Warren Buffett Knows Minimum Wage Hurts Workers

by Chris Matthews.    Billionaire suggests education instead. Warren Buffett is a favorite of the American left for his support of such policies as higher taxes on the rich and healthcare reform. But advocates for workers rights may be a little less pleased with the billionaire investor after he published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Friday, decrying   ... MORE

VIDEO: Walter Block - Understanding Minimum Wage

Thomas Sowell: Ruinous 'Compassion'

Killing jobs with kindness.      It is fascinating to see brilliant people belatedly discover the obvious — and to see an even larger number of brilliant people never discover the obvious. A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland's Chinatown have closed after the city's minimum      ... MORE

Seattle Restaurants Closing Ahead Of $15 Minimum Wage

“It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.”   Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date approaches, restaurants across the city are making the financial decision to close shop. The Washington Policy Center writes that “closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen     ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Minimum Wage Exploitation

Businesses Find Ways To Cope With Minimum Wage Hikes

by Chris Kirkham.    Low-skill workers, consumers pay the price. When the minimum wage in San Jose went from $8 to $10 an hour in 2013, Adolfo Gomez started sending kitchen staff at his Mexican restaurant home early. His mother and brother handled the extra work. In Albuquerque, Myra Ghattas told cooks and hostesses to come in later when the  ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Fairness And Justice

What you need to know about them.     Oxfam reports that the richest 1 percent of people in the world own 48 percent of the world's wealth. Many claim that we should be alarmed by income inequality because it hampers upward mobility. Others argue that because income is distributed so unevenly, justice and fairness require income     ... MORE

VIDEO: Walter E Williams - Effects Of Minimum Wage

Study Finds Local Taxes Hit Lower Wage Earners Harder

by Patricia Cohen.   When it comes to the taxes closest to home, the less you earn, the harder you’re hit. That is the conclusion of an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that evaluates the local tax burden in every state, from Washington, labeled the most regressive, to Delaware, ranked as the fairest of them all. According to the  ... MORE

Keith Weiner: The Doctor-Laborer Inversion

Clear thinking on minimum wage.  The battle over minimum wage is raging. Emotions are running hot. Some cities are setting the bar very high. For example, Seattle is mandating a $15/hour wage. Economically, the issue is very simple. Minimum wage laws do not raise anyone’s wage. This is because it’s not sustainable to overpay.  Suppose you run  ... MORE

Minimum Skills Translate To A Minimum Wage

by Abdul-Hakim Shabazz.  Whenever I read an article about fast-food workers demanding $15 an hour I have to double check and make sure I am not getting my news from the Onion or some other satirical website. You’ve seen the headlines as of late. A group of low-skilled, usually low-educated, workers are demanding $15 an hour just   ... MORE

Eli Lehrer: Hiking the Minimum Wage Won't Help the Poor

Doing more harm than good.    The ground has been shifting in the battle over the minimum wage. With President Obama's proposal to hike the national minimum from $7.25 to $9 an hour stalled in Congress, local labor activists have been aiming even higher, getting behind a vastly higher minimum wage of $15 an hour. The proposals are    ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Mob Rule Economics

Maybe low-paying jobs are better than none at all.    While we talk about democracy and equal rights, we seem increasingly to let both private and government decisions be determined by mob rule. There is nothing democratic about mob rule. It means that some people's votes are to be overruled by other people's disruptions, harassment    ... MORE

IBD: The Worst Job Stat Continues To Get Even Worse

by Jed Graham. Amid all the focus on boosting the minimum wage and legislating living wages, virtually no one seems to have noticed what is happening to the workweek in low-wage industries. 

Since December 2012, private industries paying up to about $14.50 an hour have added, on net, 972,000 nonsupervisory jobs with an average workweek of a mere 17.7 hours, an IBD analysis finds. 

That doesn't mean new employees are being hired for such few hours. Rather, it reflects a combination of reduced hours in existing jobs and   ... MORE

When It’s Easier To Pay No Wages Rather Than A Minimum

by Tyler Durden.   As of today there is no hotter subject following on the heels of Obama-Care than the current fight brewing in the minimum wage debate. Regardless of which side of the aisle (or counter) you’re on, the argument as to demand a government regulated hike of upwards of 50% or more in some places puts a question squarely on the     ... MORE

An Act To Reduce Opportunity For The Most Vulnerable

by Thomas Sherrer.     Minimum wage kicks low-skill workers to the curb. Wildfires aren’t the only things spreading rapidly in this California drought; the desire to increase minimum wages along the West Coast apparently burns equally as hot. California’s minimum wage recently increased to $9 an hour giving Golden State workers the fourth   ... MORE

Keep Them Down, Keep Them Dependent

How to prevent the young and poor from succeeding.   Let’s face it. I’m not that young anymore. I’m also not poor anymore, and I live a comfortable middle-class American life. Most older, better off middle-classers like me got where we are through the dynamic market process. The trouble is, now that we’re doing pretty well, that same     ... MORE

Peter Morici: The Real Unemployment Rate Is At Least 18%

Dismal future for low-skill workers. Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report the economy added 235,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate remained steady at 6.1 percent, but that hardly tells the story. The jobless rate may be down from its recession peak of 10 percent, but much of this results from adults, discouraged by    ... MORE

How Minimum Wage Laws Promote Racial Discrimination

by Gary North.       It was over 40 years ago that I first heard Walter Williams speak at a conference. Anyway, I think it was over 40 years ago. It could not have been less. He and I were on what speakers call the rubber-chicken circuit as early as 1974. We spoke to high school teachers in a program sponsored by the intercollegiate Studies Institute,   ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - No Possible Employer