blanket authority to individuals, you’re enabling the trampling of a human being’s rights.
- If a proposed agency has no provision for sunset, then you have planned for it to fail in its core mission.
- If you start your business budget process assuming you will need to spend more than last year, you’ll probably be out of business soon. (Unless your business has an endless supply of taxpayers to shake down.)
- If a law places a greater priority on security instead of liberty, the threat had better be clearly enunciated and have a sunset provision.
- Laws that hold us to our freely-negotiated contracts should be enforced for the good of us all, lest courts become a pay-for-play arena where the special interests win.