The Price of Good Intentions

*In her book Open Wide the Freedom Gates, Dorothy Height, one of the doyennes of the civil rights movements of the 50's and 60's, describes a meeting wherein women of the Mississippi delta talked openly about the effects of certain federal programs on their lives.

Discussing the minimum wage, one woman is quoted as saying, "When minimum wage came in, our hours were shortened. So now instead of more adequate pay, we do double the work in half the time." It is noteworthy that this meeting was not sponsored by a republican club, but the National Council of Negro Women and was moderated by Fannie Lou Hamer, another elder of the movement. Neither was the woman quoted some ivory tower intellectual or partisan gun slinger. She was one of the real-life people actually affected by minimum wage laws as opposed to so many of us that merely talk about such things in the abstract.

In very plain language, the woman in Height's story gives testimony that economic laws remain true, and their effect on the lives of people are real regardless of the pronouncements of politicians.

Amidst promises to lift legions of low wage workers out of poverty, the 110th Congress recently passed an increase in the minimum wage, a bill the president has indicated he will sign providing there are protections for business owners included in the legislation. Let us put aside for the moment the fact that the overwhelming majority of minimum wage earners do not live in poverty, do not raise families on their salaries and do not work full-time.

As the Mississippi woman's story attests, a minimum wage increase is more likely to actually harm those it is intended to help. We may wish it differently, but the laws of economics, which are neither cruel nor kind, say differently. Federal and state governments are perfectly able to set the price of labor. They are, however, unable to change the VALUE of labor and business owners, like all consumers, seek value for their money.

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