What do you think of the case where (and I'm assuming this is common among laypeople) the left winger you're arguing with has the perspective that the government should provide benefits if those benefits are really important?
For example, I had an argument once where I was using an analogy about a group ordering a pizza (i forget the exact context) and my opponent interupts me to say "no this is like fixing your car" to which I responded "ok what if I could have fixed it myself or knew a shop that was cheaper etc etc" to which I was met with eyerolls.
I think this is the kind of thinking for a majority of left wingers, that we already pay taxes and the government has all this money and if they just spent it to help people who can't afford things, that would be perfect. No amount of "hey, theyre doing more harm than good, the money was taken by force, and any help provided would override natural market outcomes" seems to work. Maybe I'm bad at arguing because I personally found laissez faire convincing in like 5th grade and chose Jefferson as my favorite president for a class project. No one else I have ever met outside of libertarian circles even thinks like this
The primary difference I see between abundance liberals and libertarians lies in the role of government. Abundance liberals want private/ public partnerships and lots of industrial policy. Libertarians want neither.
“Movement Progressives and Abundance Progressives want similar things, but take divergent approaches.”
Your phrasing implies they want similar ends as do libertarians, just seek to get there via different means.
The reality is that they want very different ends, they just want to use something like 25%-35% of libertarian means rather than the 10%-15% of libertarian means that most progressives prefer or the 0%-2% of libertarian means that the hard activist left prefer.
When I read of private/ public partnerships my hands start shaking. We won't know where the private sector ends and the public sector begins. The proponents want it that way. Welcome back, Benito!
I have a question for libertarians - how do you feel about discrimination laws? Of course eventually the market will ideally eliminate non-fact based discrimination, but it seems to me in a libertarian government you can easily end up in a situation where a certain, say, racial group statistically isn't as good as employees - they are statistically less reliable, more inclined to steal from the business, etc. Companies do thier due diligence on employees, but they can only do so much, so, in close cases, it's better for the business to just avoid people of this race. If that's allowed, you now have a race of people with less economic opportunity than people of other races through no fault of thier own. This seems bad to me, but interested in others' thoughts.
Statistical discrimination can be a life saver. Think of the black cabbie looking for custom in the middle of the night. If four noisy black youths dressed like they just came out of prison flag him down, he will not stop to pick them up. He's not stupid. That ain't racism.
Instead, it gives the individuals selected against incentives to alter their behavior.
SInce you asked. Yes, such bias is unfair to individuals but can be efficient for employers. If I'm unsure whether to hire you but you appear to be a member of a group that tends to be bad employees, it can be efficient to not investigate further.
But this is true for everyone - no matter who you are, there's somebody out there who doesn't like people like *you*. You're ugly, you're old, you're short, you look too much like my ex-wife, you went to the university that is the football rival of my own alma mater, etc. It's not clear (to me anyway) that there is or should be anything special about being a member of a government-designated "loser group" (blacks, gays, whatever). Or that government should put a thumb on the scale for some politically-organized groups but not others.
When somebody doesn't want to hire us (or rent to us or whatever) we need to go find somebody else who does. Sure, their reasons may be unfair to you as an individual, but every reason can be unfair to any individual. We can go find other people to trade with who like people like *us*.
Thank you for engaging with the premise of my question, you bring up some good points.
Old is already a protected group, so are also protected by the government.
Which university you graduated from is a choice, and (ideally) you were able to so because of your individial abilities, so this is different than race.
Short is not something you can do anything about, but either it's genuinely important for the job (in which case it's reasonable to consider) or it's not going to be a useful metric and will be punished by the market. The only way this would be akin to race in the same problematic way would be if it could be accurately used to predict something else at a group level (i.e. if it was statistically true that short people are, uh, ill-tempered or something, and a business wouldn't hire short people for thier customer service jobs). If I were short, I wouldn't want to be denied a position because they use that to assume I'm ill tempered, even if it were accurateat a group level. You are correct that current discrimination laws doesn't protect that and imo could be better in that way, but they're still better than nothing.
You are correct that you can always find someone who won't infer bad things about you based on aspects you can't change, I just think it's worth making an effort to try to not make people have to do that.
As a libertarian, I believe that there should be no discrimination laws. If you own a business, you should have the same rights as your employees and customers. That is to hire and fire and serve or not serve for whatever reason you choose. I also believe it would be stupid to do so because such non-economic decisions will likely destroy your business.
But that's the crux of this - you can't rely on racism being bad for business to eliminate it. what if it were a good economic decision at the level of an individual business to be racist? Are you comfortable allowing it?
I think in the long run you *can* rely on racism being bad business to eliminate it. If women do the same work for less pay, a smart business hires women - the same work gets done and it's cheaper. After a while this arbitrages such errors - businesses that indulge false ideas about people get worse employees or pay more than their competitors for labor. In the long run firms with less bias do better and grow more. And their punishment for choosing employees on an irrational behavior is just what it should be - they lose money vs. their competotors.
For employment, while a few hardcore libertarians object to any anti-discrimination laws since they violate freedom of association, most are perfectly sympatico with MLK’s “judge not by the color of the skin, but the content of they character” formulation.
But quotas, and statistical disparate impact citations all libertarians oppose.
For sometimes different reasons. but disparate impact can most obviously be seen to be wrong given that following its logic would require a change to the composition of NBA basketball players.
I am gobsmacked at the number of people answering in this thread who repeatedly ignore the fact that judging people statistically is a collectivist behavior. When the statistical factor is such fictional nonsense as race, it is racism, *by definition*. Jim Crow mandated segregation was racist, school busing mandated integration was racist, mandated affirmative action is racist, mandated minority-owned business favoritism is racist.
And these comments go out of their way to step around their collectivist statistical racism using weasel words to sound more sciency, that the stereotypical KKK redneck of their fantasies would stare at slack-jawed in admiration.
People are individuals. Treating individuals per statistical correlations based on irrelevant poorly-defined characteristics like skin color is bigotry.
Too many weasel words in that statement, and it's not an explicit question, so I'll answer a made-up question.
Q. Is it racism to make a decision based on race?
A. Yes.
I'm sure Jefferson Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda thought their racism was rational. But their decisions were based on race -- they were racist decisions.
As for "basis of evidence", I have no idea what you think that means. The evidence of skin color? The evidence of self-identification as black? Not pulling an answer out of a hat?
Throw those two together, and "rational decisions on the basis of evidence" means nothing.
You are in no position to complain about weasel words given that your comments on this topic consist of nothing but.
> Q. Is it racism to make a decision based on race?
> A. Yes.
So you don't dispute my claim that making rational decisions can be "racist".
> I'm sure Jefferson Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda thought their racism was rational.
I don't know whether it was or not, but at best your argument amounts to "sometimes people think they're rational when they aren't, therefore we should ditch rationality".
Oh, you’ve changed your claim, you dropped the meaningless “on the basis of evidence”. But you’ve still got that “rational” in there, and of course everyone thinks their own decisions are rational while the decisions they don’t like are not.
Let me know when you can come up with a universal objective definition of “rational”.
Heck, just let me know when you settled on one claim and don’t keep changing it.
> Oh, you’ve changed your claim, you dropped the meaningless “on the basis of evidence”.
It was assumed as be part of being rational.
> But you’ve still got that “rational” in there, and of course everyone thinks their own decisions are rational while the decisions they don’t like are not.
So are you going to go full post0moderist on me?
> Let me know when you can come up with a universal objective definition of “rational”.
"Rationality" is the process of seeking to make one's beliefs correspond to reality as accurately as possible.
There are in fact precise mathematical laws about how to go about doing this.
"Treating individuals per statistical correlations based on characteristics like skin color is bigotry"
I think you're missing that we are in agreement here (i assume we also agree bigotry is wrong). The point I'm making is that you're taking it as a given that it's ineffective, and it seems highly unlikely that's true in all cases, and therefore the free market has no mechanism to prevent it.
No, I'm taking it as proven by you all's circumlocutious weasel words that you all know you are racist but pretending to be above the fray and merely making scientific observations.
Racism is collectivist. I never said collectivism isn't effective. It does very well at destroying economies and societies.
Not a libertarian (or anything else), just want to point out something about this topic.
You describe racial groups and what can be said about them via statistics. Any group of course will have its associated statistics, so depending on where you draw the line around a group, even with the most rigorous and honest accounting you can still make the statistics show anything you want on the group level. People are pretty obsessed with race even though it's a fuzzy-around-the-edges category, so you get a lot of statistical comparisons between racial groups.
The problem is this has no bearing on any individual interaction. Looking at someone, turning superficial clues about them into a conclusion about what race they are, and then making predictions about their behavior based on statistics you have heard about that racial group, is ontologically hazardous at best (downright crazy/evil at worst) but unfortunately a common part of our wiring.
Libertarianism's Achilles's heel is, in my opinion, its baked-in presumption that people make sense of and respond to their environment in a fundamentally rational/reasonable way. In reality most people don't most of the time. We are pulled around by both outside and inside strings, to which we are mostly oblivious, often helpless against even when we are aware of them.
I don't think anti-discrimination laws were enacted with this in mind, but knowing how irrational and full of false confidence people are tells me that anti-discrimination laws are probably a necessary thing in modern society.
“Libertarianism's Achilles's heel is, in my opinion, its baked-in presumption that people make sense of and respond to their environment in a fundamentally rational/reasonable way.”
This may be a true/fair claim; I’m not sure.
But the equivalent Achilles heel of all more interventionist approaches is the conceit that government will do better. Or even do better most of the time.
It’s like Churchill said about democracy: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
I agree that people make lousy decisions for bad reasons. A lot. But in the long run that has consequences - without any need for laws to enforce the consequences. If you don't hire people of type X, that lowers the demand for such people and their wages. Which gives your competitors an advantage (cheaper labor) if they DO hire type X. Irrational decision making has real economic costs, which influence which firms grow and survive. There's no need to government put a thumb on the scale - economics corrects for this automatically. People make all kinds of dumb decisions for all kinds of reasons - why pick on skin color, or sex, or whatever in particular? If such laws are a good idea, how about laws that make it illegal to prefer pretty people or tall ones or blonds?
"Looking at someone, turning superficial clues about them into a conclusion about what race they are, and then making predictions about their behavior based on statistics you have heard about that racial group, is ontologically hazardous at best (downright crazy/evil at worst)"
While in practice this is probably done poorly more often than not, the uncomfortable truth is that there's no reason this has to be ontologically hazardous, but i believe it is immoral regardless of whether real information can be gleaned from it
> Any group of course will have its associated statistics, so depending on where you draw the line around a group, even with the most rigorous and honest accounting you can still make the statistics show anything you want on the group level.
This reads like epistemological nihilism or an best radical skepticism.
You contradict your own racism. If they are "statistically less reliable, more inclined to steal from the business, etc", then how can it be "through no fault of thier own"? Are you arguing that reliability and thievery are genetic and should be ignored in the name of DEI or some State-defined "fairness"? Are you saying these people are irresponsible and should not be held responsible?
As Willy, son of Willy, surmised, I mean that there may be things true at a group level, but as an individual in a group you had no choice to be in, that is not your fault, and shouldn't be your problem.
Yeah, I think almost everything has some genetic component, and yeah, I think we should not infer things about people based on thier genes in the name of fairness, even though, statistically, there may be some information there.
Yes, that's the argument. What's so special about race? Why privilege that characteristic for protection vs. the infinity of other ways people discriminate irrationally?
I long ago read about breeding animals, whether show dogs or milk cows, that you can only really select for one trait. You select for longer ears of fluffier fur or more milk? You lose control over everything else. The more traits you select for, the less control you have.
The same works for discrimination. The more you discriminate, the fewer choices you have. You want to favor blacks as part of your anti-racism racism? Good -- now tell me whether Obama is protected for his black father or rejected for his white mother. You want to protect trannies? Whoops, you just rejected women who don't like males in their locker rooms, and you rendered Title IX a nullity.
Bigotry is collectivism, and wrong for all the same reason socialism is wrong. It treats people as statistics and part of a group. not as individuals.
The only way to stop being racist is to stop paying attention to race.
Please explain how that "other members of their race being statistically less competent" is not of the same school of racism.
Racism is collectivism. Especially when the "race" in question is governed by the one drop rule: Obama is never described as white, always black, even though he has a black father and white mother. People with one black and 7 white ancestors are still described as black, not white.
Racism. Couching it as statistical doesn't hide the racism.
I don't understand your point. Statistical differences exist, it's not racism it's fact. I'm not saying anything essentialist about the cause of such differences only that they exist.
Treating people according to these statistics is collectivism and racism, which is my point.
I agree, it is racism. I'm just saying, in a world of incomplete information, it seems to me that racism could be rational for an individual business owner, yet still morally wrong. My position is, people shouldn't be judged for things they can't reasonably change, even if there is genuine group-level information to be gleaned from it. But I see no libertarian way to enforce this.
Competent people are profiled and discriminated due to our (all humans') natural tendency to not have complete information, to misinterpret that information, to be generally irrational, and to be unaware of how irrational and misinformed we are.
Someone could belong to a race of saints, and still other people will find or fabricate reasons to discriminate against that person, and they will be convinced they are acting based on sound statistical reasoning. Starting with the construct of that race in the first place.
Yes, it can be rational to profile, which is the point in the first place. Because it's rational, market will not solve this kind of discrimination. I'm not confident that the state will solve it either, at least not without worse side effects. But the point is that it's unjust to be judged by actions of others who look like you whether that judgement is rational and natural or not.
You and I might never agree on government mandated building codes, but there is a libertarian solution: private property associations. I happen to live in such a community in central Ohio. My property owners association has existing rules (which may be amended democratically by a vote of the owners) which could regulate my home’s electrical wiring.
That is both libertarian and democratic, which is as far as I’m willing to go.
Just after WW II, when urban planning was all the rage in Britain, Hayek wrote words to the effect that externalities of the kind being discussed can be internalized by larger property holdings. The Associations you describe are one way of bringing that about.
Building codes can also be left to markets. Insurance companies won't insure shoddy or unsafe construction, and banks won't loan on shoddy collateral. Even people who buy a house with cash will want some kind of independent guarantee of its suitability.
Absolutely. I find this issue to be an academic matter, which is not to imply that the risk of gross negligence is zero; certainly not. Again, this is analogous to a drunk driver. We don’t need to outlaw alcohol or even drinking and driving. We need to prosecute drivers who act irresponsibly. There’s no policy that produces zero risk.
PS—I want to amend my last statement. The GOAT—Thomas Sowell—has written that while lowering speed limits to 5 mph would theoretically "eliminate" almost all traffic fatalities, it would impose massive economic and practical costs on society.
Your HOA can regulate stuff like what color you may paint your mailbox, but I doubt very much they can overrule your county's authority when it comes to wiring.
I happen to do electrical work in central Ohio. Various counties -- Franklin and surrounding -- have different standards, different inspectors known for different levels of meticulousness, etc. but it's the county-level inspectors who enforce the NEC. Sometimes you get lower level requirements like in particular buildings with special occupancies (hospitals, manufacturing, high-security, etc.) but residential is residential. Even permitted electrical work in a historic home is still governed by county-level electrical code, not by the historic architectural board or whatever. The historic architecture board might have something to say about what material I use to patch siding, but that is not a code matter.
I've never walked a job with someone from an HOA or condo board. Those people mainly just want to make sure of things like we didn't change the mailbox color.
I’m sure you’re probably right but I will tell you that our inspection showed many irregularities that we had to either accept or otherwise pass on buying this house.
Also, where I live (Apple Valley Lake in Howard) has houses that could not be built in New York or California because of zoning laws and other regulations.
When you say "our inspection" do you mean a home inspection, the sort you hire a home inspector to do while you are in contract? Or a code inspection where you have done permitted construction in the house and then an employee of the county whose title is Code Inspector comes out and meets you/the electrician at the house and passes or fails the work, typically with a punch list to make it right if the work fails?
Licensed home inspectors and official code inspectors have different standards and practices, are looking for different things, give different kinds of reports, and their reports carry different weights.
Unless the home inspector is also a licensed structural engineer and he/she has stated that some structural component needs to be remedied, a home inspection report does not contain any legally enforceable command that work needs to be done. It is an educational document for the prospective home buyer.
The former. And I do understand the difference. When we were in the process of selling our old house in NY we had an open permit on our water heater. So the guy comes and is happy with the work (I doubt he was a qualified expert but I digress); he then proceeds to “inspect” that we have the necessary fire alarms and CO sensors, which we didn’t (Why?—because “they” changed the rules and required every level to have a CO sensor). That almost killed our closing date which would have meant that our rate lock would need to be adjusted for a later date (this would have been a problem for our buyer as well). Again, we’re not talking about anything more than sticking hockey pucks on the ceilings and walls but the town inspector was available until he was good and ready to make himself available.
“One possible consequence of sufficiently bad wiring is for my house to catch fire and the fire to spread to neighboring houses, doing damage to my neighbors or their property for which I cannot compensate them.”
There’s also the issue of moral hazard. Fire fighting services are usually in effect subsidized insurance. People who have insurance act differently toward risk than those without. The provider of the subsidy is being reasonable if they require those receiving the subsidy to follow some guidelines. The incentives are being changed, and arguably the building codes reflect that. Insurance companies also put stipulations on policy holder behavior in their policies, the obvious difference being that we can switch insurers (if/when the regulators allow it).
I admit this factor may be small compared to the interest of neighbors in not having a huge fire hazard near them.
For some years I participated in an on-line discussion board of low level academics. [I joined for completely non-political reasons.] I soon learned that virtually all were dedicated self-interested left wingers with unsophisticated intellects. I objected here and there to many opinions, certainly economic opinions, explaining but trying hard to not sound preachy. It was not appreciated or even acknowledged except pejoratively. Staying in the fold was considered supremely important. Lumpen-Intelligentsia.
"These workers and activists also embody what Ortega y Gasset coined, in The Revolt of the Masses, the “mass man”, who he characterized by two fundamental traits, “The free expansion of his vital desires, and therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence” (Ortega y Gasset, 1957: p. 58)."
-- Theoretical Economics Letters > Vol.13 No.6, December 2023
Off-topic: something haywire with the formatting. The first few paragraphs before the first quote have both margins aligned, with lots of extraneous space padding between words. My eyes were really struggling for a few seconds.
Then after the quotes, suddenly only the left column was aligned and the right column was ragged. My eyes were happy again.
"Some of the legal requirements for rewiring my house can be defended only on the theory that state agents know my interest better than I do, a claim not likely to be persuasive to a libertarian"
There are many "state agents" involved, from the politician who supports enacting/enforcing the building code, to the industry expert who sits on the panel and contributes to a specific part of the code itself. And there are much, much more of the latter.
By "industry expert" I don't mean someone whose career has mostly been academic, I mean someone who spent decades working in a trade, (often) became a project manager or higher-up at a trades-related organization (e.g. a trades service company, a trades union, a manufacturer of something used in the trades, etc.), who has worked in hundreds or thousands of houses and seen all issues imaginable.
Such a person knows ways that your house can burn, fall down, flood, etc. that never occurred to you ("you" being the vast majority of homeowners in this case). If this person and you were standing shoulder to shoulder, both supervising work being done in your house, this person would be able to spot errors and problems way better than you would.
Yes, you may "know your interest" better than this person, but this person has either been assigned or voluntarily taken on an interest in it being done right as well, and combined with their experience that is not to be so easily discounted.
There can be some debate over the extent to which building codes have reduced incidences of houses burning down or falling down or whatever, but I think it's pretty clear they have done so considerably. If the cost has been housing being more expensive, that is bad, but clearly housing is still affordable enough to be built en masse. All around me each summer cornfields are converted to housing, whole neighborhoods at a time, and someone is buying and moving in. You can say it'd be better if there was more mixed development, more availability of a range of housing options to suit a range of budgets, but the existence and enforcement of building codes doesn't seem to be the issue.
So I guess I just don't understand the libertarian objection except as some abstract principle. How does it withstand reality?
I have built and wired a couple of houses in the Bahamas. They follow Canadian wiring code (I'm Canadian). While they do house wiring inspections, if you are doing it in your own house, they are considerably less diligent, presumably you want it done right if you are going to live in it. Now I will say, that since the code changes almost annually, I feel there are some things that have been added that are stretching the idea that it's done for "safety". It seems to me just a kinda "gotcha" for electricians who don't keep up to date.
In the US at least, the National Electric Code is updated every 3 years. I think I've said before, yes, if you squint, some questionable interests seem to leak into the code from time to time. But that doesn't nullify the arguments for the code's benefit.
I think it's the least bad politically probable outcome. There's probably some American states which can more securely just have a fairly low minimum wage, but I think chances are low in Canada and about 2/3rds of the US.
I think you're right that there is the risk is that it becomes even easier to raise the effective minimum by adding to the EITC and it becomes quite distortionary. However I get the feeling that people will be less willing to raise the credit via their own taxes than the minimum wage via their imagined free pot of excess profits, so it may be surprisingly limited. The existing situation is distortionary, and negative for entry level employment levels, while I think potentially higher effective minimums with lower direct employer costs would be a lesser problem.
I've been thinking about a type of market-oriented policy designed to displace more traditional left-wing policy. Minimum wage may be the classic example.
It's not very effective to not have a fairly high minimum wage, because you lose votes and it's more harmful when somebody else is elected who suddenly raises it by $5.
So in the Canadian context I plan to propose to conservative parties that they replace future raises in the minimum wage with earned income tax credits. Remarkably our minimum wages are pretty level across provinces, and have risen by 40% adjusted for inflation since 2005, despite two provinces having a strong streak of more conservative classic liberal parties. But including participation rate youth unemployment is, I believe, at a 50-year high, so the justification for doing something different is quite strong now.
In my case I'm thinking more about attracting young voters who have been presented with positive attitudes towards socialism, and synthesizing a type of market-friendly politics that still is quite appealing to them. This may be pretty similar overall to libertarian and abundance liberal policy fusions.
Grok says 40 to 50% of US states have similar minimum wages as Canada. I think the "just have low minimum wages" strategy really only works in about a quarter of the US. I expect it works quite well there, but I think it makes sense to be tactical everywhere else
No surprise about the direction of association. In lieu of fancy econometrics, do look at the outlier on the graph, Washington, DC!
What struck me about your original post was the claim that real minimum wages in Canada had increased by 40% over some period. Now, there are minimum wage adjustments and there are minimum wage adjustments! In the US nominal minimum wages are reset from time to time. Between resettings you can inflate your way out of unemployment and you can grow your way out of unemployment. Indexing to inflation precludes the first path.
My favorite minimum wage institution is that of France, indexed to inflation and labor productivity growth. In addition the Assemblé National raises the minimum wage whenever it pleases. This tends to occur before elections. No surprise there, and no surprise youth unemployment is high and stays high.
Yeah and even in my province of Saskatchewan, with a more strongly conservative government, the minimum wage is indexed half to inflation and half to the average wage and about $11 USD. Which sounds great if you don't think about the effect on hiring. So I think the best we can do is keep it indexed, but provide the increase through tax credits
In the US raising the minimum wage goes through the sausage factory called the legislature, be it states' or the fed's. Usually there is some deal in which businesses, especially small businesses, are taxed less in some way. This does not reduce the incentive to shorten hours and substitute capital for labor. The minimum wage is poison, especially for youth.
“ I think the ‘just have low minimum wages’ strategy really only works in about a quarter of the US.
You are conflating “doesn’t cause all that much harm” with “works”.
Minimum wage laws cause harm to youth employment, especially those from less advantaged backgrounds.
When the minimum wage is set not far from where the lowest wages would be paid absent the law, then yes, it doesn’t do nearly as much harm as when it is set far above that level.
"... replace future raises in the minimum wage with earned income tax credits"
Have you thought through the incentives?
I understand the intent: if the public thinks (through their representatives) a minimum wage law is good, let the public pay the difference. It might even be fairer to shift the cost to those who think it is proper. But you always get more of what you subsidize, and that would be minimum wage earners.
Suppose the minimum wage is $10/hour. The local supermarket has ten baggers making minimum wage. Now you raise the minimum wage to $11/hour. The grocer's incentive is to leave their pay at $10 and let the taxpayers pick up the $1/hour difference.
He can also hire another bagger at $10/hour, paying him from the $10 he saved. Was that an intended effect?
I think of it as the best politically plausible outcome. A minimum wage already distorts the economy by reducing demand for minimum wage workers, and the effect reduces the employment prospects of entry-level workers.
A lower nominal minimum topped up by a larger EITC may be higher in total and distortionary as well but I think it's a less costly distortion.
Abundance democrat here (or at least closer to that than libertarian). I think this is the best argument for minimum wage - in a society with a social safety net (and if you're against that, I'd be interested in how you propose to keep people from starving in the streets or stealing to survive, Le Mis style), a low enough wage will be subsidized by welfare, as described above, ultimately giving industry cheap, tax-subsidized labor, distorting the market.
Ummm.. a given level of welfare is in fact another way to generate an effective minimum wage without creating a minimum wage law, since citizens eligible for that welfare will not choose to work for hundreds or thousands of hours a year if they will have little to no additional income to show for it.
And in fact we have a welfare trap in this country because, while not 100%, marginal tax rates for those receiving various kinds of welfare are above 50% and in some cases a lot higher than that; occasionally 100%.
Why don't you try showing how people were actually dying in droves before government almighty stepped in to save the day? Do you know minimum wage laws were intended from the outset to keep blacks from being hired? It's in political speeches in Congress, on the record.
No, sorry, you'll have to find some other sucker who thinks you can be educated. Minimum wage laws have been debunked so often and so thoroughly that if you actually cared about such a discussion, you'd have googled the subject and educated yourself. I am not going to waste my time doing what has been done thousands of times by better writers than me.
As for a social safety net, same answer. How did society take care of its weak and disabled before government almighty stepped in to save the day? Here's a good starting point: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807848417, all about mutual aid societies, those guys with the funny hats and secret handshakes, and how medical cronies colluded with the government to derail private charity and medical care.
Or google for charity per nation. The last pre-COVID stats put the US first by a long shot, double and triple the next most charitable nation, and that's per capita, not absolute.
Statists like to say that asking charities for help is degrading. I'd rather ask local churches and other charities than sit in some sterile government office trying to convince a faceless bureaucrat to fork over money. The locals would at least care and try to help find a job or housing.
In the past people certainly did often die of starvation or other cheaply avoidable reasons. I'm not sure what would happen today if we didn't have a social safety net, but i imagine it would be more of the same, likely on a smaller scale, but not zero. My goal is to prevent that in a cost-effective way, which is believe is best accomplished some kind of social safety net. Mutual aid societies by definition are going to exclude some people, some through no fault of thier own (what if they can't afford the dues to begin with).
You say minimum wage laws have been debunked, but I think what you mean is that they cause higher unemployment rates. I don't necessarily see that as an issue. Right now there are 6 million people who work full time jobs who are also on food stamps, so the situation you outline where taxpayers are subsidizing companies to pay minimum wage is already occurring. A minimum wage that precludes people working full time jobs from needing welfare forces companies to put up or shut up - pay people what they need to live, or don't get the benefit of thier labor.
This isn't a strongly-held belief of mine, maybe in practice we're better off subsidizing wages than giving more people welfare when they can't get jobs. But just a different way to think about the utility of minimum wage - keeps companies honest.
What do you think of the case where (and I'm assuming this is common among laypeople) the left winger you're arguing with has the perspective that the government should provide benefits if those benefits are really important?
For example, I had an argument once where I was using an analogy about a group ordering a pizza (i forget the exact context) and my opponent interupts me to say "no this is like fixing your car" to which I responded "ok what if I could have fixed it myself or knew a shop that was cheaper etc etc" to which I was met with eyerolls.
I think this is the kind of thinking for a majority of left wingers, that we already pay taxes and the government has all this money and if they just spent it to help people who can't afford things, that would be perfect. No amount of "hey, theyre doing more harm than good, the money was taken by force, and any help provided would override natural market outcomes" seems to work. Maybe I'm bad at arguing because I personally found laissez faire convincing in like 5th grade and chose Jefferson as my favorite president for a class project. No one else I have ever met outside of libertarian circles even thinks like this
The primary difference I see between abundance liberals and libertarians lies in the role of government. Abundance liberals want private/ public partnerships and lots of industrial policy. Libertarians want neither.
The differences are far greater than that, sadly. Or at least far greater than “lots of industrial policy” seems to imply.
They want pretty much all the things that Modern Progressives want, they merely seek to do them in a more efficient, somewhat less harmful way.
https://modernpower.substack.com/p/movement-vs-abundance-progressives
“Movement Progressives and Abundance Progressives want similar things, but take divergent approaches.”
Your phrasing implies they want similar ends as do libertarians, just seek to get there via different means.
The reality is that they want very different ends, they just want to use something like 25%-35% of libertarian means rather than the 10%-15% of libertarian means that most progressives prefer or the 0%-2% of libertarian means that the hard activist left prefer.
When I read of private/ public partnerships my hands start shaking. We won't know where the private sector ends and the public sector begins. The proponents want it that way. Welcome back, Benito!
I have a question for libertarians - how do you feel about discrimination laws? Of course eventually the market will ideally eliminate non-fact based discrimination, but it seems to me in a libertarian government you can easily end up in a situation where a certain, say, racial group statistically isn't as good as employees - they are statistically less reliable, more inclined to steal from the business, etc. Companies do thier due diligence on employees, but they can only do so much, so, in close cases, it's better for the business to just avoid people of this race. If that's allowed, you now have a race of people with less economic opportunity than people of other races through no fault of thier own. This seems bad to me, but interested in others' thoughts.
Statistical discrimination can be a life saver. Think of the black cabbie looking for custom in the middle of the night. If four noisy black youths dressed like they just came out of prison flag him down, he will not stop to pick them up. He's not stupid. That ain't racism.
Instead, it gives the individuals selected against incentives to alter their behavior.
SInce you asked. Yes, such bias is unfair to individuals but can be efficient for employers. If I'm unsure whether to hire you but you appear to be a member of a group that tends to be bad employees, it can be efficient to not investigate further.
But this is true for everyone - no matter who you are, there's somebody out there who doesn't like people like *you*. You're ugly, you're old, you're short, you look too much like my ex-wife, you went to the university that is the football rival of my own alma mater, etc. It's not clear (to me anyway) that there is or should be anything special about being a member of a government-designated "loser group" (blacks, gays, whatever). Or that government should put a thumb on the scale for some politically-organized groups but not others.
When somebody doesn't want to hire us (or rent to us or whatever) we need to go find somebody else who does. Sure, their reasons may be unfair to you as an individual, but every reason can be unfair to any individual. We can go find other people to trade with who like people like *us*.
Thank you for engaging with the premise of my question, you bring up some good points.
Old is already a protected group, so are also protected by the government.
Which university you graduated from is a choice, and (ideally) you were able to so because of your individial abilities, so this is different than race.
Short is not something you can do anything about, but either it's genuinely important for the job (in which case it's reasonable to consider) or it's not going to be a useful metric and will be punished by the market. The only way this would be akin to race in the same problematic way would be if it could be accurately used to predict something else at a group level (i.e. if it was statistically true that short people are, uh, ill-tempered or something, and a business wouldn't hire short people for thier customer service jobs). If I were short, I wouldn't want to be denied a position because they use that to assume I'm ill tempered, even if it were accurateat a group level. You are correct that current discrimination laws doesn't protect that and imo could be better in that way, but they're still better than nothing.
You are correct that you can always find someone who won't infer bad things about you based on aspects you can't change, I just think it's worth making an effort to try to not make people have to do that.
As a libertarian, I believe that there should be no discrimination laws. If you own a business, you should have the same rights as your employees and customers. That is to hire and fire and serve or not serve for whatever reason you choose. I also believe it would be stupid to do so because such non-economic decisions will likely destroy your business.
But that's the crux of this - you can't rely on racism being bad for business to eliminate it. what if it were a good economic decision at the level of an individual business to be racist? Are you comfortable allowing it?
I think in the long run you *can* rely on racism being bad business to eliminate it. If women do the same work for less pay, a smart business hires women - the same work gets done and it's cheaper. After a while this arbitrages such errors - businesses that indulge false ideas about people get worse employees or pay more than their competitors for labor. In the long run firms with less bias do better and grow more. And their punishment for choosing employees on an irrational behavior is just what it should be - they lose money vs. their competotors.
Are you comfortable “allowing” most NBA players to be black?
The question is not a rhetorical one unless you claim yours was.
Yes, the same as I would allow stupidity, gluttony, and lots of other things that I personally dislike.
For employment, while a few hardcore libertarians object to any anti-discrimination laws since they violate freedom of association, most are perfectly sympatico with MLK’s “judge not by the color of the skin, but the content of they character” formulation.
But quotas, and statistical disparate impact citations all libertarians oppose.
For sometimes different reasons. but disparate impact can most obviously be seen to be wrong given that following its logic would require a change to the composition of NBA basketball players.
I am gobsmacked at the number of people answering in this thread who repeatedly ignore the fact that judging people statistically is a collectivist behavior. When the statistical factor is such fictional nonsense as race, it is racism, *by definition*. Jim Crow mandated segregation was racist, school busing mandated integration was racist, mandated affirmative action is racist, mandated minority-owned business favoritism is racist.
And these comments go out of their way to step around their collectivist statistical racism using weasel words to sound more sciency, that the stereotypical KKK redneck of their fantasies would stare at slack-jawed in admiration.
People are individuals. Treating individuals per statistical correlations based on irrelevant poorly-defined characteristics like skin color is bigotry.
So by your definition making rational decisions on the basis of evidence is "racism".
Too many weasel words in that statement, and it's not an explicit question, so I'll answer a made-up question.
Q. Is it racism to make a decision based on race?
A. Yes.
I'm sure Jefferson Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda thought their racism was rational. But their decisions were based on race -- they were racist decisions.
As for "basis of evidence", I have no idea what you think that means. The evidence of skin color? The evidence of self-identification as black? Not pulling an answer out of a hat?
Throw those two together, and "rational decisions on the basis of evidence" means nothing.
> Too many weasel words in that statement,
You are in no position to complain about weasel words given that your comments on this topic consist of nothing but.
> Q. Is it racism to make a decision based on race?
> A. Yes.
So you don't dispute my claim that making rational decisions can be "racist".
> I'm sure Jefferson Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda thought their racism was rational.
I don't know whether it was or not, but at best your argument amounts to "sometimes people think they're rational when they aren't, therefore we should ditch rationality".
Oh, you’ve changed your claim, you dropped the meaningless “on the basis of evidence”. But you’ve still got that “rational” in there, and of course everyone thinks their own decisions are rational while the decisions they don’t like are not.
Let me know when you can come up with a universal objective definition of “rational”.
Heck, just let me know when you settled on one claim and don’t keep changing it.
> Oh, you’ve changed your claim, you dropped the meaningless “on the basis of evidence”.
It was assumed as be part of being rational.
> But you’ve still got that “rational” in there, and of course everyone thinks their own decisions are rational while the decisions they don’t like are not.
So are you going to go full post0moderist on me?
> Let me know when you can come up with a universal objective definition of “rational”.
"Rationality" is the process of seeking to make one's beliefs correspond to reality as accurately as possible.
There are in fact precise mathematical laws about how to go about doing this.
Here's a good introduction: https://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes
There's a lot more material available if you're interested.
"Treating individuals per statistical correlations based on characteristics like skin color is bigotry"
I think you're missing that we are in agreement here (i assume we also agree bigotry is wrong). The point I'm making is that you're taking it as a given that it's ineffective, and it seems highly unlikely that's true in all cases, and therefore the free market has no mechanism to prevent it.
No, I'm taking it as proven by you all's circumlocutious weasel words that you all know you are racist but pretending to be above the fray and merely making scientific observations.
Racism is collectivist. I never said collectivism isn't effective. It does very well at destroying economies and societies.
Not a libertarian (or anything else), just want to point out something about this topic.
You describe racial groups and what can be said about them via statistics. Any group of course will have its associated statistics, so depending on where you draw the line around a group, even with the most rigorous and honest accounting you can still make the statistics show anything you want on the group level. People are pretty obsessed with race even though it's a fuzzy-around-the-edges category, so you get a lot of statistical comparisons between racial groups.
The problem is this has no bearing on any individual interaction. Looking at someone, turning superficial clues about them into a conclusion about what race they are, and then making predictions about their behavior based on statistics you have heard about that racial group, is ontologically hazardous at best (downright crazy/evil at worst) but unfortunately a common part of our wiring.
Libertarianism's Achilles's heel is, in my opinion, its baked-in presumption that people make sense of and respond to their environment in a fundamentally rational/reasonable way. In reality most people don't most of the time. We are pulled around by both outside and inside strings, to which we are mostly oblivious, often helpless against even when we are aware of them.
I don't think anti-discrimination laws were enacted with this in mind, but knowing how irrational and full of false confidence people are tells me that anti-discrimination laws are probably a necessary thing in modern society.
“Libertarianism's Achilles's heel is, in my opinion, its baked-in presumption that people make sense of and respond to their environment in a fundamentally rational/reasonable way.”
This may be a true/fair claim; I’m not sure.
But the equivalent Achilles heel of all more interventionist approaches is the conceit that government will do better. Or even do better most of the time.
It’s like Churchill said about democracy: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
I agree that people make lousy decisions for bad reasons. A lot. But in the long run that has consequences - without any need for laws to enforce the consequences. If you don't hire people of type X, that lowers the demand for such people and their wages. Which gives your competitors an advantage (cheaper labor) if they DO hire type X. Irrational decision making has real economic costs, which influence which firms grow and survive. There's no need to government put a thumb on the scale - economics corrects for this automatically. People make all kinds of dumb decisions for all kinds of reasons - why pick on skin color, or sex, or whatever in particular? If such laws are a good idea, how about laws that make it illegal to prefer pretty people or tall ones or blonds?
"Looking at someone, turning superficial clues about them into a conclusion about what race they are, and then making predictions about their behavior based on statistics you have heard about that racial group, is ontologically hazardous at best (downright crazy/evil at worst)"
While in practice this is probably done poorly more often than not, the uncomfortable truth is that there's no reason this has to be ontologically hazardous, but i believe it is immoral regardless of whether real information can be gleaned from it
> Any group of course will have its associated statistics, so depending on where you draw the line around a group, even with the most rigorous and honest accounting you can still make the statistics show anything you want on the group level.
This reads like epistemological nihilism or an best radical skepticism.
You contradict your own racism. If they are "statistically less reliable, more inclined to steal from the business, etc", then how can it be "through no fault of thier own"? Are you arguing that reliability and thievery are genetic and should be ignored in the name of DEI or some State-defined "fairness"? Are you saying these people are irresponsible and should not be held responsible?
As Willy, son of Willy, surmised, I mean that there may be things true at a group level, but as an individual in a group you had no choice to be in, that is not your fault, and shouldn't be your problem.
Yeah, I think almost everything has some genetic component, and yeah, I think we should not infer things about people based on thier genes in the name of fairness, even though, statistically, there may be some information there.
I think the argument is that competent people are profiled and discriminated due to other members of their race being statistically less competent.
Yes, that's the argument. What's so special about race? Why privilege that characteristic for protection vs. the infinity of other ways people discriminate irrationally?
I long ago read about breeding animals, whether show dogs or milk cows, that you can only really select for one trait. You select for longer ears of fluffier fur or more milk? You lose control over everything else. The more traits you select for, the less control you have.
The same works for discrimination. The more you discriminate, the fewer choices you have. You want to favor blacks as part of your anti-racism racism? Good -- now tell me whether Obama is protected for his black father or rejected for his white mother. You want to protect trannies? Whoops, you just rejected women who don't like males in their locker rooms, and you rendered Title IX a nullity.
Bigotry is collectivism, and wrong for all the same reason socialism is wrong. It treats people as statistics and part of a group. not as individuals.
The only way to stop being racist is to stop paying attention to race.
Please explain how that "other members of their race being statistically less competent" is not of the same school of racism.
Racism is collectivism. Especially when the "race" in question is governed by the one drop rule: Obama is never described as white, always black, even though he has a black father and white mother. People with one black and 7 white ancestors are still described as black, not white.
Racism. Couching it as statistical doesn't hide the racism.
I don't understand your point. Statistical differences exist, it's not racism it's fact. I'm not saying anything essentialist about the cause of such differences only that they exist.
Treating people according to these statistics is collectivism and racism, which is my point.
I agree, it is racism. I'm just saying, in a world of incomplete information, it seems to me that racism could be rational for an individual business owner, yet still morally wrong. My position is, people shouldn't be judged for things they can't reasonably change, even if there is genuine group-level information to be gleaned from it. But I see no libertarian way to enforce this.
I think you are framing the issue incorrectly.
Competent people are profiled and discriminated due to our (all humans') natural tendency to not have complete information, to misinterpret that information, to be generally irrational, and to be unaware of how irrational and misinformed we are.
Someone could belong to a race of saints, and still other people will find or fabricate reasons to discriminate against that person, and they will be convinced they are acting based on sound statistical reasoning. Starting with the construct of that race in the first place.
Yes, it can be rational to profile, which is the point in the first place. Because it's rational, market will not solve this kind of discrimination. I'm not confident that the state will solve it either, at least not without worse side effects. But the point is that it's unjust to be judged by actions of others who look like you whether that judgement is rational and natural or not.
I agree the state (as always) is not going to be perfect in solving it. But at least it has a framework to try to that (i think) is a net positive
David,
You and I might never agree on government mandated building codes, but there is a libertarian solution: private property associations. I happen to live in such a community in central Ohio. My property owners association has existing rules (which may be amended democratically by a vote of the owners) which could regulate my home’s electrical wiring.
That is both libertarian and democratic, which is as far as I’m willing to go.
Just after WW II, when urban planning was all the rage in Britain, Hayek wrote words to the effect that externalities of the kind being discussed can be internalized by larger property holdings. The Associations you describe are one way of bringing that about.
Building codes can also be left to markets. Insurance companies won't insure shoddy or unsafe construction, and banks won't loan on shoddy collateral. Even people who buy a house with cash will want some kind of independent guarantee of its suitability.
Absolutely. I find this issue to be an academic matter, which is not to imply that the risk of gross negligence is zero; certainly not. Again, this is analogous to a drunk driver. We don’t need to outlaw alcohol or even drinking and driving. We need to prosecute drivers who act irresponsibly. There’s no policy that produces zero risk.
PS—I want to amend my last statement. The GOAT—Thomas Sowell—has written that while lowering speed limits to 5 mph would theoretically "eliminate" almost all traffic fatalities, it would impose massive economic and practical costs on society.
Your HOA can regulate stuff like what color you may paint your mailbox, but I doubt very much they can overrule your county's authority when it comes to wiring.
I happen to do electrical work in central Ohio. Various counties -- Franklin and surrounding -- have different standards, different inspectors known for different levels of meticulousness, etc. but it's the county-level inspectors who enforce the NEC. Sometimes you get lower level requirements like in particular buildings with special occupancies (hospitals, manufacturing, high-security, etc.) but residential is residential. Even permitted electrical work in a historic home is still governed by county-level electrical code, not by the historic architectural board or whatever. The historic architecture board might have something to say about what material I use to patch siding, but that is not a code matter.
I've never walked a job with someone from an HOA or condo board. Those people mainly just want to make sure of things like we didn't change the mailbox color.
I’m sure you’re probably right but I will tell you that our inspection showed many irregularities that we had to either accept or otherwise pass on buying this house.
Also, where I live (Apple Valley Lake in Howard) has houses that could not be built in New York or California because of zoning laws and other regulations.
When you say "our inspection" do you mean a home inspection, the sort you hire a home inspector to do while you are in contract? Or a code inspection where you have done permitted construction in the house and then an employee of the county whose title is Code Inspector comes out and meets you/the electrician at the house and passes or fails the work, typically with a punch list to make it right if the work fails?
Licensed home inspectors and official code inspectors have different standards and practices, are looking for different things, give different kinds of reports, and their reports carry different weights.
Unless the home inspector is also a licensed structural engineer and he/she has stated that some structural component needs to be remedied, a home inspection report does not contain any legally enforceable command that work needs to be done. It is an educational document for the prospective home buyer.
The former. And I do understand the difference. When we were in the process of selling our old house in NY we had an open permit on our water heater. So the guy comes and is happy with the work (I doubt he was a qualified expert but I digress); he then proceeds to “inspect” that we have the necessary fire alarms and CO sensors, which we didn’t (Why?—because “they” changed the rules and required every level to have a CO sensor). That almost killed our closing date which would have meant that our rate lock would need to be adjusted for a later date (this would have been a problem for our buyer as well). Again, we’re not talking about anything more than sticking hockey pucks on the ceilings and walls but the town inspector was available until he was good and ready to make himself available.
But I’m sure lives were saved so no big deal.
“One possible consequence of sufficiently bad wiring is for my house to catch fire and the fire to spread to neighboring houses, doing damage to my neighbors or their property for which I cannot compensate them.”
There’s also the issue of moral hazard. Fire fighting services are usually in effect subsidized insurance. People who have insurance act differently toward risk than those without. The provider of the subsidy is being reasonable if they require those receiving the subsidy to follow some guidelines. The incentives are being changed, and arguably the building codes reflect that. Insurance companies also put stipulations on policy holder behavior in their policies, the obvious difference being that we can switch insurers (if/when the regulators allow it).
I admit this factor may be small compared to the interest of neighbors in not having a huge fire hazard near them.
For some years I participated in an on-line discussion board of low level academics. [I joined for completely non-political reasons.] I soon learned that virtually all were dedicated self-interested left wingers with unsophisticated intellects. I objected here and there to many opinions, certainly economic opinions, explaining but trying hard to not sound preachy. It was not appreciated or even acknowledged except pejoratively. Staying in the fold was considered supremely important. Lumpen-Intelligentsia.
"These workers and activists also embody what Ortega y Gasset coined, in The Revolt of the Masses, the “mass man”, who he characterized by two fundamental traits, “The free expansion of his vital desires, and therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence” (Ortega y Gasset, 1957: p. 58)."
-- Theoretical Economics Letters > Vol.13 No.6, December 2023
Off-topic: something haywire with the formatting. The first few paragraphs before the first quote have both margins aligned, with lots of extraneous space padding between words. My eyes were really struggling for a few seconds.
Then after the quotes, suddenly only the left column was aligned and the right column was ragged. My eyes were happy again.
Fixed.
Interesting observation, as it blew right by me. I had to go back & look!
I only noticed because my eyes did not like reading it with all those spaces. I don't know why, maybe it's just old age :-)
This article is incredible naïve in its presumption that people's stated reason for supporting policies are their real reasons.
In the modern world of American politics, many do not understand the importance of prioritizing, or even how to prioritize, especially progressives.
https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/when-progressive-policy-priority
"Some of the legal requirements for rewiring my house can be defended only on the theory that state agents know my interest better than I do, a claim not likely to be persuasive to a libertarian"
There are many "state agents" involved, from the politician who supports enacting/enforcing the building code, to the industry expert who sits on the panel and contributes to a specific part of the code itself. And there are much, much more of the latter.
By "industry expert" I don't mean someone whose career has mostly been academic, I mean someone who spent decades working in a trade, (often) became a project manager or higher-up at a trades-related organization (e.g. a trades service company, a trades union, a manufacturer of something used in the trades, etc.), who has worked in hundreds or thousands of houses and seen all issues imaginable.
Such a person knows ways that your house can burn, fall down, flood, etc. that never occurred to you ("you" being the vast majority of homeowners in this case). If this person and you were standing shoulder to shoulder, both supervising work being done in your house, this person would be able to spot errors and problems way better than you would.
Yes, you may "know your interest" better than this person, but this person has either been assigned or voluntarily taken on an interest in it being done right as well, and combined with their experience that is not to be so easily discounted.
There can be some debate over the extent to which building codes have reduced incidences of houses burning down or falling down or whatever, but I think it's pretty clear they have done so considerably. If the cost has been housing being more expensive, that is bad, but clearly housing is still affordable enough to be built en masse. All around me each summer cornfields are converted to housing, whole neighborhoods at a time, and someone is buying and moving in. You can say it'd be better if there was more mixed development, more availability of a range of housing options to suit a range of budgets, but the existence and enforcement of building codes doesn't seem to be the issue.
So I guess I just don't understand the libertarian objection except as some abstract principle. How does it withstand reality?
I have built and wired a couple of houses in the Bahamas. They follow Canadian wiring code (I'm Canadian). While they do house wiring inspections, if you are doing it in your own house, they are considerably less diligent, presumably you want it done right if you are going to live in it. Now I will say, that since the code changes almost annually, I feel there are some things that have been added that are stretching the idea that it's done for "safety". It seems to me just a kinda "gotcha" for electricians who don't keep up to date.
In the US at least, the National Electric Code is updated every 3 years. I think I've said before, yes, if you squint, some questionable interests seem to leak into the code from time to time. But that doesn't nullify the arguments for the code's benefit.
The question is whether it should be mandatory.
I think it's the least bad politically probable outcome. There's probably some American states which can more securely just have a fairly low minimum wage, but I think chances are low in Canada and about 2/3rds of the US.
I think you're right that there is the risk is that it becomes even easier to raise the effective minimum by adding to the EITC and it becomes quite distortionary. However I get the feeling that people will be less willing to raise the credit via their own taxes than the minimum wage via their imagined free pot of excess profits, so it may be surprisingly limited. The existing situation is distortionary, and negative for entry level employment levels, while I think potentially higher effective minimums with lower direct employer costs would be a lesser problem.
I've been thinking about a type of market-oriented policy designed to displace more traditional left-wing policy. Minimum wage may be the classic example.
It's not very effective to not have a fairly high minimum wage, because you lose votes and it's more harmful when somebody else is elected who suddenly raises it by $5.
So in the Canadian context I plan to propose to conservative parties that they replace future raises in the minimum wage with earned income tax credits. Remarkably our minimum wages are pretty level across provinces, and have risen by 40% adjusted for inflation since 2005, despite two provinces having a strong streak of more conservative classic liberal parties. But including participation rate youth unemployment is, I believe, at a 50-year high, so the justification for doing something different is quite strong now.
In my case I'm thinking more about attracting young voters who have been presented with positive attitudes towards socialism, and synthesizing a type of market-friendly politics that still is quite appealing to them. This may be pretty similar overall to libertarian and abundance liberal policy fusions.
Yes that would be better than the status quo. Not ideal, but an improvement.
The minimum wage is not market friendly. It is anti-market. It creates fewer employment hours, especially fewer youth employment hours.
One can generate one's own domestic youth revolution. See France, with a youth unemployment rate of over 20% at present.
I suppose it's OK to have a high minimum wage in Canada and California. The unemployed youth can migrate to the rest of the United States.
Grok says 40 to 50% of US states have similar minimum wages as Canada. I think the "just have low minimum wages" strategy really only works in about a quarter of the US. I expect it works quite well there, but I think it makes sense to be tactical everywhere else
Here's a comparison of youth unemployment rates with minimum wage rates by state:
https://minimumwage.com/2023/04/new-data-high-wage-states-top-the-list-of-state-teen-unemployment-rates/
No surprise about the direction of association. In lieu of fancy econometrics, do look at the outlier on the graph, Washington, DC!
What struck me about your original post was the claim that real minimum wages in Canada had increased by 40% over some period. Now, there are minimum wage adjustments and there are minimum wage adjustments! In the US nominal minimum wages are reset from time to time. Between resettings you can inflate your way out of unemployment and you can grow your way out of unemployment. Indexing to inflation precludes the first path.
My favorite minimum wage institution is that of France, indexed to inflation and labor productivity growth. In addition the Assemblé National raises the minimum wage whenever it pleases. This tends to occur before elections. No surprise there, and no surprise youth unemployment is high and stays high.
Yeah and even in my province of Saskatchewan, with a more strongly conservative government, the minimum wage is indexed half to inflation and half to the average wage and about $11 USD. Which sounds great if you don't think about the effect on hiring. So I think the best we can do is keep it indexed, but provide the increase through tax credits
In the US raising the minimum wage goes through the sausage factory called the legislature, be it states' or the fed's. Usually there is some deal in which businesses, especially small businesses, are taxed less in some way. This does not reduce the incentive to shorten hours and substitute capital for labor. The minimum wage is poison, especially for youth.
“ I think the ‘just have low minimum wages’ strategy really only works in about a quarter of the US.
You are conflating “doesn’t cause all that much harm” with “works”.
Minimum wage laws cause harm to youth employment, especially those from less advantaged backgrounds.
When the minimum wage is set not far from where the lowest wages would be paid absent the law, then yes, it doesn’t do nearly as much harm as when it is set far above that level.
"... replace future raises in the minimum wage with earned income tax credits"
Have you thought through the incentives?
I understand the intent: if the public thinks (through their representatives) a minimum wage law is good, let the public pay the difference. It might even be fairer to shift the cost to those who think it is proper. But you always get more of what you subsidize, and that would be minimum wage earners.
Suppose the minimum wage is $10/hour. The local supermarket has ten baggers making minimum wage. Now you raise the minimum wage to $11/hour. The grocer's incentive is to leave their pay at $10 and let the taxpayers pick up the $1/hour difference.
He can also hire another bagger at $10/hour, paying him from the $10 he saved. Was that an intended effect?
I think of it as the best politically plausible outcome. A minimum wage already distorts the economy by reducing demand for minimum wage workers, and the effect reduces the employment prospects of entry-level workers.
A lower nominal minimum topped up by a larger EITC may be higher in total and distortionary as well but I think it's a less costly distortion.
It would be interesting to see some good studies of that, but defining "good" for such studies is probably harder than the studies themselves.
Abundance democrat here (or at least closer to that than libertarian). I think this is the best argument for minimum wage - in a society with a social safety net (and if you're against that, I'd be interested in how you propose to keep people from starving in the streets or stealing to survive, Le Mis style), a low enough wage will be subsidized by welfare, as described above, ultimately giving industry cheap, tax-subsidized labor, distorting the market.
Ummm.. a given level of welfare is in fact another way to generate an effective minimum wage without creating a minimum wage law, since citizens eligible for that welfare will not choose to work for hundreds or thousands of hours a year if they will have little to no additional income to show for it.
And in fact we have a welfare trap in this country because, while not 100%, marginal tax rates for those receiving various kinds of welfare are above 50% and in some cases a lot higher than that; occasionally 100%.
Why don't you try showing how people were actually dying in droves before government almighty stepped in to save the day? Do you know minimum wage laws were intended from the outset to keep blacks from being hired? It's in political speeches in Congress, on the record.
No, sorry, you'll have to find some other sucker who thinks you can be educated. Minimum wage laws have been debunked so often and so thoroughly that if you actually cared about such a discussion, you'd have googled the subject and educated yourself. I am not going to waste my time doing what has been done thousands of times by better writers than me.
As for a social safety net, same answer. How did society take care of its weak and disabled before government almighty stepped in to save the day? Here's a good starting point: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807848417, all about mutual aid societies, those guys with the funny hats and secret handshakes, and how medical cronies colluded with the government to derail private charity and medical care.
Or google for charity per nation. The last pre-COVID stats put the US first by a long shot, double and triple the next most charitable nation, and that's per capita, not absolute.
Statists like to say that asking charities for help is degrading. I'd rather ask local churches and other charities than sit in some sterile government office trying to convince a faceless bureaucrat to fork over money. The locals would at least care and try to help find a job or housing.
Yikes, so much for starting a dialogue...
In the past people certainly did often die of starvation or other cheaply avoidable reasons. I'm not sure what would happen today if we didn't have a social safety net, but i imagine it would be more of the same, likely on a smaller scale, but not zero. My goal is to prevent that in a cost-effective way, which is believe is best accomplished some kind of social safety net. Mutual aid societies by definition are going to exclude some people, some through no fault of thier own (what if they can't afford the dues to begin with).
You say minimum wage laws have been debunked, but I think what you mean is that they cause higher unemployment rates. I don't necessarily see that as an issue. Right now there are 6 million people who work full time jobs who are also on food stamps, so the situation you outline where taxpayers are subsidizing companies to pay minimum wage is already occurring. A minimum wage that precludes people working full time jobs from needing welfare forces companies to put up or shut up - pay people what they need to live, or don't get the benefit of thier labor.
This isn't a strongly-held belief of mine, maybe in practice we're better off subsidizing wages than giving more people welfare when they can't get jobs. But just a different way to think about the utility of minimum wage - keeps companies honest.