What is "Poverty"?
Perhaps the single greatest fallacy in modern liberal theory is the fiction of “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.”
It is the basis for, among other things, the current push for local minimum living wages, since Congress has been (properly) uninterested in raising the archaic federal minimum wage for several years now.
Some hasty stitches about minimum living wages:
–Hardly anybody actually earns that little. Even the New York Times Magazine piece acknowledges that it might be, at most, three percent of the workforce.
–Even fewer, somewhere in the neighborhood of zero, people actually work full-time for minimum wage as their sole source of income. The minimum wage is mostly a phenomenon seen only among high school students and fresh-off-the-plane immigrants. This is, literally, much ado about nothing.
–It is better to be employed at the federal minimum wage than unemployed at a higher local “living wage.”
–The better policy question to ask is not “How can people be expected to survive on so little?” but rather “How bad a failure must our schools and job training programs be if they produce people who are so ultra-unskilled that they cannot command a higher wage?”
–”Poverty” is, at best, a relative concept:
[N]early 13% of Americans have incomes that place them below the official poverty line. But what does that mean in terms of their daily lives? The fact that 95% of them may have a refrigerator tells only part of the story.The Census report also compares, from 1992 through 1998, people’s perceptions of whether basic needs were being met. More than 92% of Americans below the poverty line said they had enough food, as of 1998. Some 86% said they had no unmet need for a doctor, 89% had no roof leaks, and 87% said they had no unpaid rent or mortgage.
…
Two-thirds of those in poverty had air conditioners in 1998, up from 50% in 1992. Personal computers have grown increasingly ubiquitous. Where fewer than 20% of homes had them in 1992, nearly 60% did in 2002 (more than own dishwashers).
The minimum wage merely redistributes jobs (after destroying some in the process) among those whom the law is supposed to help. It violates the most basic laws of elementary economics, if not the most basic laws of politics.
Which is precisely why the two should be kept as far apart as possible.
Similar Posts:
- Minimum Wage Hyperbole of the Day
- On the Poor and Housing Costs
- An Econ 101 Moment
- Behold American “Poverty”
- More on the Deductibility of State & Local Taxes
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Re: "liberal theory"… American intellectuals really dropped the ball on that one, didn't you? (Sorry, slightly off-topic rant). In Europe, liberal means "classical liberal", in other words, libertarian light. Leftists have to call themselves "Socialists", "Social-Democrats" and so on… it's much more clear who the minion of Marx are
[Kip replies: To quote Ferris Bueller -- "I mean really, what's the point? I'm not European, I don't plan on being European. So who gives a crap if they're socialists? They could be fascist-anarchists for all I care..."]
Re: minimum wage… the emperor has no clothes but no one except in certain circles will come out and say it. As long as the bulk of voters might be impressed by it, it's going to say.
Re: poverty line… this concern cannot be taken outside the criminal mindset of wealth egalitarianism (not equal treatment in front of the law, as it would be decent, but rather equal wealth). Some people will cry fault in all situations other than complete equality, all other considerations be damned.