A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2010



Minimum Wage Cruelty: Update



"Minimum Wage Cruelty" (4/14/10) was my column about the unemployment effects of Congress’ 2007 minimum wage increase on the canning industry in American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the far Pacific Ocean. The 2007 legislation mandated 50 cents annual increases in Samoan minimum wages until it reached the U.S. mainland’s hourly minimum of $7.25. In response, Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyons, Ga. That resulted in roughly 2,000 jobs lost in Samoa and a gain of 200 jobs in Georgia. Prior to minimum wage increases, Samoan wages were about $3.25 an hour. With the legislated increases, Samoa’s minimum wage is $5.25. So the question is: Which is preferable for the Samoan worker -- being employed at $3.25 an hour or being unemployed at $5.25? Which buys more of life’s essentials?

The Samoa News (April 10, 2010) reported that American Samoa’s Gov. Togiola Tulafono warned Congress more than once that American Samoa is "destined for very serious economic difficulties" if nothing is done to change provisions of federal law which mandate annual minimum wage increases.

On May 14th, the governor’s warnings bore distasteful fruit. StarKist, the island’s remaining cannery, announced that between 600 and 800 people will be laid off over the next six months, reducing the company’s Samoan workforce from a high of more than 3,000 in 2008 to less than 1,200 workers. StarKist CEO Don Binotto said it's difficult to compete when Samoan workers' wages are nearly 10 times those of its competitors in Thailand and other countries.

Labor unions are the major supporters of increases in the minimum wage. Even though the overwhelming majority of their members earn multiples of the minimum wage, they spend millions upon millions lobbying for minimum wage increases. They do it because higher minimum wages protect their members from competition with low-skill, low-wage workers. Most other minimum wage supporters are decent people with a concern for low-wage workers, but their actions suffer from a misguided vision of how the world operates.

If it is one’s vision that an employer must have a fixed number of workers to do a particular job, it makes sense to help workers by mandating higher wages. The same number of workers will be hired earning higher wages and the only difference is that employers will earn lower profits. Other people with the same desire to help low-wage workers will argue against minimum wage increases because they have a more realistic vision of how the world operates. They recognize that there is not a fixed number of workers necessary to get a particular job done. The employer can substitute capital for labor -- automate. If employers do hire the same number of workers with higher wages and try to shift the higher cost on to the product price, consumers can purchase substitute goods, including goods from foreign producers. Finally, employers can relocate to cheaper-wage countries. These and other responses to higher wages reduce employment.

Poor people are not poor because of low wages. For the most part, they're poor because of low productivity, and wages are connected to productivity. Congress can easily mandate higher wages, but they cannot mandate higher worker productivity or that employers hire a particular worker in the first place. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy, echoing the vision of many, said in his support of higher minimum wages, "I believe that anyone who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, should not live in poverty in the richest country in the world." It’s breathtakingly stupid to think of minimum wages as an anti-poverty tool. If it were, poverty in places such as Haiti, Ethiopia and Bangladesh could be instantly eliminated simply by proposing that these country’s legislators mandate a higher minimum wage. I’m wondering whether the Obama administration has proposed a $7.25 minimum wage as part of the cure to Haiti’s poverty.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

Burke and Obama

By Thomas Sowell







http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The other day I sought a respite from current events by re-reading some of the writings of 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke. But it was not nearly as big an escape as I had thought it would be.


When Burke wrote of his apprehension about "new power in new persons," I could not help think of the new powers that have been created by which a new President of the United States — a man with zero experience in business — can fire the head of General Motors and tell banks how to run their businesses.


Not only is Barack Obama new to the presidency, he is new to running any organization. One of Burke's fears was that "we may place our confidence in the virtue of those who have never been tried."


Neither eloquence nor zeal was a substitute for experience, according to Burke. He said, "eloquence may exist without a proportionate degree of wisdom." As for zeal, Burke said: "It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion."

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The Obama administration's going back and forth on the question whether American intelligence agents who forced information out of captured terrorist leaders will be subjected to legal jeopardy, even though they were told at the time that what they were doing was not only legal but a service to the nation, came to mind when reading Burke's warning about the dangers of continuing to change the rules and values by which people lived.


Burke asked how we could expect a sense of honor to exist when "no man could know what would be the test of honour in a nation, continually varying the standard of its coin?"


The current drive to take from "the rich" for the benefit of others came to mind when reading Burke's warning against creating a situation where "any one description of citizens should be brought to regard any of the others as their proper prey."


He also warned that "those who attempt to level, never equalise." What they end up doing is concentrating power in their own hands— and Burke saw such new powers as dangerous, even if they were used only sparingly at first.


He said, "the true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients and by parts." He also said: "It is by lying dormant a long time, or being at first very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people."


People who don't like "the rich" or "big business" or the banks may be happy that President Obama is sticking it to them. But such arbitrary powers can be turned on anybody. As Robert Burns said: "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." There was a lot of wisdom in the 18th century.


The Constitution of the United States set out to limit the powers of the federal government but judges have greatly eroded those limitations over the years and the dispensing of bailout money has allowed the Obama administration to exercise powers that the Constitution never gave them.


Edmund Burke understood that, no matter what form of government you had, in the end the character of those who wielded the powers of government was crucial. He said: "Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state."


He also said, "of all things, we ought to be the most concerned who and what sort of men they are that hold the trust of everything that is dear to us." He feared particularly the kind of man "whose whole importance has begun with his office, and is sure to end with it"— the kind of man "who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming into power is obliged to desert his friends." Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and others came to mind.


The biggest challenge to America — and to the world — today is the danger of Iran with nuclear weapons. President Obama is acting as if this is something he can finesse with talks or deals. Worse yet, he may think it is something we can live with.


Burke had something to say about things like that as well: "There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief." Acting — not talking.

A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2009 AND THEREAFTER



Rich People Versus Politicians



Sometimes I wish there were a humane way to get rid of the rich. Without the rich for whipping boys, we might be able to concentrate on what's best for the 99 and a half percent of the rest of us.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion in assets each, are America's richest men. With all that money, what can they force us to do? Can they take our house to make room so that another person can build an auto dealership or a casino parking lot? Can they force us to pay money into the government-run retirement Ponzi scheme called Social Security? Can Buffett and Gates force us to bus our children to schools out of our neighborhood in the name of diversity? Unless they are granted power by politicians, rich people have little power to force us to do anything.

A GS-9, or a lowly municipal clerk, has far more life-and-death power over us. It's they to whom we must turn to for permission to build a house, ply a trade, open a restaurant and a myriad of other activities. It's government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce and make our lives miserable. Coercive power goes a long way toward explaining political corruption.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's hawking of Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat; Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel's alleged tax writing favors; former Rep. William Jefferson's business bribes; and the Jack Abramoff scandal are mere pimples on the government corruption landscape. We can think of these and similar acts as jailable illegal corruption. They pale in comparison to what's for all practical purposes the same thing, but simply legal corruption.

For example, according to the Miami Herald, by March 2008, the powerful Florida Fanjul sugar family had given over $300,000 to politicians and political committees. They didn't fork over all that money to help politicians to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. Like businessmen who approach Charlie Rangel, Rod Blagojevich and William Jefferson, they give politicians money because they want a favor in return -- namely import restrictions on sugar so they can charge Americans higher prices. In the case of the Fanjuls, and thousands of others buying favors, they are engaged in legal corruption.

Legalized corruption is widespread and that's the job of 35,000 Washington, D.C., lobbyists earning millions upon millions of dollars. They represent America's big and small corporations, big and small labor unions and even foreign corporations and unions. They are not spending billions of dollars in political contributions to encourage and assist the White House and Congress to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. They are spending that money in the expectations of favors that will be bestowed upon them at the expense of some other American or group of Americans.

This power helps explain, for example, why a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, not to mention its chairmanship, is so highly coveted. For the right price, a tax loophole, saving a company tens of millions of dollars, can be inserted into tax law, a la the Charlie Rangel scandal. At state levels, governors can award public works contracts to a generous constituent. At the local levels mayors can confer favors such as providing subsidies for sports stadia and convention centers. When politicians can give favors, they will find buyers.

The McCain-Feingold law was to get "money out of politics" but more money was spent in the 2008 election cycle than ever. The only way to reduce corruption and money in Washington is to reduce the power politicians have over our lives. James Madison was right when he suggested, "All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." Thomas Jefferson warned, "The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers." That's what today's Americans have given Washington -- unlimited powers.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3, 2010



Who Poses the Greater Threat?



Bill Gates is the world's richest person, but what kind of power does he have over you? Can he force your kid to go to a school you do not want him to attend? Can he deny you the right to braid hair in your home for a living? It turns out that a local politician, who might deny us the right to earn a living and dictates which school our kid attends, has far greater power over our lives than any rich person. Rich people can gain power over us, but to do so, they must get permission from our elected representatives at the federal, state or local levels. For example, I might wish to purchase sugar from a Caribbean producer, but America's sugar lobby pays congressmen hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to impose sugar import tariffs and quotas, forcing me and every other American to purchase their more expensive sugar.

Politicians love pitting us against the rich. All by themselves, the rich have absolutely no power over us. To rip us off, they need the might of Congress to rig the economic game. It's a slick political sleight-of-hand where politicians and their allies amongst the intellectuals, talking heads and the news media get us caught up in the politics of envy as part of their agenda for greater control over our lives.

The sugar lobby is just one example among thousands. Just ask yourself: Who were the major recipients of the billions of taxpayer bailout dollars, the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)? The top recipients of TARP handouts included companies such as Citibank, AIG, Goldman Sachs and General Motors. Their top management are paid tens of millions dollars to run companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy, were it not for billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Politicians preach the politics of envy whilst reaching into the ordinary man's pockets, through the IRS, and handing it over to their favorite rich people and others who make large contributions to their election efforts.

The bottom line is that it is politicians first and their supporters amongst intellectuals who pose the greatest threat to liberty. Dr. Thomas Sowell amply demonstrates this in his brand-new book, "Intellectuals and Society," in which he points out that: "Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the twentieth century was without his intellectual supporters, not simply in his own country, but also in foreign democracies ... Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had their admirers, defenders and apologists among the intelligentsia in Western democratic nations, despite the fact that these dictators each ended up killing people of their own country on a scale unprecedented even by despotic regimes that preceded them."

While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant's primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite.

We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine's warning that "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

I saw your interview on Tavis Smiley Monday evening and your comment that the financial sector is trying to get back where they were before the crisis. It made me think. Here is a little background on me. I grew up in a small town of 7,000. My father was on the township council and was Mayor for a year. So I lived through the politics of a small town. My thought was the unconscionable men who are running the whole financial sector have a single purpose in life, money and the control and power that come with it. They laughed at everyone when they took the bail out money and gave themselves bonuses fully knowing no one could stop them. As their greed consumes them all they care about is how do we repeat the biggest personal financial gain we ever had. They will spend not one second on who it will hurt, all they can do is think about how to duplicate this phenomenon. A consequence of their greed, which turned into a GOLDEN EGG. “If it ain’t broke don’t fixit”. In their eyes it "ain’t broke" when they can pay themselves 30 billion in bonuses. Their desire to set up the same situation is what is driving them every minute of everyday. All they need to do is figure out how to do it around the new rules. This is never a problem for these people they love a good challenge. I believe they are putting the old system back into place so it will collapse again and they will find a way to give themselves another outrageous payoff. There are no rules you can put in place to stop them, they are experts at circumventing the rules. Anything a man can make, another man can break. There is only one way to rectify the situation…

Hugh Gallagher

The discussions over extending Tarp today are nauseating. If the powers that be wouldn’t have let the banksters convince them that Mark to Market needed to be abolished to allow for zombie appraising of toxic sludge held by those that created the toxic sludge we would have seen some benefit from the Tarp program as much as I despise the whole idea.
The banksters have no incentive to unload their depreciating assets if can fictitiously appraise them. Instead we have allowed the hoarding of digital dollars by the banksters through legislation (mark to market) by those that have no skin in the game that only have campaign contributions to fund in the near future as paybacks with the nations/peoples credit that sooner or later will decide to loan some of the freebie money with higher interest rates as the FED will surely raise them soon to further place us in bankster bondage. The banksters refusing to loan is equal to the oil tankers parked off the coast of the U.S. until the price of a barrel of oil increases. Which it will through manipulation not from free market pressure.
Our supply/demand economy operates as "I will supply you with the needed legislation but first I will demand $250,000 be placed in my offshore account". JMO
What a racket!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could go on but thanks for allowing me to have a say,
Mark

How can "we the people" end the corruption and bribery in government when the corporate media which controls a majority of the flow of information to the masses has no interest in cleaning it up? I was disgusted at the "debates" when it was obvious that the most honest candidate, Dennis Kucinich, was virtually shut out. I also watched as Ralph Nader was muzzled during the past two elections. I complained to the sponsors, but to no avail. I am about ready to give up on any real change EVER occurring. People like you are our only true hope for change. Thank you.

This is a good thing that you are doing. It is nice to hear someone talk intelligently about the current state of affairs of the United States of America.
I would be proud to have you as my Senator Sir, and will enjoy hearing more from you.
I have felt for some time now that it is time for the people of the U.S. have
a serious discussion about who we are as a people and where we wish to go as a nation.
More people, such as you need to speak out the truth about our country and help build something greater then we now have so that it is not said of our time in history, that we had the chance to make a better United States but failed to act.

Thank You!!! Also, a question...do you know how many homeowners of the mass have successfully modified under the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act Of 2009? Where can I get this information in order to ensure accountability?

In today's edition of the Eugene, OR Register Guard "Letters to Editor's Section" is a letter stating that the Health Insurance companies are exempt for Anti-Trust regulation and have been for decades. Is this true? Does this mean that they are free to do what ever they wish in spite of any Health Care Reform Bill that maybe passed?

Anti-trust legislation doesn't apply as insurance companies are by the states. So, they have to adhere to 50 different sets of rules.

id like to see the energy saving patents that the oil companies own to be made common knowledge, its not illegal to hide good ideas, but it is immoral...what can be done?

So far so good. A bit short, but he's a busy man. I'd like to see an episode on cap and trade versus a carbon tax, or perhaps a more detailed explanation of Waxman-Markey.