The foolishness of liberals knows no bounds; it destroys what it pretends to build up and hurts those it tries to protect. With total disregard for time tested principles and common sense they plunge forward with nothing more than idealism and dreams to go by. In there wake lies broken bodies, shattered lives and economic desolation. Oblivious to the consequences of their actions, and no matter how often they fail, the results are never so bad that they will forgo trying do it all over again.

This tendency is never more apparent than when it comes to the Living Wage. The fantasy of all fantasies it tries to alleviate poverty by simply and arbitrarily raising peoples wages. The Living Wage is a belief that every person, no matter their situation, should be able to support a family on what they make irregardless of what that occupation is.  To accomplish such a feat they believe all that is needed is to raise the minimum wage to some amount that seems to meet such criteria.

Of course if that is the answer to poverty it must also be the answer to income inequality as well. Why stop with a Living Wage, just dictate everyone should be paid a million a year and everyone will be rich. Even the Living Wage proponents recognize such a proposal is nonsense but in reality it is no more nonsense than what they want to implement. To say wages should not be connected to productivity is foolish. The only difference between the two proposals is the extent to which their logic is applied. It is just that the more you follow their absurd logic the more evident the absurdity becomes.

The city of Washington DC found this out when it decided to pass an ordinance that would force Walmart to pay what they determined was a Living Wage. Walmart balked and hundreds of jobs were lost. They thought they could legislate higher wages with no regard as to whether the positions justified it. Walmart, being a business, decided it was not in their interest to build stores that would have to operate at a loss. Something that seem to shock the city council.

The ignorance that permeates the minds of liberals on all matters economic starts with the term labor. They see work as work, the pay scale that separates one person’s labor from another is somehow reached arbitrarily in their minds. The fact is wages are not paid for labor but for applied skills and knowledge. The amount of wealth any particular set of applied skills and knowledge creates or helps sustain sets the upper limit of what a person can be paid. The number of people possessing the necessary skills and knowledge compared to how many is needed sets the wage. No matter what, the wage can’t exceed the upper limit of wealth a particular set of applied skills and knowledge can produce.

When people try to push wages up artificially they create situations where some jobs are no longer viable. Employers must find a way to make do with less people, move to where wages are lower or go out of business. In the case of DC Walmart stores, they will build on the outskirts of the city instead of in it. That is fine for Walmart but stores without such an option simply do not survive. One can suppose that as incomes drop due to a lack of jobs and desperation grows the DC city council can take consolation in the fact they meant well.

Liberals, as the economist Milton Friedman liked to say, want desperately to be judged “by their good intentions.” They never question their belief that they can alleviate evil as they see it by passing magical laws or recanting catchy slogans. It seems the liberal magic wand never runs out of magic in their eyes. They wave it at poverty, homelessness and economic inequality with full faith it will work its magic. When it inevitably fails they figure they did not wag it fast enough or hard enough and try it over and over again. Given such a history it is unlikely the esteemed gentlemen of the DC city council will learn anything from their tomfoolery.

The liberal mind is filled with idealism but void of depth. Like a witch doctor dancing to expel the spirit that gave his patient the flu, they have no comprehension of what causes things to happen nor any interest in finding out. Artificial wage controls like the Living Wage and the minimum wage do far more harm then good. The facts and studies that prove it could fill a room but facts are of no use to minds for whom intent is all that matters.

“The Conservative Mind”

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