Trying to Explain Why the $15/hour Wage Mandate Is Bad Economic and Social Policy

 Amici,

I have a Left aquaintance who writes me often and I sometimes try (and of course fail) to make her understand why Leftist policies don't work. The following is an example. "E" sent me a Leftist article on how evil Walmart is for opposing the proposed $15/hour minimum wage. I wrote:

Long sigh, long eye-role.

Well, E, on the one hand I have no brief to defend the Waltons, as they made their money both selling cheap Chinese junk (nicknacks, not boats:) and thereby putting Mom-Pop stores out of business all across the U.S. A nation without small shop keepers is easily dominated by authoritarians. The Kaiser disparaged the English by calling them a nation of small shop keepers. Unbeknownst to that fool, it was, in fact, a compliment.

However, only people who have NO economic sense promote a $15/hour wage, as it would put tens of thousands OUT of work because their employers simply can't afford it. (This is already happened wherever it has been employed.) Wage levels are driven by market forces, not imperial fiat.

It's an insane idea by ideologues who do not understand economics, the labor market, or anything practicable. Bernie Sanders never worked an honest day labor in his life, and was in all aspects an actual bum until he got into politics. Then he sold out to Obama and then he caved to whoever is running the Biden facade. He's a putz. Anyway, the idea is classic Marxist Academic Idealism that has never worked in "the real world".

I don't expect you to comprehend this, as one has to know economics. If employers are forced to pay more for basic labor, they'll fire the basic labor. If the employers try to pass on the artificial pay raise to their customers, their customers won't by their products, thus putting the employers out of business. Government ordering of artificial wages also helps to create inflation, where one's dollar (or Euro or whatever) is worth less than it was before.

HOWEVER, even YOU can see the validity of the following question: where is the sense of bringing in 100s of 1000s of Meso-American peasants into the U.S. who don't even have an 8th-grade education in their own countries (and no English) when artificially jacking up low-income wages via a $15/hour wage mandate? They're mostly unemployable to begin with, at least in a first-world high-tech nation, but to the extent they are possibly employable, Biden handlers seem to want to put Americas OUT of employment because the U.S. people who would lose jobs to these invaders are precisely themselves Black and Latino.

That's why Trump got more Black and Latino votes than anyone in history.

But I assume you just can't comprehend any of this.

An P