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From: ken@ihuxq.UUCP (ken perlow)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Unemployment & the minimum wage
Message-ID: <1116@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Aug-84 21:28:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.1116
Posted: Mon Aug  6 21:28:39 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Aug-84 08:24:37 EDT
References: <1665@inmet.UUCP>, <229@idi.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 30

--
>>     ...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

That statistic, of course, ignores the drastic changes in most every
important socio-economic variable this country has come up with, and
is therefore silly.  After all, Black teenage "unemployment" in the
Antebellum South was pretty low, too.  Not much crime, either.

But that's capitalism, Rick.  An industrializing country that
succeeds soon prices itself out of the market.  It happened to the US,
and it's happening now to Japan.  But go ahead, try offering a ghetto
kid $1 an hour--he'll spit in your face.  You may blame an insidious
dependency on the welfare state; I call it the fair price of civilization.
-- 
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