Should There Be a Minimum Wage?
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Effective or not, at least the advocates of the minimum wage have good intentions.
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Dennis HackethalOP·#6151··Criticism
No, minimum-wage laws have originally racist motivations in several jurisdictions:
- British Columbia, a minimum-wage law passed in 1925 to price Japanese immigrants out of jobs in lumber.
- Australia, to “‘protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese,’ who were willing to work for less.”
- South Africa during apartheid, when “white labor unions urged that a minimum-wage law be applied to all races, to keep black workers from taking jobs away from white unionized workers by working for less than the union pay scale.”
- The United States, with the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, whose supporters “used exactly the same rationale, citing the fact that Southern construction companies, using non-union black workers, were able to come north and under-bid construction companies using unionized white labor.”
Historically, advocates of the minimum wage understood its effects and used them strategically.
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