Sunday, June 1, 2014

Hey, @cmkshama Watch This: Walter Block Says Eliminate the Minimum Wage

Dr. Walter Block, economics professor at Loyola University New Orleans,  tells New Orleans CBS affiliate WUPL why he thinks the minimum wage should be eliminated all together.

Dr. Block is absolutely brilliant during this interview.



-RW

4 comments:

  1. Uh oh, he said niggardly.

    PC police will have his scalp

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  2. API (Jan 1, 2017): The new "Minimum Wage Freedom Troops Patriots Act" has just been signed into law by President Sum Minor Ity. It will set minimum wage to $30/h AND you must have a minimum of 10 employees AND you are forbidden to fire anybody AND you are forbidden to go out of business.

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  3. It's great that they let him hit all the politically incorrect points, but I'm concerned that the sales pitch for abolishing the minimum wage always appears theoretical, pie in the sky, or as we'd call it, "that was is unseen." We need to cite real life "seen" examples, of which there are plenty:

    Most Americans would be shocked to find out that many "socialist" countries in Europe have no minimum wage at all, and lower unemployment than the US.

    http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/11/in-western-europe-average-jobless-rate.html

    If places sandwiched by the EU like Switzerland and Norway can hit 3%, what would it be in the US, the world's largest free trade zone?

    The minimum wage rose 40% (!) from 2007 to 2009, at which point youth unemployment hit a record high of 18.4% and since dropped to only 16.4%.

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USAURYNAA

    Before FDR packed the courts and prolonged the Great Depression with countless price fixing schemes, any attempt at a minimum wage, even on a local level, was always thrown out on the basis that it violated freedom of association guaranteed by the 1st amendment.

    Some people will acknowledge that the minimum wage is price fixing, but they probably haven't thought that it's a violation of their constitutional rights.

    People who earn the minimum wage are still poor because the very same federal government that sets it also steals 20% of their income in payroll taxes that start after only $400 of earnings.

    By cutting the payroll tax or raising the point it starts, the minimum wage effectively goes up, while simultaneously reducing the cost to the employer. There are countless other "unseen" benefits that we can't calculate, like upward mobility for people on the bottom, and reducing the number of people who qualify for welfare down to large families.

    Those of us here know that inflation is even more destructive in that regard, but again, it often sounds theoretical. You can still drive home the point that the federal government attacks the very people it claims to help with simple facts.

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