Beginning April 1, the minimum wage for employees working in California’s fast food chains and health care industries will rise to $20 per hour and, in some cases, up to $23 per hour. Many employers managing independent restaurants, retail, and other industries will have to match the higher hourly rate to retain employees. And for hourly employees whose wages are indexed to the minimum wage, mostly in California’s unionized public sector, wages will rise proportionately.
There is no national consensus on the impact of minimum-wage laws. It is part of a much larger debate over what constitutes an optimal economic environment to enable, quoting from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “economic security and independence.”
In January 1944, in his State of the Union address, Roosevelt enumerated what has since been referred to as a “Second Bill of Rights.” Here it is:
1 – The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
2 – The right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing and recreation;
3 – The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
4 – The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
5 – The right of every family to a decent home;
6 – The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
7 – The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents, and unemployment;
8 – The right to a good education.
For the American Left, this list hasn’t changed much over the past 80 years. From the Democratic Socialists, we have this 2012 list “A Social and Economic Bill of Rights.” From Bernie Sanders a few years ago, we have the following “21st Century Economic Bill of Rights.” An even more contemporary wish list comes from current presidential candidate, Democrat Marianne Williamson’s “Social and Economic Bill of Rights.”
The common thread in all these lists is the assumption that the government can make all of this happen. That hasn’t worked out in practice. Along the way towards fulfilling these objectives, rising government taxes and regulations managed to alienate a sufficient number of voters to prevent their achievement. And if history is any guide, every time governments seize sufficient power to reach for the quasi-utopian dream that socialists share, the dream has turned into a bloody nightmare. So what can be done?
In 1987, towards the end of his two-term presidency, at an Independence Day celebration at the Jefferson Memorial, Ronald Reagan unveiled his own version of “America’s Economic Bill of Rights.” Here it is:
1 – The freedom to work.
2 – The freedom to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor.
3 – The freedom to own and control one’s property.
4 – The freedom to participate in a free market.
It isn’t a puzzle to recognize the difference in emphasis between Reagan’s Bill of Rights, which enumerates freedom from government, and Roosevelt’s version, which requires massive government programs.
In California, the Democratic state legislature has attempted to enforce Roosevelt’s first two “rights,” the right to a “remunerative job” and the right to “earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation,” by raising the minimum wage to more than twice the federal standard.
Doing this, of course, will eliminate jobs and increase the cost of living. Companies will either fold, cut jobs, or raise prices. Government agencies, already struggling with deficits, will have to contend with elevated payroll costs triggered by the minimum wage hike. All this means the recipients of pay increases will at best break even as they pay higher prices and higher taxes.
All this begs the question: If we agree on Roosevelt’s desired outcome and Reagan’s desired means, what government policies might achieve both? For nearly all of the outcomes on Roosevelt’s list, there is one economic variable that exercises a decisive influence: affordability. In Reagan’s estimation, the surest guarantee of affordability is to rely on the private sector.
Robert Reich, whose economic philosophy in general is a quintessential leftist blend of naivete, pandering opportunism, and big state solutions that will create more problems than they solve, does get some things right. He is quoted on the website “InequalityMedia.org,” which he co-founded, as saying, “In America, it’s expensive just to be alive.” He is correct. After listing a daunting number of reasons for this, mostly accurately, he goes on to state, “Jobs, the stock market, the GDP—don’t show how our economy is really doing, who is doing well, or the quality of our lives.”
Again, correct. And he’s on a roll. There’s more. Reich proceeds to describe how corporations are monopolizing their markets and how wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the richest one-tenth of one percent. All true. But Reich’s solution, along with most of the American Left, is to blame corporations, impose more taxes and regulations on them, and use that to grow government.
It doesn’t work. Corporations pass the costs on to consumers, making life even more unaffordable, while the higher taxes and regulations eliminate smaller corporations, which prevents them from growing and forcing monopoly corporations to compete with them. The answer from the Left grows government at the same time as it further centralizes private wealth, which in both cases breeds greater inefficiency. That is why corporations in America today overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party, and it is why most Republicans are RINOs. They all follow the money, and the smart money knows that leftist rhetoric and leftist policies make them richer and stronger.
Ironically, it is America in the 1930s during FDR’s presidency and California in the 1960s when Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (Jerry Brown’s father) was governor that provide clues to how affordability can best be achieved through government policies. While there is plenty to criticize in both administrations, they both did something of surpassing, multi-generational benefit. They built infrastructure. Not nonsensical, pointless infrastructure. Actual practical public works that yield economic benefits to this day.
Between 1933 and 1939, FDR’s Public Works Administration built educational buildings, courthouses, city halls, sewage treatment plants, hospitals, roads, bridges, subways, dams, aqueducts, and rural electrification, among other things. To this day, Americans still use these public assets. Between 1959 and 1967, Pat Brown expanded the state’s public works projects to build new colleges and universities, freeways and expressways, and the California Water Project, which remains the most extensive system of water storage and distribution in the world. And to this day, Californians still benefit from these public assets.
Times are very different now. The consensus among America’s elite—with California driving the bandwagon—is that the state has grown quite enough, at the same time as literally everything affecting land development, land management, or energy and water policy has to be evaluated through the filter of the climate crisis. Hence “renewables” to the exclusion of clean, ultra-efficient, advanced natural gas power. Hence water rationing instead of investment in practical water supply infrastructure. Hence trains, light rail, and high-density housing instead of new roads and new suburbs. No wonder everything costs so much.
The paradox in all this is how the result is counter to all the human values that American culture purports to cherish. We need extensive infrastructure because it fosters private sector freedom and growth. When the public subsidizes energy and water infrastructure and deregulates land development, ownership is decentralized. When infrastructure is inadequate and prices soar, the only winners are corporations and rentiers, who invest in artificially inflated assets and artificially overvalued commodities, making excessive profits as consumers struggle.
The formula for economic security and independence for American citizens is not more regulations, more taxes, and more government. The irony that Leftists must face is that more regulations benefit corporate monopolies and stifle competition, and without competition between private corporations, the cost of living increases at a rate that can’t possibly be mitigated by government benefits and subsidies to households.
Similarly, right-of-center critics of big government must distinguish between obvious wasteful spending based on fraudulent premises versus the government sharing the burden of construction costs for infrastructure assets that will yield economic dividends for generations. It isn’t enough to fight against the waste. It is necessary to correctly identify the investments we need in sensible infrastructure and fight for them.
There is a compelling libertarian argument in favor of government spending on infrastructure that provides clear and long-term benefits instead of a permanent drain. When federal and state governments fail to invest on the front end to make life’s essentials within the reach of ordinary households, they will end up spending more public money merely to subsidize, in perpetuity, those millions of low- and lower-middle-income households who can’t pay their rent or their mortgage.
An economic bill of rights for Americans today might include the following: the government will invest in infrastructure that lowers the cost of living, and it will deregulate essential industries to ensure competition between large and small corporations.
As much as I admire Ring’s highly creative approach to solving problems, he begins mid-stream, never discussing the reasons for instituting/resurrecting infrastructure programs in the first place. It seems this assumption exists in America, and one I sincerely hope we can shake loose from popular opinion, that America exists to take in all excess population in the world, especially the impoverished failures of other countries. At this stage of the republic in decline, nothing could be more damaging than the continued importation of millions upon millions of poor, uneducated, unskilled foreigners or even skilled, educated foreigners with no particular allegiance to the United States or worse, divided loyalties. Extraction migration damages the U.S. as well as originating countries, yet that is the official stance of our government and Big Corporate, which partner to create and implement federal immigration policy without any input from existing citizens.
An excess supply of labor accounts for low wages and that is what Democrat-Socialists attempt to solve with gubmint programs and mandates. Immigration alone is responsible for adding millions to the supply side. If the U.S. has a goal of increasing wages, it must reduce the supply of labor. The solution is simple: halt immigration and deport all illegal aliens in the country, eliminate “guest” worker visa categories and make all non-immigrant visa holders ineligible for any change of status. Reducing labor supply increases wages and the United States accomplished this in 1924 under Coolidge. This solution has yet to be tried during my lifetime. Rapid, unchecked foreign population growth is due to mass, uncontrolled immigration and its highly deleterious impact on wages is no mystery. So, why does Ring act as though we ought to ignore the main driver of low wages? Why else would we need infrastructure programs? Tens of millions of foreigners have descended upon the U.S. over the past 30+ years, and Biden’s policies only exacerbate that situation. Most cannot and have no desire to assimilate, work or demonstrate any respect for our history or culture. The result is hundreds of colonies throughout the United States with no connection to the country other than work. Finding work has never been a reason to allow foreigners into the country or allow them to remain in the country.
In 1926 the U.S. paused immigration. Suddenly, wages went up, blacks flourished and that single action allowed for energy and resources to be directed towards assimilation. It is also worth noting that fully one-third of legal immigrants during that time returned to their country of origin. Imagine how much more damage the Great Depression would have inflicted on Americans and quasi-Americans (my term for partially-assimilated millions of immigrants from the Great Wave of the late 19th, early 20th century) had Coolidge not signed The Johnson-Reed Act?
I am increasingly alarmed that make-work programs and their sponsors never address the reasons for the needed infrastructure programs: mass, uncontrolled immigration. There exists a body of evidence that the majority of arrivals utilize welfare and other government programs, and that includes both legal immigrants and illegally-present foreign citizens. On balance, recent “immigrants” have not “contributed” to the country. In fact, it indicates the opposite of what Americans believe: immigration has damaged the country, its prosperity, and what citizens have a right to expect from their country.
Sadly, the true solution to this infrastructure crisis is to deport millions who do not belong here and have entered and resided in violation of our laws, or who entered on a temporary basis and have no right to remain indefinitely. It’s time to right-size our population and preserve and enhance resources which rightly belong only to citizens.
You lost me at deregulating land development. I live in an area that is growing fast because of flight from CA, WA State, and OR. Our way of life is being forever altered because of bad policies several States away. We would appreciate regulations tamping down rapid development. Former CA residents enjoying the benefits of policies we painstakingly adhered to for generations isn’t the highest for us. We want a say in how our community develops moving forward. Land developers jump in, build, make their profit and leave, forever. You make a persuasive argument on economic principles, but without paying attention to actual human needs, misery can follow.
Ayn Rand commented on the very FDR ‘Bill of Economic Rights’ decades ago with a criticism that is as applicable today as it was then.
"A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear: At whose expense?
Jobs, food clothing, recreation (!), homes, medical care, education, etc. do not grow in nature. These are man-made values-goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them?
If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessities the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, and unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”"
Rand is not speaking of public projects. She certainly had issues with those as well. If you understand what she is implying and then have a look at the Nazi socialist planks you would have a hard time not seeing familiarity. The Nazis were not Republicans or right wing in any way. They were, as one German said… “Monster socialists”.
The bulk of the federal laws created to deal with immigration are outside the powers given to the legislature under Article I, Section 8. Furthermore such rulings ignore property rights that the Declaration of Independence referred to. Jefferson understood that private property and individual liberty were inseparable and he made that clear when he substituted the “pursuit of property” to read the “pursuit of happiness” which catches that which is similar that may otherwise have been missed.
Madison made that clear when the Congress wanted to help destitute French Haitian immigrants when he replied “that he could not put his finger on any place in this document (Constitution) that allowed them to do acts of benevolence”.
Hi Task,
2 thoughts, one man’s right is the other man’s obligation. Socialists declare the law of gravity void on the 10th floor balcony, so far so good at the 8th and “they just didn’t give us time enough” at the 2nd”.
dickr