I've experienced both sides of minimum wage and labor "exploitation."I started working for wages when I was six years old.
On Saturdays I'd sit on a big box in a dark warehouse and count nuts, bolts, and washers into smallerboxes; and then I'd label them...#3...#4...#5...#6...I was paidpiecework. And if I really hustled, I could make up to 30 cents an hour --- but typically Ionly made 10.
By the time I was twelve, I was making $1 per hour at my summer warehouse job -- often working 60-hour weeks with no overtime. Minimum wage back then (1969) was $1.60an hour -- the equivalent of $10 today.
I was never paid the legal minimum wage until after I turned sixteen years old--- when I started working "legally", and was no longer considered a "child laborer".
For the next two summers I made $1.60 and $2.00 an hour respectively. Come 1975, when the minimum wage spiked to $2.10, I graduatedearly from high school and spent a semester and a summer making $2.10 an hour before I left for college.
Did all of this "build character"? I don't know. I think it probably trained me to labor for very little in return, which is not something I would recommend to anyone I cared about.
I've noticed that the so-called "American Century" was defined by the unprecedented,huge, destructive, and expensive wars --- World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam ---the relative economic contributions of government spending, domestic production, domestic consumption, and the making-and-killing of foreign enemies.
The U.S. would not have been quite so prosperous in its post-WWII heyday if the military industrial complex had outsourced its production. Still, this hasn't kept some terribly stupid, cowardly andglobalist politicians in Washington from resorting to war every time their creativity and courage failed them.
We learned -- or should have learned -- some other simple, useful lessons back in our happier, wealthier days --- arguably none more important than opportunity.
High income taxes (over 90%) and union membership (over 30%) helped relax tight fists, but even the depression-scarred among America's wealthy soon learned that when their money circulated, it propagated. They too, became unexpectedly richer as our country's middle-class income and consumption grew.(Who'd have thought?)
In macro terms, managing our economy was much, much easier in the pre-globalization days. American economic stimulus stimulated the American consumption of American goods -- not the consumption of goods manufactured by our foreign competitors and adversaries.
I'm cringing -- fast-forwarding to the mid-1970s [when the middle-class hadpeaked] thinking about all those Detroit union autoworkers buying Datsuns.
I'm cringing again thinking about the minimum wage, imagining a hypothetical son or daughter asking me for an increase in their allowance, when I know very well that they plan to spend it on something unhealthy -- likedrugs --- or on campaign contributions to Republicans and Democrats.
So would I increase the minimum wage?
Yes, but first things first --- or simultaneously and comprehensively. We won't get enough bang for the buck if the higher wages are spent on foreign goods and services. This moves American wealth outside our borders and helps our competitors and adversaries. But if the money stayed and circulated within our borders, we could raise the minimum wage through the roof and it would help us all -- our economy and our people.
*** Originally writtenby Bob Hall at www.facebook.com/BobHall2016 Excerpted [and since edited] - Editor's Note: Related post: GovernmentCreates Jobs
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