Please Read the Matt Walsh Blog
And read it every day. The man is pure brilliance. For example:
The Argument for Obama’s $10.10 Minimum Wage Hike, Explained in Dialogue Form:
Worker: “Hi, I’d like to work for you.”
Employer: “Sorry, the government says we have to pay everyone at least 10.10 an hour. We don’t have any money in our budget to hire more workers at that rate.”
Worker: “Well, I still need a job. I’ll gladly work for 6 dollars an hour. Deal?”
Government: “Hold on! You can’t do that. You’re not allowed to sell your services for less than 10.10 an hour!”
Worker: “But… I’d rather make under 10.10 than be unemployed. Why can’t I enter into a private employment contract with this establishment if we both feel that the arrangement benefits us? We are both consenting parties, aren’t we?”
Government: “Because that isn’t fair.”
Employer: ”Excuse me, but I’d like to have a say in this conversa-”
Government: “Enough out of you, business owner! This is between me and the worker.”
Employer: ”Actually, I really think you have nothing to do with-”
Government: “FAIRNESS! We are decreeing a minimum amount that all people must be paid, regardless of the financial realities of an individual business, and regardless of the actual measurable worth a particular worker represents. If a worker wants to work for less rather than not work at all, we won’t allow it. We are doing this because of fairness and freedom. WHAT DON’T YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS?”
Worker: ”Well, if I can’t work than I guess I’ll have to start selling my stuff. Anybody want to buy my TV for 100 dollars?”
Buyer: “Awesome! I’ll take it!”
Government: “WAIT! You aren’t selling that thing for less than 200 dollars. This is for your sake. You deserve 200 dollars for that TV.”
Worker: “But nobody will buy it for that much and I really don’t think it’s worth 200 dollars…”
Government: ”Look, just take some of this welfare until a high paying job falls out of the sky and lands on you like an Asteroid of Fairness from the Kumbaya Galaxy.”
Taxpayers: “Hang on, we can’t afford to finance any more entitlements! We’re barely making ends meet as it is!”
Government: ”Well, you’ll have to get a second job to compensate for the financial burden of a trillion dollar Nanny State.”
Taxpayers: “Fine. Hi, employer, I’d like to work for you.”
Employer: “Sorry, can’t afford to hire more workers at 10.10 an hour.”
Taxpayers: “Alright, this is a supplemental income anyway. I’ll work for less. How ’bout 7 dollars an hour? Deal?”
Government: “WAIT.”
What I thought was sad, was that the first comment in the comments box was this:
Matt, your argument makes sense *if* labour is a commodity like any other. But it isn’t, it’s fundamental to human dignity. As other comments have already mentioned, if an employer cannot afford to employ someone they need at minimum wage, it’s a sign their business model is flawed. More likely, however, is that the employer can afford it but isn’t willing to trim their profit margin.
What I think is sad is that this person is not expressing himself in inarticulate rambling, but in clear, concise, easy-to-read sentences, and yet he is unaware of the basics of economic, and the basics of logic.
In economics, the economic value of a good or service is based on the supply and demand. Supply is how much is offered in the market. Demand is the perceived need, as decided each buyer in his own mind, compared to the other uses to which the buyer’s money (which represents his time and effort) might be put. The commenter’s argument is that the price of labor, due to human dignity, is not the same as other goods. I presume other goods (all except for my collection of imported Martian Fighting Tripods) are fabricated or gathered by human labor, so the reason why paying per each fish caught a man for a fish he catches is governed by supply and demand, whereas paying a man an hourly wage to fish for my fishing company is not governed by supply and demand, is an issue not addressed here.
Or, in other words, his argument is that the law of supply and demand, while it does apply, should not apply. Things should not be as they are. For the sake of human dignity, reality should yield to human emotion. In this case, the reality that must give way is that some people’s labor should be valued as being worth more than they are worth, and so other people should suffer a loss, that is, their labor should be valued as worth less than they are worth.
The argument, in other words, is that since the employer’s time and effort is of less value than that of the employee, the State should take money (which we use to represent the market’s valuation of time and effort) from the employer and give it to the employee. The employer’s labor is worth less than the employee’s.
Now, there is an inevitable and absurd consequence once we accept this idea of the inequality of the value of labor, which is that the employee stands to other people in the economy (in this example, the buyer of the television) in the same relation as the employer to employee. Hence, logically, the same man’s time and effort are less and more valuable at the same sense and same time, because he is both employer, in relation to one man, and employee, in relation to another.
The labels ’employee’ and ’employer’ are not castes. They are not badges of rank in a hierarchy. They are names for processes, and one person can be involved in several processes at one time. A man who owns a small business but works weekends in a second business as a hand, who owns stock in a second business and has loaned money to a neighbor but borrowed money to buy a car, who has sold a short story to a magazine, is, at once, an owner, a laborer, a capitalist, a debtor, a creditor, and self-employed. If human dignity applies to him, it applies to him, and not to the names we give the economic processes in which he happens to be engaged. That does not change if the man is in one role at one point in his life, and other role in another, or if he is in a different role from his brother or grandfather or grandson.
In basic logic, one must avoid the simple informal logical error of irrelevance. Human dignity is a moral category, dealing with moral principles. Economics is the science of studying the invariant relations that underlay the market activities of man. A fact cannot make a moral principle invalid; a moral principle cannot make a fact not a fact. That the value of labor on the market is determined by cause and effect is a fact. the fact that there ain’t no such thing as free lunch is a fact.
The fact that minimum wages laws have NO EFFECT WHATEVER on the height of wages is a fact. All that happens is that businesses start taking a loss on workingmen whose value is less than the minimum, and they retire or replace them as soon as possible. Its only effect is on creating a permanent and artificial condition of unemployment.
This is not a difficult concept to grasp; it is Econ 101. A twelve year old can get the concept. Likewise, the basic rules of logic, how syllogisms work, what is and is not a formally correct argument, is something schoolboys can grasp. The problem is that we live in a new Dark Ages, which, unlike the original Dark Ages, does not have monks carefully and loyally trying to preserve books during the wreckage of civilization. What we have now are anti-monks called intellectuals carefully and loyally trying to wreck civilization by heaping scorn on old books. They cannot destroy the physical copies, so they destroy the willingness of the young to read them. Hence logic and economics becoming as rare, these days, as the lost works of Aristotle.
Matt Walsh is doing his small part to stem the rise of the darkness. Here are a few more choice gems:
Chivalry is out of style
This past Christmas Eve, I went to church with my wife, my sister, and my brother-in-law. We arrived a half hour early, which was a half hour too late. All of the seats were taken, and even the standing room … Continue reading →
Your life is over when you have kids
I remember when we told people that my wife was pregnant with twins. There were plenty of handshakes, hugs, and congratulations. But I also heard this line quite a bit: “Oh man, your life is over!” A common refrain, and … Continue reading →
Monogamy is unnatural
Monogamous marriages are unnatural. On this, I agree with the emailer below. Now, behold these enlightening thoughts that I found in my inbox this morning: Greetings Mr. Walsh, I am a college professor, author, and researcher. It was obvious to … Continue reading →
Five economic reforms every rational Millennial should be fighting for
I remember when I first began to understand the issue of poverty. We were not wealthy by any means, but we weren’t impoverished. The concept perplexed me. One day I came up with a brilliant idea and suggested it to … Continue reading →
Why do progressives always want the government to intrude in their bedrooms?
“Get the government out of my bedroom!!!!!” How many times have you seen that written on the internet, complete with multiple exclamation points so as to emphasize the emphasis of the emphasis of the emphasis? And there’s a funny thing … Continue reading →
Let us send our daughters to die in battle for the sake of gender neutrality!
There are three different types of ideas: good ideas, bad ideas, and ideas so horrifically stupid that they will be mocked and scorned by our descendants for centuries to come. Modern left-wingers typically trade in the second sort of idea, … Continue reading
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
