The Patrician Backlash

You know that, with Democrats championing the absurd notion that someone who works 40 hours a week should be able to afford food and clothing and shelter, that there would be courageous Americans who would step forward and stand up for those downtrodden souls who can't fight for themselves: employers.

So it is that the proud George Will writes today, giving voice to the patrician voiceless, boldly speaking for the Home Depot CEOs of the world and finally pressing forth with the sensible idea that people should be paid in bowls of rice, if at all.

Today, raising the federal minimum wage is a bad idea whose time has come, for two reasons, the first of which is that some Democrats have an evidently incurable disease -- New Deal Nostalgia. Witness Nancy Pelosi's "100 hours" agenda, a genuflection to FDR's 100 Days. Perhaps this nostalgia resonates with the 5 percent of Americans who remember the 1930 [...]

Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part time, and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326, respectively.)

Shorter George Will: They can work two or three jobs, what are they, lazy? Also, he's lying about the statistics, and ignorant of basic economic fact that when you provide acceptable wages, that money gets plowed back into the local community and helps the economy.

Then he uses this statistic to SUPPORT his claims?

Ronald Blackwell, the AFL-CIO's chief economist, tells the New York Times that state minimum-wage differences entice companies to shift jobs to lower-wage states. So: States' rights are bad, after all, at least concerning -- let's use liberalism's highest encomium -- diversity of economic policies.

But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly. But that is a good idea whose time will never come again.

So there shouldn't be a federal minimum wage, because - minimum wage jobs like flipping burgers and cleaning toilets will move to Mexico? Will the burgers and toilets join them there?

This is ludicrous. Study after study show that raising wages do not impact local economies or local jobs. As Oliver Willis says so well, capitalism that is unregulated will race to the bottom, just as Will's own statistic about companies chasing lower state minimum wages proves.

The whole reason we've got minimum wage law and other labor laws is that left to their own designs businesses colluded with each other, fixed their prices, and paid their workers next to nothing in horrible life-threatening conditions (and some of those laborers were children).

Capitalism is great and it works, but without policing, rules, and enforcement it is the playground of devils - devoid of morality and a pariah on our society. We learned that lesson collectively already, we won't repeat it. America's past that.

Meanwhile, another bold soul has stepped forward for the patrician class: the LA Times editorial board. The target here is a living-wage law passed by the City Council for LAX-area hotels. That, of course, cannot stand.

Business groups rightly cried foul and have since collected twice the number of signatures needed to take the matter to voters. Assuming that the petition is verified by the city clerk, the council will have to decide whether to rescind the wage extension or submit it to the ballot, which could cost taxpayers anywhere from $100,000 (if it's part of another citywide election) to $6 million (if it's a one-off).

The council should stop throwing good money after bad policy and instead withdraw the law. The living-wage extension is an unwarranted and capricious government intrusion into private industry that could chase businesses out of Los Angeles while encouraging hotels to raise prices or lay off workers. It reinforces the growing notion that City Hall is not friendly toward employers.

Yeah, you're going to chase hotels away from an airport. Honestly, do media figures think we're idiots? There's money to be made at LAX whether you pay the maid six dollars or 10.50 an hour. If your profit margin is that low you shouldn't be in the hotel business. This is about perpetual growth, stockholder pressure, and greed. Pure, unadulterated greed that suggests "the good old days" were in the time of the Gilded Age. The people aren't going to stand for this anymore; 80% agree with increasing the minimum wage. The country has changed. The patricians might have to part with a buck or two. I think they can spare it.