Supporters of minimum wage laws are often hopelessly illiterate regarding basic laws of economics. In recent election cycles, however, advocates of minimum-wage hikes have won some huge “victories” in such cities as Seattle and San Francisco. The Seattle City Council, for example, imposed a $15-per-hour minimum wage on all employers in the city last year. …
Category: Government’s War on the Poor
Sep 08
Wages have nothing to do with miserliness or generosity
The brilliant economist John C. Goodman is out with another brilliant column. This one about the foolishness of minimum wage laws. See here. : To summarize: a firm that pays workers more than they are worth cannot survive because it cannot match the prices and the rate of return to investors of its rivals. A …
Sep 05
“Disability” Checks Now Sustain 11 Million Americans
There are roughly 300 million Americans. Some 100 million of those are children or retirees. Of the remaining roughly-200 million eligible workers, MORE THAN 5 PERCENT claim to be “disabled” and unable to work. They generally draw monthly “disability” checks for life. The “labor participation rate” is now near an historic low. See here. The …
Aug 15
New Study: For Every New Dollar a College Receives in Student Loans, a College Raises its Tuition by 65 Cents
We all know that the Federal Student Loan Program has driven up college tuition costs because the Program subsidizes artificial demand. Now a New York Fed study has found that: for every new dollar a college receives in Direct Subsidized Loans, a school raises its price by 65 cents. For every dollar in Pell Grants, …
Aug 13
Upcoming Courses for August 2015
Lysander Spooner University will be offering a one-day course on “How Government Harms the Poor” at the Manhattan, Montana Potato Festival on Saturday, August 15. Tuition is free; the exam is $5. Find us at the Libertarian Party table at the Festival. Every government measure aimed at helping the poor actually harms the poor. Consider …
Aug 03
Today’s college students pay more than 1,000 percent more for textbooks than their predecessors, almost entirely due to the Government’s student loan program
Today’s incoming college freshmen will be paying 1,041 percent more for their textbooks than their peers did in 1977. This is while the actual value and costs of books have been declining for years. The free market has been making books cheaper; yet college students are forced to pay ever-more. Why? Because of the Federal …
Jul 31
Government scrambles to protect its vast stupid regulatory schemes from the threat of Uber
To operate a taxi cab business is to navigate through one of the most over-regulated industries in the world. But the actual act of cab-driving is relatively simple, and poor people of limited means should be able to participate and enter the market. This disconnect is caused by decades of stupid overregulation of the taxi …
Jul 28
New study shows recent minimum-wage hikes have caused the loss of 700,000 jobs
More than a hundred peer-reviewed economic studies have established that raising (or imposing) a minimum wage is correlated with increased unemployment. The only studies purporting to show otherwise are those that occurred in unusual economic circumstances (such as in a “boom-town” situation where wages were naturally rising rapidly anyway). The strong correlation between minimum-wage laws …
Jul 17
Report: Student Loan Program has Drastically Increased Tuition Costs while LOWERING the Proportion of Poor People in College.
Imagine a government program that achieves THE VERY OPPOSITE result of its intentions. This is the truth about every large government program. Social Security has impoverished seniors (and America) and transferred vast sums from poor people to rich people. See here, here, and here. Minimum wage laws increase unemployment and greatly harm poor people. See …
Jul 11
U.S. Debt will Soon be more than 100 Percent of annual GDP, Official Warns
The U.S. national debt is now so large that it constitutes 74 percent of America’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Not since World War II has this percentage been so high. And today’s debt is not so much the product of a worldwide war but of the constant deficit spending required to pay for American …
