SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Minimum wages destroy both jobs and employability: "When I discuss minimum wages in class I tell my students that one of the best ways to get a high-paying job is to get a low-paying job and work your way up. The minimum wage can put the least employable out of work and have permanent negative effects when training and work skills not acquired in youth are difficult to accumulate later on.... David Neumark and Olena Nizalova look at the how exposure to the minimum wage in the past impacts workers today. They find that teenagers who grow up in states with a minimum wage that is significantly and consistently higher than the federal minimum have lower earnings and work less a decade or more later when those workers are in their late twenties. The negative effects are larger for blacks, for whom the minimum wage tends to be more binding.... The bottom line? If you don't work at McDonald's when you are a teenager, don't expect to manage a McDonald's when you are middle-aged."

The origin of the income tax: "'The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913,' wrote Frank Chodorov. Indeed, a man's home used to be his castle. The income tax, however, gave the government the keys to every door and the sole right to change the locks. Today the American people are no longer the master and the government has ceased to be the servant.... Adjusting for inflation, in the 81 years between the enactment of the income tax in 1913 to 1994, government spending increased 13,592%!"

A reader writes: "This article shows that the number of Australians on full time welfare support has gone from 1 in 20 in the early 1960s to 1 in 5 today. The welfare lobby and 'social justice' advocates seem to be on a business as usual track. You don't have to be a libertarian or even a conservative to criticise these numbers. Many ordinary Australians would say that Australia was a fairer and more equal society in the 1960s than it is today. The welfare lobby needs to redirect their focus from welfare expansion to welfare targeting."

Walter E. Williams: "The truly rich don't deserve all the political hype we hear; they're only a tiny percentage of our population and not that important. According to recent U.S. Treasury statistics, the top 1 percent of income earners have an adjusted gross income that starts around $300,000. While $300,000 or $400,000 a year is nothing to sneeze at, it's a far cry from being rich; it's not even yacht-and-Gulfstream-jet money. The truly rich Americans are those with assets like Bill Gates ($46 billion), Warren Buffett ($43 billion) and Paul Allen ($21 billion). All told, there are about 275 Americans in the billionaire club. Having just a couple million dollars in assets doesn't merit much respect as riches.The 99 percent plus of the rest of us can safely ignore the truly rich."

What the Left won't tell you: "The twentieth century contrasts sharply with the record of the two preceding centuries. In every measure we have bearing on the standard of living, such as real income, homelessness, life expectancy and height, the gains of the lower class have been far greater than those experienced by the population as a whole, whose overall standard of living has also improved".

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