Organizers of a nationwide fast-food strike set for Aug. 29 are demanding that the minimum wage be raised to at least $15 an hour.
Major fast-food chains like McDonald's and Wendy's are expected to be targeted. Workers at retail stores like Macy’s and Sears may also participate in some cities, according to CSP Daily News.
Milton Friedman was terrible on monetary theory and economic methodology, but he sure understood the problem with minimum wage laws.
Here's Walter Block in a debate on minimum wage:
Dr. Boyd Blundell doesn't understand that all economic activity begins and ends with the individual, not with society:
ReplyDeleteThe Birth of the Austrian School | Josep T. Salerno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZRZKX5zAD4
Society only exists/is cohesive ("society" implies the cohesion of individuals) when INDIVIDUAL rights are respected; So-called "collective rights" require violations of individual rights, so his proposed legislations are impediments to individuals' economic prosperity.
At any rate, though, we are only a "society" insofar as individuals WANT to associate with one another, and to assume that everyone SHOULD want to associate with each other and then make laws that FORCE people to associate MIGHT be the reason for some of the animosity in "society".
In favoring legislation that forces employers to pay a so-called "living wage", he is revealing that he thinks your wealth does not belong to you - that it, on some level, belongs to "all of us".
Whether he realizes it or not, this view contradicts his position that "we don't live in an economy, we live in a society".
Of course, goods ARE scarce, and we must ECONOMIZE them, so yes, we actually DO live in an economy before we ever begin to live in a society; Economy is necessarily prior to society.
And I don't have to belong to someone's society in order to trade with them, so people who DON'T want to belong to, or act as, a society still have an incentive to be civil and not rip each other off - and no, that is NOT the definition of "society". I don't need to know anything about the person I'm trading with in order to know we're both profiting from a trade - all that needs to happen is that we both voluntarily accept the trade.
If one party didn't think he was going to profit from a trade, then the trade wouldn't happen.
And as far as the drowning analogy, look at all the land the government keeps people from homesteading. Government keeps people from earning a living, not "greedy employers".
Thanks for that. The Block debate was very enjoyable.
ReplyDeletethank you mr. wenzel for reinstating the "anonymous" option.
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