Minimum Wage as Affirmative Action
A reasonable person might look at it this way: either a minimum wage law has an effect or it doesn’t.
Minimum wage laws are the Midas temptation of the Democrats. Lay a hand on the wage rates of employees and—presto!—they become rich. It’s malarkey, of course. As many a wit has said, if employees could be made better off by legislating higher wages, why be cheap and raise their wages by only a buck or two? Instead of legislating a minimum wage of $10.10, the current proposal of the Democrats, why not raise it to $15? Or $20? Or $25? I-have-$35-in-the-back-of-the-room-from-the-lady-in-the-big-hat-who’ll-give-me-$45?
There is some dispute over the actual effects of minimum wage laws, with liberals extolling their virtues, conservatives decrying their effects. The liberal extolling is amplified by unions who may like to have the minimum wage increased because their contracts provide that union wages up the line be a multiple of the minimum wage.
A reasonable person might look at it this way: either a minimum wage law has an effect or it doesn’t. If it has no effect, why enact it? If it does have an effect, that means it must do something for one set of people (we could refer to them as an interest group, in fact). But like any piece of legislation, if it does something for one person it must do something else to another person. Somebody must be on the losing side. Supporters say it is greedy corporations that will suffer. Puh-lese. Crony-capitalists suffer? What paper do these people read?
Economists generally agree that a minimum wage reduces employment for the least skilled workers. Those people tend to be younger and not heads of households, which means that households are not benefitted by a minimum wage, and younger people are disadvantaged by it, if it means they miss out on the experience of having a job and learning skills. It is estimated that half of minimum wage workers in the U.S. are under the age of 25, and almost a third of them are 16 to 19 years old, i.e., part-time workers still in school.
Even though some may argue, and even if it’s true, that the effects of a minimum wage are actually quite small, they are not small for the people not hired because of it. For them the minimum wage law is a disaster―a disaster that some supporters, and statist progressive techies, recognize but attempt to camouflage by callously calling the job losses “fallout”―as if unintended consequences didn’t matter.
(Of course the real argument against the minimum wage is that it impresses employers into the welfare business. An employer’s function is to pay a salary, not to provide welfare.)
It is probably also true that the first minimum wage law enacted was specifically designed to be anti-black: to discourage southern blacks from moving north to look for jobs. If you think Northerners during the post-Civil War period just loved blacks, read Gene Dattel’s piece in The New Criterion.
But the sensible arguments against a minimum wage have never prevailed, with the result that those who oppose minimum wage legislation are portrayed as cheapskates, and sometimes even anti-black.
Minimum wage opponents need to change their game. They need to get the supporters of minimum wage legislation to become suspicious of the law. Some of those supporters may simply be feel-good artists: people who do things they don’t understand because it makes them feel good about themselves. Other minimum wage supporters may really believe.
But how can they be made suspicious? Perhaps by goading them into inflicting a minimum wage on a small group of people, where the results will be readily visible and the politics disastrous. That would allow minimum wage opponents to claim the high ground when the results become apparent.
The idea needs to be floated—notice the passive voice—that minimum wage legislation should be made applicable to blacks only. That should make almost anyone suspicious—a good beginning.
The stated rationale for a blacks-only minimum wage would be either affirmative action, or reparations, or both.
Harold Meyerson, writing in The Washington Post, claims that the argument of the “die-hard” opponents of a minimum wage that it will lead to job losses is only a “flimsy veneer” of concern about the welfare of the working poor.
Okay, Mr. Meyerson, we confess (and without even having been water-boarded!) that the arguments against a minimum wage are specious. We now admit that a rise in the minimum wage will be effective in making working people better off. But we think that blacks deserve to be the special beneficiaries of this particular special interest legislation. Blacks have historically been discriminated against in the workplace, and this proposal will go part way towards redressing that injustice. Etc. Etc.
Bernie Sanders (Faux-Soc, VT) might agree. According to Sanders, “Today, more than half of all African American workers …make less than $15 an hour… . That is unacceptable.”
The AFL-CIO says, “African Americans comprise 11 percent of the nation’s workforce, but they are 14.8 percent of the workers who would be positively affected by raising the minimum wage.”
And per the National Urban League, “Many African Americans don’t make enough money to save for retirement. As of 2010, only 43 percent of African-American workers ages 26–61 were part of an employer-based retirement plan, compared to 50 percent of White workers. Raising the wage would allow more African Americans to save for retirement.”
There you have it. Those quotes pretty much make the case.
Maybe.
Even so, a Brookings Institution report nags: “In a city like Washington, D.C., where unemployment among those with a high school education or less is at a worrisome 15%, jobless rates will almost certainly rise [if the minimum wage is increased].”
But we’ve heard that one before, haven’t we, Mr. Meyerson—and what would you expect from the paleo-ultra-right Brookings Institution anyway? That’s just the old “flimsy veneer” again. Given that the Brookings people are talking about Washington, D.C., probably many or most of the people who make up that 15 percent are blacks.
So this is the plan (don’t tell anyone): inflict the minimum wage on blacks (or if you have a group more suitable for the didactic purpose in mind, that’s fine), and then reap the kudos of feel-good liberals.
Will the feel-gooders enjoy their Midas touch? Midas became disillusioned when he laid a hand on his daughter. Years later, Midas ticked off Apollo, who then turned his ears into the ears of a donkey, which, somehow, makes Midas’s bio seem like a cautionary tale for Democrats who support the minimum wage.