An Argument Against Thomas Sowell and the Anti-Minimum Wage Reactionaries/Libertarians

Jamila is a reactionary Black blogger who has appeared in the comments section. I praised her earlier before I checked out her politics, and now I have to think otherwise.

First of all, it is certainly despairing that over 9

Jamila is opposed to minimum wage laws:

But either you eliminate minimum wage laws and allow unskilled workers to charge something for their work, or you make them unproductive members of society – because no one will hire them at the rate that laws say they have to be paid–and you end up making the productive members of society take care of them via subsidized housing, food stamps, cash assistance, child tax credits etc.Thomas Sowell has written extensively on how minimum wage laws harm unskilled workers.

Sowell is a reactionary who pursues a blatantly and objectively anti-Black politics. Jared Taylor, pre-eminent White nationalist, has said that he would vote for Sowell for President, so Sowell is palatable to the worst White racists of them all. That does not speak highly of Sowell’s project in terms of Black folks.

If jobs below minimum wage in the ghetto were offered…well, they would not be. There are no jobs of any kind in the ghetto, minimum wage, below, or above. If you drop the minimum wage to zero, the ghetto is not going to be flooded with job openings. Any below minimum jobs that opened up would be mass rejected by all the Blacks of the ghetto. Only illegal aliens would work them, like they already do.

If no minimum wage laws means paradise, the 3rd World would be Paris everywhere. It’s not because they aren’t.

The best living conditions are to be had in places where the workers make the highest wages. The shittiest conditions are in places where the wages are very low. This shoots the whole anti-minimum wage argument right there.

Another thing.

Capitalists need to hire workers. If there are jobs that need to be filled, capitalists in general will just fill them, since they can make a profit by hiring the worker via the Labor Theory of Value. If the position goes unfilled, the capitalist loses because they handle less volume, can’t keep up with work or customers, or have to close early. No capitalist wants labor holes in his business. That right there is bad for business.

Labor holes in a business cost the capitalist big bucks. That’s why capitalists advertise for workers, pay them, and mark up their labor as profits. Sure, there’s increased costs with hiring workers, but they are generally less than the costs of having a labor hole. Anyway, you can pass on the increased costs of the workers to your customers and make up the difference. You can’t do that with a labor hole.

Another thing to consider is Fordism.

The best places to live in the US are where wages are high. Highly paid workers, not the rich, spend most if not all of their money. They buy not just necessities but luxuries, high item stuff and utterly frivolous things like gambling excursions to Las Vegas. Profit margins are high, and businesses don’t compete by price-cutting so much because people with good incomes don’t compare price tags so much. In fact, many are willing to pay a “luxury markup” just for purchasing goods in a luxury zone. Businesses tend to be long lasting, and the malls are full of shops.

Areas with low wages tend to have poor economies since workers spend every nickel of their paychecks on necessities like rent, cheap food, gasoline, utilities, insurance and other bills. There’s literally nothing left over, and they are typically broke by the end of the month, if not before. The few businesses that survive fight to make it by mass price-cutting to attract broke customers. Profit margins are slim, and businesses go out all the time. Result is urban blight, which causes further job losses via capital flight to wealthier areas.

If the extra workers or higher wages raise the costs of doing business, you simply raise prices. As the minimum wage laws apply to your competitors too (Assuming they don’t use illegal labor!), you don’t lose any business, since your competitors are operating under the same economic laws you are and have to pass on all of their increased labor costs too.

$8 an hour won’t break a single businessman anyway. And the US minimum is $7.25/hr.

You have to understand who is pushing this pro-worker argument. The capitalists! Sowell is an apologist and spokesman for the enemies of the workers – the capitalists. The capitalists are the workers’ enemies, through and through, 10

If getting rid of minimum wage laws was cotton candy for workers, workers would be behind it in a New York minute. They’re not because it isn’t. Who’s it good for? The capitalists! Duh. That’s why they are pushing it.

C’mon people, really, this is economics 101 here.

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24 thoughts on “An Argument Against Thomas Sowell and the Anti-Minimum Wage Reactionaries/Libertarians”

  1. Jared Taylor really said that he would vote for Thomas Sowell for president?

    I don’t know man, because many other WN’s derisively denounce token black conservatives as rented Uncle Tom’s (although they’re certainly correct).

    And yes, I find it interesting the way Jamila is all of a sudden not cool in your book just because of one of her views.

    Check out her other views, and then pass judgment.

    1. I’ve studied Marxism for many years. I’m an economic man. After economics, there is little else. You’re on the wrong side economically, you’re on the outs with me, bro.

      1. Fair enough.

        I’m like you in many ways. I can agree with the left on many economic issues (ie. a more even distribution of wealth, less corporate greed, more of a safety net for the working poor, etc).

        However, I just cannot agree with them on many social issues.

        While I can flirt (though I would hardly classify myself as a marxist) with the idea of being an economic marxist, I cannot stand cultural marxists.

        You seem to be the same way. Economically, you’re a marxist. Culturally, however, you could never be one.

  2. Hey Robert, not all race realists are neoliberals.
    Many WN’s believe in a form of national socialism.

  3. I agree in general with this, however you have made an error. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 and that of California is $8.00. The wikipedia write up is reasonably good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._minimum_wages

    I would content that $8.00/hour *will* break a soul, at least in quite a few places. In places with very low costs of living, one can have a semblance of a life, but there are many places in which the current minimum wage isn’t enough for rent and food, let alone anything else.

  4. I just want to point out that Libertarians are not affiliated with “The Right” or Conservatism. There are marked differences. There are, however, little to no differences between the Republicans and Democrats when it comes to minimum wage. Both are on the bandwagon.

    Let’s talk economics, Robert. I’m sure you’re familiar with demand curves. Demand for any sort of labor (or any factor of production) is set by the perceived marginal productivity of that labor, i.e. the minimum a worker can produce that a producer is willing to pay for. If you raise minimum wage, what you are doing essentially is raising the marginal productivity standards of a company beyond what they’ve set for themselves.

    Who do you think is affected by this? Clearly it’s the minimum wage workers, i.e. the black people in the ghetto. Those people who were hired at the previous minimum wage are those most likely to lose their jobs OR be prevented from being hired for future jobs. They don’t meet the minimum marginal productivity. When we take this into account there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period.

    The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.

    “If no minimum wage laws means paradise, the 3rd World would be Paris everywhere. It’s not because they aren’t.
    The best living conditions are to be had in places where the workers make the highest wages. The shittiest conditions are in places where the wages are very low. This shoots the whole anti-minimum wage argument right there.”
    I mean Robert let’s continue your logic here: you’re telling me that for the 3rd world to change their entire poverty level around ALL THEY HAVE TO DO is up their minimum wage? Well why stop at the US minimum of $7.25 and hour? Why doesn’t some country just raise the mimumum wage to $1000 an hour and outperform the US as the new largest consumer in the world?

    Mexico’s minimum wage is 57.46 pesos an hour. Numbers show the minimum is higher in their currency than the 7.25 dollar minimum in the US. It’s important to note why different national currencies have value and just by implicating wage minimums alone won’t prove anything.
    ————————
    I can have a discussion on the topic of Labor Theory of Value if you’d like which in my view is a complete misunderstanding of how value is determined. In short, value is subjective.
    ————————-

  5. Your argument is full of holes: You seem to be saying, for one thing, that countries with higher wages seem to have better living conditions, which somehow proves that raising the minimum wage is a good thing. However, you do not provide any evidence supporting this correlation.

    Another of your arguments is best summarized by your statement, “$8 an hour won’t break a single businessman anyway.” Again, this ignores the fact that every dollar (or in this case, every dollar per hour) comes out of the bottom line, and has to be accounted for somewhere. So you believe that it won’t have a net effect on any particular company, because all companies have to operate under the same laws. Well what about companies that aren’t paying the minimum wage? So a shop in a high-profit area continues to pay above the minimum wage, but a shop that is already paying its employees minimum wage suddenly has to pay even more per week for the same employees. So they raise their prices to compensate…but as you already pointed out, stores in low-income areas already have rock-bottom prices, so they are suddenly priced out of the market, have to move out of low-income communities, and suddenly there are fewer jobs.

    Really, you don’t seem to have thought this position out at all, besides a vague argument of, “Rich people can always afford to pay more.” Sorry, but they can’t.

  6. Building off of Andy’s point and to clarify, Robert seems to be completely unaware of supply and demand curves or other issues which arise from the government intervention he so loves.

    Easy example: I live in NYC, so Taxi medallions. They cost 100 grand. 8 dollars won’t break a single business man? He’s going to have to think again.

    It’s well advised that Robert look into the theory of money and credit before he proceeds claiming “econ 101”.

  7. This argument makes absolutely no sense. You desperately need to read Thomas Sowell’s book, “Basic Economics”.

    1. Can not agree more because Robert appear to understand only 1-0% of macro economics. Workers producing for less than minimum wage do not get hired. They have been priced out of the market. When something is to expensive you simply do not buy it.

        1. So you do not want anyone on your socialist blog to hear about capitalism because they may change their mind and realize it works much better than socialism

  8. Lack of minimum wage laws is not the plight of the worker in the 3rd world . It’s a lack of any work place or human rights system of laws there.

  9. All of the people here complaining about minimum wage creating unemployemnt are deluded idiots. There is study after study showing the opposite, that the MW has nothing to do with unemployment. There was a time in this country when there was no MW and few other labor laws. It wasn’t the great time these people would like to pretend. It was shit for the majority of working people. Low wages and poverty. As it is now a good deal of welfare recipients are actually working people with families to support who are earning MW. These loons would only exacerbate that and ultimately increase the numbers of people on welfare. If they want to live some place with no MW and few labor protections then I suggest they relocate to the third world or so called “devolping world” and go to work in a sweat shop for a few cents an hour, 7 days a week for 12 hours or so a day and then report back to us on how great it is. As that is all they would ultimately create here.

    1. Nick, can you cite one study that shows that the MW has no impact on unemployment? Preferably one done by somebody reputable….thanks.

  10. @ Nick “As it is now a good deal of welfare recipients are actually working people with families to support who are earning MW.” This is absolute horse shit….get your facts straight son. Fewer than one out of five people on MW do not have a family to support and are usually young people starting out in the workforce.

  11. Too many logical holes in your argument.

    1. Labor theory of Value – What if the marginal profit from hiring a new worker falls below the minimum wage? Why would that worker be employed then? As minimum wage goes up and marginal profits remain constant, the expected consequence is unemployment, not higher wages.

    2. “Fordism”, “The best places to live in the US are where wages are high.”, “Areas with low wages tend to have poor economies” – These are arguments stating that higher wages are better than lower wages, which is true but it attacks a strawman. Sowell does not claim that higher wages are bad. Sowell claims that minimum wage laws do not lead to higher wages but result in unemployment instead.

  12. All right reactionary, I am banning you.

    We have all heard all of your crazy conservative arguments about everything under the sun. We don’t agree with them, period. There is nothing to discuss and no reason to debate anything.

  13. I don’t really care about Sowell’s economic views. The more important point is that he is one of the exceedingly few Black commentators who is actually a rational civilized HUMAN being – one opposed to the violent out of control savagery and cultural/moral degeneracy of the vast majority of his race.

  14. I imagine the logic here has a lot to do with the oversimplification that all (legitimate) employment is better than unemployment. This does not take into account what sort of employment we are talking about. It only even seems economical if these low wages are still reasonably higher than welfare benefits and that (as is probably the case in “the ghetto”) crime does not pay higher. (Why work some shitty low-wage job when you can make loads more as a drug dealer, say?)

    The fact is not all unemployment is created equal: not all of it provides enough for an adequate standard of living, nor does it always allow people to manage other responsibilities of have a life of any sort outside of work.

    I can understand the logic if it is an entry-level/trainee position which allows an otherwise unemployable person a route into work with guaranteed better prospects- this is the logic behind apprenticeship schemes over here which may even be backed up with government funding- but at the same time can be an excuse for cheap labour.

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