PART VIII. LABOR.
Chapter 29. The Fat Capitalist Pig Employer.
If not for the minimum wage law and other progressive legislation, the employers, the fat capitalist pig exploiting employers, to be precise, would lower wages to whatever level they wanted.
At best, we would be pushed back to the days of the sweatshop.
At worst, to the days of the Industrial Revolution and before, when mankind waged an often losing battle with starvation.
So goes the conventional wisdom on the merits of minimum wage legislation.
It will be shown, however, that this conventional wisdom is wrong, tragically wrong.
It assumes a villain where none exists.
What does the law actually accomplish, and what are its consequences?
The minimum wage law is, on the face of it, not an employment law, but an unemployment
law.
It does not force an employer to hire an employee at the minimum wage level, or at any other
level.
It compels the employer not to hire the employee at certain wage levels, namely those below
The Theory of Money and Credit
How would wages be determined in the absence of minimum wage legislation?
If the labor market consists of many suppliers of labor, employees, and many demanders of
labor, employers, then the wage rate will tend to be set in accordance with what the
economist calls the marginal productivity of labor.
The marginal productivity of labor is the extra amount of receipts an employer would
have if he employs a given worker.
In other words, if by adding a given worker to the payroll, the employer's total receipts
rise by $60 per week, then the marginal productivity of that worker is $60 per week.
The wage rate paid to the worker tends to equal the worker's marginal productivity.
Why is this so, in view of the fact that the employer would prefer to pay the worker virtually
nothing, no matter what his productivity?
The answer is competition between employers.
For example, assume the worker's marginal productivity is equal to $1 per hour.
If he were hired at $0.05 per hour, the employer would make $0.95 per hour profit.
Other employers would bid for that worker.
Even if they paid him $0.06, $0.07 or $0.10 an hour, their profit would still make the
bidding worthwhile.
The bidding would end at the wage level of $1 per hour.
For only when the wages paid equal the worker's marginal productivity will the incentive to
to Bid for the Worker, Stop.
But suppose the employers mutually agree not to hire workers at more than 5 cents per hour.
This occurred in the Middle Ages, when cartels of employers got together with the aid of
the state to pass laws which prohibited wage levels above a certain maximum.
Such agreements can only succeed with state aid, and there are good reasons why this is
So, in the non-cartel situation, the employer hires a certain number of workers, the number
which he believes will yield the maximum profit.
If an employer hires only ten workers, it is because he thinks the productivity of the
tenth will be greater than the wage he must pay, and that the productivity of an eleventh
would be less than this amount.
If then a cartel succeeds in lowering the wage of workers with a marginal productivity
of one dollar to five cents per hour, each employer will want to hire many more workers.
This is known as the law of downward sloping demand.
The lower the price, the more buyers will want to purchase.
The worker whose productivity was, in the eyes of the employer, just below one dollar,
and therefore not worth hiring at a dollar per hour will be eagerly sought at five cents
per hour.
This leads to the first flaw in the cartel.
Each employer who is a party to the cartel has a great financial incentive to cheat.
Each employer will try to bid workers away from the others.
The only way he can do this is by offering higher wages.
How much higher?
All the way up to one dollar, as we have seen before, and for the same reason.
The second flaw is that non-members of the cartel arrangement would want to hire these
workers at five cents per hour, even assuming no cheating by members.
This also tends to drive up the wage from five cents to one dollar per hour.
Others, such as would-be employers in non-cartel geographical areas, self-employed artisans who could not before afford employees,
and employers who had previously hired only part-time workers, would all contribute to an upward trend in the wage level.
Even if the workers themselves are ignorant of wage levels paid elsewhere,
are located in isolated areas where there is no alternative employment.
These forces will apply.
It is not necessary that both parties to a trade have knowledge of all relevant conditions.
It has been said that unless both parties are equally well informed, imperfect competition
results and economic laws somehow do not apply.
But this is mistaken.
Employers usually have little overall knowledge of the labor market, but employers are supposedly
much better informed.
And this is all that is necessary.
While the worker may not be well informed about alternative job opportunities, he knows
well enough to take the highest paying job.
All that is necessary is that the employer present himself to the employee who is earning
and this is exactly what naturally happens.
The self-interest of employers leads them as if by an invisible hand to ferret out low-wage
workers, offer them higher wages and spirit them away.
The whole process tends to raise wages to the level of marginal productivity.
This applies not only to urban workers but to workers in isolated areas who are ignorant
of alternative job opportunities and would not have the money to get there even if aware
of them.
It is true that the differential between the wage level and the productivity of the unsophisticated
worker will have to be great enough to compensate the employer for the costs of coming to the
The Mexican wetbacks are a case in point.
Few groups have less knowledge of the labor market in the United States and less money
for traveling to more lucrative jobs.
Not only do employers from Southern California travel hundreds of miles to find them, but
they also furnish trucks or travel money to transport them northward.
In fact, employers from as far away as Wisconsin travel to Mexico for cheap labor, workers
receiving less than their marginal product.
This is eloquent testimony to the workings of an obscure economic law they have never
heard of.
There are complaints about the poor working conditions of these migrant workers, but these
complaints are mainly from either well-intentioned people who are unaware of the economic realities,
or from those not in sympathy with these hapless workers receiving full value for their labors.
The Mexican workers themselves view the package of wages and working conditions as favorable
compared to alternatives at home.
This is seen in their willingness year after year to come to the United States during the
harvesting season.
It is not the minimum wage law, therefore, that stands between Western civilization and
a return to the Stone Age.
There are market forces and profit-maximizing behavior on the part of entrepreneurs which
ensure that wages do not fall below the level of productivity.
The level of productivity is itself determined by technology, education and the amount of
capital equipment in a society, not by the amount of socially progressive legislation
enacted.
Minimum wage legislation does not do what its press claims.
What does it do?
What are its actual effects?
That will be the reaction of the typical worker to a legislated increase in wages from $1
to $2.
If he is already fully employed, he may want to work more hours.
If he is partially employed or unemployed, it is virtually certain that he will want
to work more.
The typical employer, on the other hand, will react in the opposite way.
He will want to fire virtually all of the workers he is forced to give raises to.
Otherwise he would have granted raises before he was compelled to.
Now he has to keep production up so he might not be able to adjust this situation immediately.
But as time passes he will replace his unexpectedly expensive unskilled workers with fewer but
more skilled workers, and with more sophisticated machinery, so that his total productivity
remains constant.
Students of an introductory economics course learn that when a price level above equilibrium
is set, the result is a surplus.
In the example, when a minimum wage level above $1 per hour is set, the result is a
The Surplus of Labor, otherwise called Unemployment. Iconoclastic as it may sound, it is therefore
true that the minimum wage law causes unemployment. At the higher wage level it creates more people
willing to work and fewer jobs available. The only debatable question is, how much unemployment
What does the minimum wage law create? This depends on how quickly the unskilled workers
are replaced by equivalently productive skilled workers in conjunction with machines.
In our own recent history, for example, when the minimum wage law increased from 40 cents
to 75 cents per hour, elevator operators began to be replaced. It has taken some time, but
But most elevators are now automatic.
The same thing happened to unskilled dishwashers.
They have been and are still being replaced by automatic dishwashing machinery, operated
and repaired by semi-skilled and skilled workers.
The process continues.
As the minimum wage law is applied to greater and greater segments of the unskilled population
and, as its level rises, more and more unskilled people will become unemployed.
Finally, it is important to note that a minimum wage law only directly affects those earning
less than the minimum wage level.
A law requiring that everyone be paid at least $2 per hour has no effect on an individual
earning $10 per hour.
But before assuming that the minimum wage law simply results in pay raises for low-wage earners,
consider what would happen if a $100 per hour minimum wage law went into effect.
How many of us have such great productivity that an employer would be willing to pay $100
for an hour of our services?
Only those thought to be worth that much money would retain their jobs.
The example is extreme, of course, but the principle which would operate if such a law were passed does operate now.
When wages are raised by law, the workers with low productivity are discharged.
Who is hurt by the minimum wage law?
The unskilled, whose productivity level is below the wage level legislated.
The unemployment rate of black male teenagers is usually underestimated at 50%,
three times the unemployment level of the 1933 depression.
And this percentage does not even begin to take into account the great numbers
who have given up searching for a job in the face of this unemployment rate.
The lost income that this represents is only the tip of the iceberg.
More important is the on-the-job training these young men could be receiving.
Were they working at $1 per hour, or even less, instead of being unemployed at $2 per hour,
they would be learning skills that would enable them to raise their productivity and wage rates above $2 in the future.
Instead, they are condemned to street corners, idleness,
Learning only those skills which will earn them jail sentences at some early future time.
One of the greatest hurdles facing a black teenager is looking for his first job.
Every employer demands work experience, but how can the young black get it if no one will hire him?
This is not because of some employer conspiracy to denigrate minority teenagers.
It is because of the minimum wage law.
If an employer is forced to pay for an experienced level worker, is it any wonder that he demands this kind of labor?
A paradox is that many black teenagers are worth more than the minimum wage, but are unemployed because of it.
In order to be employed with a $2 an hour minimum wage law, it is not enough just to be worth $2.
You have to be thought to be worth two dollars per hour by an employer who stands to lose
money if he guesses wrong, and may go broke if he guesses wrong too often.
With a minimum wage law, an employer cannot afford to take a chance, and unfortunately
black teenagers are frequently viewed as risky as a class.
When confronted with a reluctant employer, a Horatio Alger hero could stride over manfully
and offer to work for a token salary, or even for nothing, for a term of two weeks.
During this time, our hero would prove to the employer that his productivity deserved
a higher wage rate.
More important, he would bear with the employer part of the risk of hiring an untried worker.
The employer would go along with this arrangement because he would be risking little.
But the Horatio Alger hero did not have to do battle with a minimum wage law, which made
such an arrangement illegal.
The law thus ensures that there is less chance for the black teenager to prove his worth
in an honest way.
The minimum wage law hurts not only the black teenager, but the black ghetto merchant and
and Industrialist as well. Without this law he would have access, in a way which his white
counterpart would not, to a cheap labor pool of black teenager labor. The young black worker
would be more accessible to him since he tends to live in the ghetto and would have easier
access to the job site. He would undoubtedly have less resentment toward and a smoother
Another Work Relationship with a Black Entrepreneur Since this is one of the most important determinants
of productivity for jobs of this type, the black employer could pay his workers more
than the white one could and still make a profit.
Unfortunate as the effects on young black workers are, a greater tragedy of the minimum
Minimum wage law concerns the handicapped worker, the lame, the blind, the deaf, the amputee,
the paralyzed and the mentally handicapped.
The minimum wage law effectively makes it illegal for a profit-seeking employer to hire
a handicapped person.
All hopes of even a modicum of self-reliance are dashed.
The choice the handicapped person faces is between idleness and governmentally supported
make-work schemes which consist of trivial activities and are as demoralizing as idleness.
That such schemes are supported by a government which makes honest employment impossible in
the first place is an irony few handicapped people would find amusing.
Recently, certain classes of handicapped people, the slightly handicapped, have become exempt
from the minimum wage law.
It is therefore in the interest of employers to hire the slightly handicapped, and they
now have jobs.
But if it has been realized that the minimum wage law hurts the employment chances of slightly
handicapped people, surely it should be realized that it hurts the chances of others.
Why are seriously handicapped people not exempt?
If the minimum wage law does not protect the individual it seems designed to protect, whose
interests does it serve?
Why was such legislation passed?
Among the most vociferous proponents of minimum wage legislation is organized labor, and this
must give us pause for thought.
For the average union member earns much more than the minimum wage level of $2 per hour.
If he is already earning $10 per hour, as we have seen, his wage level is in accordance
with the law and is not, therefore, affected by it.
What then accounts for his passionate commitment to it?
His concern is hardly with the downtrodden worker.
His black, Puerto Rican, Mexican-American and American Indian brethren, for his union
is typically 99.44% white, and he strenuously resists the attempts by members of minority
groups to enter his union.
What then stands behind organized labor's interest in minimum wage legislation?
When the minimum wage law forced up the wages of unskilled labor, the law of downward sloping
Sloping demand caused employers to substitute skilled labor for unskilled labor.
In the same way, when a labor union composed mainly of skilled laborers obtains a wage
increase, the law of downward sloping demand causes employers to substitute unskilled laborers
for skilled laborers.
In other words, because skilled and unskilled laborers are, within certain bounds, substitutable
for each other, they are actually in competition with one another.
It might well be that it is 10 or 20 unskilled workers who are in competition with, and hence
substitutable for, two or three skilled workers, plus a more sophisticated machine.
But of the substitutability itself, especially in the long run, there can be no doubt.
What better way to get rid of your competition than to force it to price itself out of the
market?
What better way for a union to ensure that the next wage hike will not tempt employers
to hire unskilled, non-union scabs, especially minority group members?
The tactic is to get a law passed that makes the wage of the unskilled so high that they
cannot be hired, no matter how outrageous the wage demands of the union are.
If minority groups could get a law passed requiring all union wages to rise ten times
their present amount, they could virtually destroy the unions.
Union membership would decline precipitously.
Do the unions purposefully and knowingly advocate such a harmful law?
It is not motives that concern us here.
It is only acts and their effects.
The effects of the minimum wage law are disastrous.
It adversely affects the poor, the unskilled and minority group members, the very people
It was supposedly designed to help.