Tyranny has taken many forms over the history of humankind. In America, the most obvious form of tyranny was that of chattel slavery, present at the country’s founding and the cause of 600,000 lost American lives. There have been other, more devious forms of oppression in the US, however. For instance, the courts originally ruled that Jim Crow laws were constitutional and women did not get the right to vote until 1920. Many people, however, fail to see one of the current forms of tyranny, one that was first implemented in the US in the 1910s and has spread across the nation, taking on holistic pretenses and ending in economic failure: the minimum wage.
The minimum wage was first introduced into America in 1912 when Massachusetts established a minimum wage at the behest of the Woman’s Trade Union League. By 1923, 15 states had minimum wage laws on the books. Finally, in 1933, the federal government enacted the first nation-wide minimum wage. Today, the minimum wage sits at $7.25 at a federal level, though many states have higher minimum wages.
The minimum wage is economically unsound, for a variety of reasons. To start, setting a price floor (which is what a minimum wage is, a price floor for labor) is terrible for the economy. It distorts the market allocation of resources and forces consumers to spend more money than necessary for a product. By not allowing the market to decide the value of a person’s labor, the minimum wage deters people from purchasing that person’s labor if it is not worth the face value of the minimum wage. Also, forced payment of a certain dollar amount forces businesses to increase prices. This drives inflation and causes the value of the minimum wage to decrease relative to prices. This puts the person making the minimum wage right back where they started.
The minimum wage, more than just being economically unsound, is also morally unsound. Consider the following scenario: A poor 14-year old boy seeks to enter the labor market. He is unskilled and has no job experience. He attempts to take work at the local grocery store where he hopes to work for some time to build his resume.
As he enters the grocery store he sees it’s in dire need of sweeping. He approaches the owner with a proposition to sweep the floors for $4.50 an hour. In a world without a minimum wage, this interaction would be a private proposition between the owner and the young man. And, if the owner judges the boy’s labor to be worth the $4.50 an hour, he could hire the boy who would then have gainful employment on terms of his choosing. The store would get swept, the boy would get work experience, and both private parties would be satisfied.
Contrast this with today’s world where the minimum wage is $7.25. The government inserts itself into the interaction forcing the store owner to reject the boy’s offer, even though he would be happy to hire the boy and the boy would be happy with the terms. Worse, because the owner would likely not see the simple task of sweeping as worth the same $7.25 an-hour he’s paying other more experienced employees, the boy’s offer loses all value. Instead of the government having secured him a minimum wage for his labor it has instead denied him an opportunity for entry-level employment. The store would remain unswept and the impoverished young man will have been denied valuable work experience.
In this scenario, the minimum wage, designed to lift people out of poverty, ended up becoming another barrier keeping this young man on the road to life on streets, homeless and perpetually impoverished. This is the kind of result that can arise from a government-mandated minimum wage.
This brings us to the title of this article. The broad definition of tyranny is the restriction of individual liberty for arbitrary reasons dictated by some higher power, regardless of whether the designs of that higher power are malicious or benevolent. Almost all people would agree with this definition and agree it is an undesirable reality. If this is unacceptable, so to must it be unacceptable to force a business owner to pay a certain wage. Government coercion encroaching into private affairs, such as what a business owner thinks the work of his employees is worth and what the employees are willing to be paid, is tyrannical. It is an idea forged in even deeper tyranny.
Historically speaking, white progressives founded the minimum wage to keep black men unemployed. In the early progressive era, black labor in the South was paid next to nothing. As black men migrated North to find better employment, they began taking jobs at wages far lower than what Northern white labor expected to be paid. The labor unions demanded a minimum wage be put into place so that black men did not take “white jobs” by their willingness to work for less. Tyranny and oppression were perpetuated using the minimum wage then, just as it is now.
There are many who hotly debate the minimum wage in this country. There are those who wrongfully consider the minimum wage a moral concept and, along with other progressive notions, believe the minimum wage will build a better society. These people, I am sure, have good intentions. And yet, it is those intentions that can pave the road to Hell. The minimum wage, and its implications, do much of that paving.
Scott Howard is a constitutionally-minded conservative freelance writer with a focus on fiscal matters and foreign policy. You can follow him on Twitter: Follow @thenextTedCruz
Editor’s Note: The minimum wage is another cog in the vast machinery of the modern welfare state. Kike every aspect of that state, many champion it as a tool to lift people out of poverty. The reality is sobering. I
spent two years as a young man on a church mission in northern Ohio. I was not ready for the culture shock I experienced given that I was still in my own country. In both the inner-city and the inhabited ghost towns of the rust-belt, I witnessed the results of a government welfare scheme that accomplished only a perpetual level of manageable poverty.
The welfare system kept families from falling into absolute destitution but then became reliant on a system that created a generational culture of dependence. Progressives have swollen government and unleashed it to interfere in all sorts of private affairs. It has ultimately solved very little. -Justin
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