since we are talking about the minimum wage laws, we need to be clear about something his story about the fat old man is cute but doesn't fit the analogy. His story illustrates limiting the most you can charge for a service or a product ie: The fat old man offering more to the woman than the young man.
Whereas the minimum wage just sets a base fee that the young man and the old man both must start at, it doesn't put a cap on what either can pay to win the beautiful lady.

When He's asked the hard question on Minimum wage on whether it won't just drive down wages he goes into libertarian speak "I believe in fair and equitable trade between parties,and,mand right to enter into private contract...yada yada yada"

He doesn't explain why the minimum wage is bad for American's, he says that it cuts out jobs for those only suited for $2.00-$3.00 per hour jobs. I say that any man who calls himself an economist and claims that there are people whose employment is only worth $2-3 Per Hr. and I say he's really a blood sucking capitalist in a economists clothing. You talk about cutting off those on the bottom rung.. $7.25 is the bottom rung! anything less is not subsistence.

Mr. Williams never gives a clear example or reason why the minimum wage is bad for poor Modern America. Sure unemployment is up especially in teenagers and it's really high in black young men. But lower or no minimum wage isn't going to cure that. Putting an end to racial profiling, putting an end to valuing a black teen's worth at $3.00 per hour will help end that. Employers education would help end that. Letting employers get away with paying the least common denominator in wages will not cure anything. What it will do is allow their already obscene profits grow wider between costs.

He uses the millions we send to Bangladesh and Haiti as an example as why the minimum wage wouldn't work to fight poverty right there I almost hit stop on the vid. What a stupid point what completely different environments I really was expecting something a little more from him. He drags up the minimum wage law s from 1936 as if they are something that just got passed and then just to skirt around one President. I mean come on already. And again using the South African minimum wage laws used to segregate the labor unions there as an example for the labor unions being a racial too here is crazy.

Mr. Williams never answered the hard question he squirmed around it. Eliminating the minimum wage would benefit the low income people how? or why is it bad?

And second he makes some fairly racist observations; Japanese Americans are the top of the socio/income bracket, Blacks make bad politicians and police officials, and Irish Americans are the best politicians. Good god he labels more than Archie Bunker did.

Fail/fail
I'd like someone to show me why the minimum wage is a bad idea.... in a real sense. It's a discussion I'd like to have but with thoughts and ideas, not quotes.

This post was edited by Valhalls_Sun on Mar 15 2015 04:32am

He is talking about price controls. The same logic applies to other examples, including price floors.
A lesser skilled worker who is free to contract can offer an employer his labor at a lower price.
You seek to ban that option, which takes away his bargaining power and makes it more preferable to hire skilled and experienced laborers instead.

An example:
"Suppose that a job can be done by either three unskilled workers or two skilled workers. If the unskilled wage is $5 per hour and the skilled wage is $8 per hour, the firm will use unskilled labor and produce the output at a cost of $15. However, if we impose a minimum wage of $6 per hour, the firm will instead use two skilled workers and produce for $16 as opposed to the $18 cost of using unskilled workers. In the "official data" this shows up as a small job loss — in this case, only one job — but we see an increase in average wages to eight dollars per hour in spite of the fact that the least skilled workers are now unemployed."

If those hypothetical numbers offend your feelers, feel free to change them to a higher amount.


You have little respect for voluntary exchange or people's right to contract. We got it.


All the nasty insults and smears in the world will not change the fact that some people are more productive than others, and that some unskilled and inexperienced workers generate very little value per hour until they are able to acquire the necessary skills and work their way up.
Furthermore some jobs are less productive and less labor intensive than others and would not be profitable for the employer at certain higher wages. Setting a high wage floor removes these types of jobs and takes away the opportunity for both the employer and the employee that would have come to mutually agreeable and mutually beneficial terms.

Great lets say you think no one one earth generates 5 or 6 dollars of value per hour on a job.
Do you think its possible some people might not generate more than $10 or $15/hr plus all of the other (mandated) additional costs of labor?


Sure he did, similar to what I explained above.
Unskilled black teenagers with lousy public school education and no job experience aren't typically the most productive workers.
When the price floor is raised who do you think a company will hire first, when they are forced to pay a higher wage?
It punishes the people who are the worst off and least preferable.


Your feelings about justice and fairness and how evil capitalists are do not change economic reality.

Hes written extensively about this very subject.
To blame rampant unemployment on racial discrimination is a cop out, nor is shaking your fist at it going to make the racism that does exist go away.
In the first half of the 19th century blacks were MORE active than whites in the labor market.

As he writes:

In other words, there was obviously far more racial discrimination in the past, and poor education, so those cannot be the deciding reasons. We have to look elsewhere.


You are twisting the story pretty badly. He did NOT use the millions we send as the example of why the minimum wage wouldn't fight poverty there.
He brought up Bangladesh as an obvious example of how raising minimum wage doesn't solve the problem of poverty. Mandating high wages in a very poor country will obviously not suddenly create wealth out of thin air and make their people well off.


He explicitly said that it was the FIRST minimum wage law, said the year was 1931, and also mentioned FDR by name.. he clearly wasn't trying to pass it off as something brand new.
You are inventing things to make him sound bad..

The history about freedom to contract being upheld until FDR was threatening the supreme court is a pretty relevant and interesting part of the story for those who respect that freedom.


Another misinterpretation..
He brought up that the racist unions in South Africa advocated the wage because of what they thought it would do to black labor. (price them out of it, and protect their own jobs)
He did NOT use that as an example of labor unions being racist here.. He brought up a different quote from an American labor leader which you verified earlier.

Whether there is racist intent behind the law NOW is irrelevant. You saw him make a big deal of focusing on the effects rather than the intent.
If racists and other unions saw the bad effects that would happen to blacks and used it to punish black laborers, don't you think that its important to recognize the effects that they saw?
Do you think those bad effects go away if you shout insults at people and claim every black person should support it because you think its good for them and if they don't they are race traitors?? Of course not.


Another disgusting misrepresentation of what he actually said..

How is recognizing the success of japanese americans "Racist"?
This is the type of nonsense he is constantly fighting against. He is trying to look at the facts and you are just trying to smear him as a racist and an uncle tom.

He essentially said black politicians aren't necessarily going to be better for black citizens just because of the color of their skin.
He made an effort to thoroughly explain why he thinks its a mistake to support a politician based on his skin color, and that getting a politician from your ethnic group into power isn't necessarily going to solve your problems.
Thats about as far from racism as it gets.

To back that up he mentioned that many of the black politicians in office preside over terrible situations for black people. He explicitly said he doesn't think its a causal relationship.
He didn't say Irish Americans are the "best" politicians either. He said the group that has had the most political power is Irish-Americans and then said Irish Americans were among the slowest rising of any of the ethnic groups.
He brought up the success of Japanese Americans to demonstrate that you don't need people of your race in political office in order to succeed. There have been very few Japanese Americans in power, even in areas where there is a high Japanese population.
These are historical facts.

Bringing up ethnic groups and statistical facts is not racist.


We've seen you rush to condemn him without fairly or honestly understanding his arguments..

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Mar 15 2015 06:41am

I may have been judgmental of him at this point but honestly I'd had more than I'd cared for. I think maybe you are being too easy on him on his racial profiling as far as politics go but you admire him as much as I don't so it evens out. I'll have to go back and listen to that part again tomorrow morning sometime after 2Am .

Yes skilled and experienced laborers are worth more to a company than unskilled ones for a variety of reasons.. we agree.
You are arguing against the numbers in a hypothetical example.. you think it underestimated skilled workers.. and in doing so you are helping me prove my point.
Its the unskilled workers.. disproportionately many of whom are young minorities.. that are harmed by the mandatory wage increases.

We can use your numbers if you want.
If you think an $8.00/hr skilled worker is worth way more than what a $5/hour unskilled worker could offer you, why on earth would you hire one of the unskilled workers if an $8 minimum wage was imposed?


If its the only job there is then thank god no one banned it and that someone is offering him that opportunity..
If he is in trouble at $4/hour how is he supposed to survive on the $0 that you would condemn him to?


What exactly are you contradicting from my post? I don't see it. We didn't claim there weren't different sized businesses.

And why should:
1. businesses be punished for expanding
2. unskilled and inexperienced workers not be allowed to offer their services to any significant businesses that otherwise would be willing to employ them?
Why would you want to vastly shrink their starting employment opportunities?

You not liking bigger, richer businesses and trying to extract more money from them isn't a good reason.


This is yet another ham-fisted attempt to smear him based on a misconception of what he is actually saying.
No hes is not "de-valuing the black workforce" he is making factually accurate observations and identifying the negative effects of the policies you support.
You yourself have already said skilled labor is worth more than unskilled labor. Its not "racist", its reality.

If you think its better to have more unemployed black people as long as the average wage for blacks is closer to that of whites, you can come out and say it.
But you will be giving up on the argument that these laws don't harm unskilled minorities.


Yes the same labor leader who had that racist quote.
The strong racist ties to minimum wage and equal pay advocacy are undeniable if you know your history.

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Mar 15 2015 10:15am

More examples of the history of racist advocacy for the minimum wage:



-Thomas Sowell (you probably wont like him, hes another black guy)
http://nypost.com/2013/09/17/why-racists-love-the-minimum-wage-laws/

A very relevant sentence from the same article:

Advocates of minimum-wage laws usually base their support of such laws on their estimate of how much a worker “needs” in order to have “a living wage” — or on some other criterion that pays little or no attention to the worker’s skill level, experience or general productivity.
So it’s hardly surprising that minimum-wage laws set wages that price many a young worker out of a job.

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Mar 15 2015 10:26am

Cam Can't we discuss this without the assholery? You claiming that I have racial bias because I disagree with a black man is idiotic.

whatever race fights they had near the turn of the last century really isn't relevant to today's conversation,

Here is where your argument falls flat Cam. if the minimum wage was to be eliminated tomorrow and the job that was advertised at the broom factory that Jim applied for. Jim is an experienced broom maker who lost his last job when the competition was closed 3 months ago. Bill also applied for the job Bill has never worked a day in his life. With the min. wage law gone the PR. foreman drops the hourly wage from $7.25 to $4.00 Jim hasn't worked in 3 months so he needs money to live, and Bill has never worked but will work for that too. who will the PR guy hire? The guy with experience of course.

lower wages don't help anyone except for the owner of the business, the only time minimum wages could affect the employment value of the teenagers is when the unemployment rate is down near zero otherwise the experienced applicant will always be picked. .

So you've essentially gone from "you are a race traitor if you oppose raising the minimum wage" and pretending there aren't negative effects on unskilled inexperienced labor, to 'meh its ok if unskilled and inexperienced black folks can't legally find a job i think its better that way'


The fact that you disagreed with him was not what brought on that statement.
It was your numerous racial slurs and hatred directed at the last black libertarian I brought up.


There is a demand for labor. If an employer only offers workers $4 an hour but they are really worth vastly more, some other businessman will see that opportunity for profit and bid up their wages.
In the same vein, a worker will attempt to choose the best option available to him. A trained and experienced worker will tend to command a higher wage.

If Jim asks for $7.25/hr and Bill asks for $4/hr, the employer is far more likely to hire Bill than if Bill was not legally allowed to offer his services for any less than 7.25.

Contrary to your statements: Skilled and experienced workers are simply NOT unanimously picked over lesser skilled and lesser experienced workers when there are other factors like price that are allowed to come into play.
We can see this in practice now. You may have job experience, a college degree and skill, but if you walk into walmart asking for $20/hour to stock shelves the high school kid offering his labor for $8/hour will likely beat you out for the same job.

Its unequivocally false to claim lower wages only help the owner.
Keeping the cost of production down helps consumers who are able to buy cheaper goods.
Legally being allowed to offer low paying jobs also helps low-skill and inexperienced workers who would have a harder or impossible time finding a job at a higher wage.

I disagree look at the pricing policy of any large retail market they don't base their pricing on cost alone it's just one small factor most practice a form of predatory/cost/market pricing
the cheaper labor helps the production end which never sees retail. once again until unemployment is almost nonexistent the skilled workers will still take the work because low paying work is better than none. There is no competition with a open market wage atmosphere the only thing you do is remove the protection that the lowest paid employees had of being paid little to nothing for putting in a good days work. I repeat the employer always sets the price that he will pay for unskilled labor jobs when you collapse the artificial floor

Why do you think there are so few jobs and such low demand for unskilled labor?
Mandates and regulations that increase the (minimum) cost of labor reduce the demand for that labor. Thats what I've been talking about..

There isn't a permanently set finite amount of jobs for unskilled labor. There will be more job opportunities for them with a lower minimum wage compared to a higher one.
If the cost of labor is relatively low new businesses and jobs will spring up to capitalize on that potential profit.

Whether they physically and thoroughly negotiate wages with each employee or not is immaterial to the point.
Sure they can set the price they are willing to pay, but the workers determine whether they will accept the job or not.
There is fact an economic pressure to offer competitive wages if they want to hire people. If a business doesn't offer a competitive wage people will look elsewhere for employment.
There isn't just one business, but a whole plethora of them competing against each other.



This is utter nonsense not backed up by anything. Of course there is competition in a free market wage atmosphere. Does supply and demand ring any bells?
Heres a graph that illustrates the point:


If there is "no competition" and they will offer the least they legally can, why aren't most people making minimum wage right now? The amount of people actually making minimum wage is pretty low.

If they abolished minimum wage laws and I opened up a business tomorrow and offered wages of $1 an hour guess how many employees I would get? Likely zero. potential employees would turn to other employers for a job instead of me.