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From: kiessig@idi.UUCP (Rick Kiessig)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Unemployment & the minimum wage
Message-ID: <229@idi.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Aug-84 19:36:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: idi.229
Posted: Mon Aug  6 19:36:58 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Aug-84 05:26:57 EDT
References: <1665@inmet.UUCP>
Organization: Intelligent Decisions, Saratoga, CA
Lines: 44


	Well, there are really several things going on here.  It
is true that unions have had some influence on the minimum wage.
However, remember that unions were extremely effective before
there ever was a minimum wage law.  They achieve their
effectiveness by creating in effect a monopoly on their services.
If they don't get what they want from their employer, they simply
stop working.  Even without a minimum wage law, it may well be
impossible for a company to go out and hire enough sufficiently
skilled people if a union were to strike.  This is also called
blackmail.  Do what we want, or else.

	After talking with and listening to several politicians,
I think their reasoning behind the minimum wage goes more like
this:  Earnings below some (arbitrarily decided) level are not
acceptable.  If you earned less than $3.35/hr., for example, that
would be barely enough for you to live on.  Therefore, what we
(government) will do is to declare that no one can work for less
than $3.35/hr.  We can then say to our constituency that we are
doing a good thing: writing into law that each and every one of
us is worth at least $3.35/hr.  On the surface, that looks like a
good thing.  I.e. it implies that if you have a job, you can earn
enough to live above the "poverty level".  No more
"exploitation".  The problem is that they are ignoring the side
effects.  We don't have guaranteed employment in this country.
Just because someone has to pay you at least $3.35/hr. doesn't
mean that he actually has to hire you.  So if what you were doing
isn't worth the government-declared minimum, you lose your job.

	In other words, what the minimum wage law says is that
it's better to be unemployed than to have a job that pays "too
little".  It's better for black teenagers to hang out at the
local park than to have them be able to work.

	An interesting statistic from Dr. Williams:  before the
days of the minimum wage, black teenage unmployment was about 9.5%.
Today, after the law which was supposed to protect them from
poverty and exploitation, the unemployment rate has climbed to 50%.

-- 
Rick Kiessig
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