Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 56 of my late, great colleague Walter Williams’s 2011 book, Race & Economics (original emphasis):

The minimum-wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the most disadvantaged members of our society. The absence of work opportunities for many black youngsters does not only mean an absence of pocket money. Early work opportunities provide much more than that: important insights on how to find a job and to adopt proper attitudes toward both, punctuality, and respect for supervision in the workplace. Lessons of that sort learned on any job help make a young person a more valuable and successful worker in the future. In addition, early work experiences give youngsters the pride and self-respect that come from being financially semi-independent. That is even more important for black youngsters, a disproportionate number of whom grow up in female-headed households and to the nation’s worst schools. If they are to learn job-related lessons, many of them will be learned through a job.

DBx: Yes.

If a gaggle of Grand Wizards of the KKK wished to erect a surreptitious yet highly effective barrier to the economic advancement of minorities, they could do no better than to propose a minimum wage.

So to all you who support minimum wages: You might well have the motives of an angel, but your motives count for nothing against the devilish results of the policy you endorse.