Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Has There Ever Been a Time When the Unemployment Rate for Whites was Higher than It was for Blacks?

 By Stan Gudmundson

Minimum-wage proponents’ arguments are in fact hope over reality, sentiment and compassion over truth, and ideology over fact. These whims happen to also sum up the liberal view of the world.

When first promoted, the minimum-wage was purposely racist and, in effect, is still racist — though, today, it is supposedly not intentionally discriminatory. John F. Kennedy in 1957 said, “Having on the market a … large source of cheap labor depresses wages … of the white worker who has to compete. And when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage … it affects the whole wage structure.”

An isolated comment by one politician of the day? Not on your life.

Author Jason Riley, in his recent book “Please Stop Helping Us,” says “when (politicians) moved to implement federal minimum-wage laws and Davis-Bacon statues … it is crystal clear that Congress passed these statues to protect white union workers from competition from nonunion blacks … We still have the transcripts.”

The solution is obvious. Just use unions who have a membership that reflect the surrounding area’s racial composition. In 1933 there were about 2.25 million union members. Two percent were black. In 1930, however, blacks were formally barred from union membership in 26 national unions. There goes that solution.

Responding to President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery act, the NAACP in 1934 noted that, “Union labor strategy seems to be to form a union, strike to obtain the right to bargain … and close the union to black workers.” This act was later ruled unconstitutional, but to the blacks of the day, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was commonly known as the Negro Removal Act. It was very effective.

Has there ever been a time when the unemployment rate for whites was higher than it was for blacks? Yes, but it was long ago in 1930, the year before passage of the Davis-Bacon act.

Read the rest here.

RW Note: The JFK quote above comes from a  Senate hearing, where then Senator Kenendy was advocating for an increase in the minimum wage. (SEE: The Joy of Freedom  pp 112-114)

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