Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site tty3b.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ltuxa!tty3b!mjk From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Unemployment & the minimum wage Message-ID: <463@tty3b.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-Aug-84 13:03:22 EDT Article-I.D.: tty3b.463 Posted: Tue Aug 14 13:03:22 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 15-Aug-84 01:41:42 EDT References: <1665@inmet.UUCP> <451@tty3b.UUCP>, <388@pucc-i> <461@tty3b.UUCP>, <393@pucc-i> Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill Lines: 27 Response to afo@pucc-h (sefton) and ags@pucc-i (Seaman): Seaman: "Of course working people are not mobilizing to oppose minimum wage laws; working people are precisely the ones who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo." I used "working people" as a general term. As we all know, about 8 million working people aren't. My real point here was that there is no clamoring for elimination of the minimum wage from below; it comes from above, which says a lot about who is going to benefit from its elimination. There is not, for example, much support among blacks for elimination of the minimum wage. I find this "it's for their own good" argument coming from people who have never shown any concern for anything other than their own profit margins pretty laughable. Laurie Sefton did a good job of sketching "a 'worst-case-scenario'" based on "an extrapolation upon the effects of removing minimum wages." What Laurie probably realizes, but left unsaid in her article, is that her "worst-case scenario" is a pretty good history lesson for those who forget what life was like back in the good old days before the big, bad unions and minimum wages came along. The advocates of abolishing the minimum wage have no answer to her argument, other than to say that it's OK for people to be starving if that's what the market produces. Their position was rejected 50 years ago and is about to be rejected in its more recent incarnation. Mike Kelly