The Liberals and Conservatives have strayed so far to the interventionist side of the economic policy spectrum that the NDP must work hard to make headlines. Enter the Ontario NDP’s recent proposal for a $20 hourly minimum wage through steady increases over the next five years.
In reality, high wages can’t be legislated. If a worker’s hourly productive output (the amount she contributes to a business’ bottom line) is below the stated minimum, an employer would be able to offer her a job only by losing money. Raising the minimum wage, by raising the minimum level of productivity a worker needs to be employable, makes more workers unemployable.
Moreover, the workers most negatively affected are the most disadvantaged in the labour force — those with the least experience, least skills, least education and fewest qualifications — and populations that suffer most from racial or other forms of unfair discrimination. Far from being an action of compassion, raising the minimum wage is actually an act of cruelty.
In fact, the first minimum wage laws passed a century ago were intentionally cruel. British Columbia’s minimum wage law in 1925 was meant to price Japanese immigrants out of jobs. Racist labour unions in the United States similarly advocated for minimum wage laws to oppress blacks. In apartheid South Africa, too, minimum wage laws were used to encourage discrimination.
Even if the stated intentions of minimum wages have...
Deepak Jain had fraudulently induced SEC to enter into contract by falsely certifying that his data centre at Beltsville in Maryland met Tier IV standards. Washington: A former Indian-origin CEO of...