This Labor Day, Celebrate Intellectual Labor

 The United States Department of Labor, speaking on The History of Labor Day, had this to say on its website:

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Really? There is no doubt about what is meant here. McGuire was referring to people who “work with their hands”. Is that what built America? Physical labor has existed since time immemorial. What changed in the last two hundred + years that suddenly endowed the American worker with the means to produce “all the grandeur we behold” out of raw, “rude” nature? (Note the word “all”).

The American worker has, indeed, contributed significantly to the American Economic juggernaut. But, it was not because of his labor, as such. It was because of his intellectual mastery of the theoretical and material tools of production provided to him that vastly increased the value of his labor.

Physical labor, as such, has very little value. Slaves can perform it. So can mules pulling hand plows.

Consider my trade, plumbing. If my job is fundamentally physical labor, then any able-bodied person off of the street can wander onto any construction job site and robotically perform the task of installing plumbing systems. He can simply be told: “Run this pipe from here to there”, and it will get done. He has the same muscles and bones, nerves and guts that I have, after all.

That, of course, could never be the case. Performing my task (or any construction trade) requires reliance on previously acquired theoretical knowledge, on-the-job apprenticeship training, the mastery of the tools, materials, and procedures of the trade, and years of learning experience. This is to say nothing of the continuing education that new materials and technologies require of me.

My job is knowledge-based. All modern jobs are, to varying extent. How did that knowledge become imbued in my brain? - by my choice to expend the intellectual effort to acquire it. Even the muscular physical motions my job requires had to be learned by a conscious mental effort that led to the appropriate neurological connections.

Do you still think mere physical labor built this country?

The idea that a laborer “works with his hands” is only superficially true. What directs the motions of his hands? It is his focussed, reasoning mind – if he is a motivated worker who strives to be the best that he can be at his chosen occupation. If not, then that worker is a mere drone.

And that gets directly to the point. The celebration of “labor” as a holiday implies that mindless worker. Labor Day ignores the intellectual root of modern, productive labor. It ignores the intellectual labor of the inventor and entrepreneur that created the worker’s job—and the workers' tools and processes—to begin with, and the intellectual labor that the competent worker must expend to learn to perform his job.

Human knowledge is fleeting, but for the grace of those who came before us and chose to acquire it and pass it on. Knowledge can not be passed on from person to person or generation to generation innately. No one is born with previously discovered knowledge, but rather with a mind that is tabula rasa – a blank slate. To celebrate “all the grandeur we behold”, it is to the discoverer and the acquirers of knowledge that we must pay initial gratitude to. The worker, by learning the skills he needs to perform his job, plays his role in keeping that knowledge train going.

This does not, however, mean that labor is inconsequential. Theoretical knowledge in and of itself has little value, unless and until it is placed into the service of man’s living requirements. The process of turning knowledge into the material values humans need to live and to flourish is dependent upon the contributions of many economic players. The value of each player’s contribution to this productive process varies and is dependent upon many factors. But all through that process – from the discoverer of new knowledge to the final material product put together by the worker – the value added represents, at root, the application of the mind.

“[W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

“When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think…” (Page 1064)

Labor Day, according to the DOL, was created in 1882. That was the heyday of Karl Marx’s rise to prominence among the American intellectual elite. Marx was the theoretician of “Dialectical Materialism”, the idea that man’s consciousness – his spirit, his intellect, ability, and logic – plays at best a minimal role in the production process. Human beings, according to Marx, are conditioned by the physical world around them, including the means of production like tools and factories, which just happened into existence. Our modern, complex, and advanced industrial society is the product of mindless, conditioned muscular movements, according to Marx (and others). It is owing to the Marxist theory of the mind – i.e., spiritual values - as of little consequence that gave rise to the myth that labor and those that perform it are the primary engines of economic progress.

Labor Day, whether one knows or wants to admit it or not, is an outgrowth of Marxism and the “labor theory of economic value” that so enamored late 19th century American intellectuals.

The DOL concludes its Labor Day salute as follows:

"It is appropriate … that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

Not quite. Instead, we should pay tribute to the creator of the American worker.

This Labor Day, we should celebrate not just workers, but those who made our jobs and prosperity possible. This country was not built by physical labor. It was built by intellectual labor applied to physical labor under a system of individual rights that allowed everyone the freedom to think and, above all, to act on his thinking. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for our labor, we “workers” should reflect on the mental efforts that we had to expend in order to acquire the previously discovered knowledge that makes it possible to perform our jobs. We should stop selling ourselves short. Labor Day is an insult to the American Worker.

More importantly, we should give silent thanks to all of those intellectual “laborers” who came before us – the discoverers, the inventors, the investors, the businessmen - who made our well-paying jobs possible.

Instead of Labor Day, we should celebrate Intellectual Labor Day.

Or, better yet, we should celebrate political and economic freedom—i.e., Capitalism – the social system of the United States of America. Capitalism unleashed the individual human mind. It is Capitalism that liberated the inventor, entrepreneur, businessman, and industrialist, who in turn made it possible for the American worker to have acquired the means to rise to middle class status and prosper. The labor movement fought for better working condiditions, shorter work weeks, and the like. But those victories couldn't have been possible without the tools of increased worker productivity and consumer products created by the inventor/entrepreneur/businessman/industrialist, who wouldn't have been possible without capitalism. The labor movement could not have been possible in any other era in human history. Capitalism made the labor movement possible.

It is Capitalism’s liberated human mind that from rude nature has delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.

Capitalism is what I will be quietly rejoicing as I enjoy my long weekend.

Happy Labor Day!!

Related Reading:

Atlas Shrugged—Ayn Rand

To Whom Does the American Worker Owe His Prowess?

Did Unions Create the Middle Class?

QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'

Another View:

Don’t Forget to Celebrate Capital on Labor Day, Too from FEE

"Labor is ennobling because it’s an important source of such values as self-esteem, personal fulfillment, responsibility, accomplishment, and voluntary cooperation. It’s both a vehicle and an outlet for our talents and ambitions. Good parents instinctively teach their children that work is a virtue and a benefit, while idleness and laziness are to be avoided.

"But all of that could also be said of another vital ingredient in our standard of living—capital. Most of us would starve without it. Creating it and then deploying it to increase material wealth is ennobling just as much as labor is, and for the same reasons. The creator and user of capital is furthering his talents and ambitions in the process. And every parent who tells his child to mow the lawn hopes he’ll do it with a piece of capital equipment like a lawn mower instead of his teeth."

[True. But never reverse cause and effect. Without labor -- especially the labor of the mind -- capital is useless. In fact, it doesn't exist.]

QUORA: ‘Why are the laws called "Right to Work" when in fact they are really "No Right to Work", since they permit an employee to be fired with no reason given and usually no recourse?'

 QUORA: ‘Why are the laws called "Right to Work" when in fact they are really "No Right to Work", since they permit an employee to be fired with no reason given and usually no recourse?

I posted this answer:

I would make the issue clearer by reversing the question: “Why should an employee be permitted to quit a job with no reason given and leave the employer no recourse?” An employer need not give a reason to fire an employee, just as an employee need not give a reason to quit a job. Why should either have to justify their action to anyone? If it’s in one’s best interest, they are free to do it. Both, in fact, have a recourse (in a free, or even in today’s semi-free, market): The fired employee can seek another job, and the employer can hire another worker. An employer who fires a worker is not violating his right to work. Leaving aside prior contractual agreements, the former employee is free to seek work elsewhere. 

Right to Work laws are not literally about the right to work, which is a moral right. The right to work means only that each individual has the right to work to support himself. It does not mean that someone must supply him with employment. 

In actuality, Right to Work laws say nothing about whether or not an employer needs a reason to fire an employee. Right to Work laws are a reaction to compulsory unionization laws, mainly The Wagner Act. That 1935 Wagner Act compels union membership of all associated workers, even if against their will, and compels employers to negotiate with the unions through collective bargaining even if against the company’s will. Right to Work laws, which were authorized by the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act, outlaw union-only shops, even if the company and union voluntarily agree. I understand the impetus for Right to Work laws. Nonetheless, I believe both laws—the Wagner Act and Right to Work statutes—are rights-violating and should be repealed. I wrote an op-ed for The Objective Standard explaining my reasons. 

Related Reading:

End “Collective Bargaining Rights” and “Right-to-Work” Laws

The Future of Organized Labor Should Be Volunterism

 Law-Favored Unions are Quasi-Criminal Organizations

Fast-Food Workers Seek Government Guns to Back Demands

QUORA: ‘What does economics have to say about the statement “If a company can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage, they shouldn't be in business.”?

 QUORA: ‘What does economics have to say about the statement “If a company can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage, they shouldn't be in business.”? Is that an economically sound argument?’

I posted this answer:

By “they shouldn't be in business,” does the questioner imply that anyone who doesn’t think the employees are not being paid what he imagines equals a “living wage” can physically threaten or attack the business and its owners, including the use of violence, unless they raise the wages or close the business? Or by “they shouldn't be in business,” does the questioner mean they shouldn't be legally allowed to be in business?  If the first, you are a criminal. If the second, you are worse than a common criminal; you are a fascist.

I don’t think economics has anything to say about this statement, because this is a moral, not an economic, statement. Economics is the science that studies production and trade. Morality covers individual rights, which underlies the premise of the question. (economics and morality are actually integrated, but in modern thinking they are not.)

A job is a two-way street. It is a mutual, voluntary agreement between employer and employee. A worker is entitled to compensation he agreed to, and what the employer agreed to pay him. An employer is entitled to a worker’s labor only according to the compensation a worker agreed to accept. If a worker agrees to work for something less than what some busybody calls a living wage, it’s the worker’s business, no one else’s. It would be immoral for any outside interest to force any labor contract agreement on unwilling parties. 

“Living wage” is a political, not economic, term. When an employer and employee agree to an employment agreement, it is none, and shouldn’t be any, of anybody else’s business, including the government. The premise “If a company can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage, they shouldn't be in business” is neither an economically nor morally sound argument.

Related Reading:

Taking vs. Earning a "Livable Wage"

Tuesday’s ‘Fight for $15’ is about Imposing Demands by Government Aggression

Earned Pay vs. Need-Based Pay--or, Justice vs. Injustice

"Greed" is a Two-Way Street

If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?

"Greed" is a Two-Way Street

Business vs. Workers' Jobs: Who Makes Who Possible?

Minimum Wage Doesn't Belong in the Constitution--or Law

Earned Pay vs. Need-Based Pay--or, Justice vs. Injustice

A couple of years ago, major bank CEOs appeared before a Congressional committee. One CEO, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, was asked a stupid question by an ignorant Congresswoman, Katie Porter. According to CNN,

Freshman Rep. Katie Porter stumped multimillionaire JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during a hearing Wednesday with a simple question: How are workers supposed to make ends meet?

The back-and-forth occurred during a House Financial Services Committee hearing featuring the CEOs of several major banks on Wednesday. Porter, a California Democrat, shared the story of a JPMorgan Chase employee – making a fraction of what the company’s top executives are paid – who is running a $567 deficit each month because her salary is insufficient to cover basic expenses.

“How should she manage this budget shortfall while she’s working full-time at your bank?” Porter asked Dimon.

Dimon’s answer was basically that he’d have to think about, and would need to check the math. The hypothetical employee’s salary is $16.50 per hour, plus benefits. Porter used the exchange to demand that Dimon’s bank pay employees enough to make ends meet, regardless of any other considerations. 

With Dimon’s disappointing response leaving much to be desired, Michael Dahlen, writing for The Objective Standard, suggested How Jamie Dimon Should Have Answered Representative Katie Porter. 

As you’d expect from TOS, Dahlen suggested a good, hard-hitting moral and economic lesson to Congresswoman Porter. I give Dahlen a thumbs up. But I thought I’d take a crack at an answer myself. I composed my rough draft before reading Dahlen’s article, just to compare for myself. I must say, I think I did a very credible job. Here is my “How Jamie Dimon Should Have Answered Representative Katie Porter”:

First, let me say that a job is a two-way street. It’s based on mutual self-interest. We, as an employer with particular concerns, have as much right to do what’s best for our business as the employee has to do what’s best for herself in the context of her life and concerns. Ideally, both can find common ground and advance our respective interests together by the prospective employee accepting our job offer.

As to our policy, the employee is paid according to her productive contribution to our business, not her needs. As she gains knowledge, skills, and experience, she has the opportunity to advance in pay and position. In the meanwhile, she’ll have to figure out how to get by. Her life is her responsibility. 

We do “provide a way for families to make ends meet.” We offer jobs--good paying jobs with opportunity for advancement. But we don’t give handouts. If we pay people by need, rather than productiveness and competence, then soon enough there will be no business and the jobs, including mine, will be gone. Then how will she make ends meet? If a person doesn’t have to earn her pay, and instead get paid according to whatever she claims are her needs, then all incentive to excel at her job evaporates--along with the incentive of all of the other employees, whose competence suddenly doesn’t matter, only their needs.

Yes, I make vastly more money than her. That’s because my responsibilities and productiveness are vastly greater than hers. In fact, hers and the jobs of all 250,000+ JP Morgan employees depend on my ability to do my job competently. The only just and objective method of setting pay rates for all of these employees is merit, as judged by management and, ultimately, the judgment of the market; i.e., our customers, the ultimate end of our business. Anything other than a merit-based standard will ultimately result in inferior products, harm to our customers, and finally the loss of our customers. Need is neither just nor objective as a standard, and thus is not rational or sustainable. 

I started by emphasizing that a job is a two-way street. And as it turns out, such a relationship of mutual self-interest turns out to be win-win. Both sides advance their own well-being, based on mutual agreement. Our employees' jobs depend on a fair and rational pay policy just as much as our business does. 

I wish more businessmen would stand up for their right to exist, not just on economic grounds, but on moral grounds as well

Related Reading:

No Conflict Between People and Business

"Greed" is a Two-Way Street

If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?

Is ‘Common Good Capitalism’ a One-way Street?

On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 1

On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 2

This Labor Day, Celebrate Intellectual Labor

The United States Department of Labor, speaking on The History of Labor Day, had this to say on its website:

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Really? There is no doubt about what is meant here. McGuire was referring to people who “work with their hands”. Is that what built America? Physical labor has existed since time immemorial. What changed in the last two hundred + years that suddenly endowed the American worker with the means to produce “all the grandeur we behold” out of raw, “rude” nature? (Note the word “all”).

The American worker has, indeed, contributed significantly to the American Economic juggernaut. But, it was not because of his labor, as such. It was because of his intellectual mastery of the theoretical and material tools of production provided to him, that vastly increased the value of his labor.

Physical labor, as such, has very little value. Slaves can perform it. So can mules pulling hand plows.

Consider my trade, plumbing. If my job is fundamentally physical labor, then any able-bodied person off of the street can wander onto any construction job site and robotically perform the task of installing plumbing systems. He can simply be told: “Run this pipe from here to there”, and it will get done. He has the same muscles and bones, nerves and guts that I have, after all.

That, of course, could never be the case. Performing my task (or any construction trade) requires reliance on previously acquired theoretical knowledge, on-the-job apprenticeship training, the mastery of the tools, materials, and procedures of the trade, and years of learning experience. This is to say nothing of the continuing education that new materials and technologies require of me.

My job is knowledge-based. All modern jobs are, to varying extent. How did that knowledge become imbued in my brain? - by my choice to expend the intellectual effort to acquire it. Even the muscular physical motions my job requires had to be learned by a conscious mental effort that led to the appropriate neurological connections.

Do you still think mere labor built this country?

The idea that a laborer “works with his hands” is only superficially true. What directs the motions of his hands? It is his focussed, reasoning mind – if he is a motivated worker who strives to be the best that he can be at his chosen occupation. If not, then that worker is a mere drone.

And that gets directly to the point. The celebration of “labor” as a holiday implies that mindless worker. Labor Day ignores the intellectual root of modern, productive labor. It ignores the intellectual labor of the inventor and entrepreneur that created the worker’s job to begin with, and the intellectual labor that the competent worker must expend to learn to perform his job.

Human knowledge is fleeting, but for the grace of those who came before us and chose to acquire it and pass it on. Knowledge can not be passed on from person to person or generation to generation innately. No one is born with previously discovered knowledge, but rather with a mind that is tabula rasa – a blank slate. To celebrate “all the grandeur we behold”, it is to the discoverer and the acquirers of knowledge that we must pay initial gratitude to. The worker, by learning the skills he needs to perform his job, plays his role in keeping that knowledge train going.

This does not, however, mean that labor is inconsequential. Theoretical knowledge in and of itself has little value, unless and until it is placed into the service of man’s living requirements. The process of turning knowledge into the material values humans need to live and to flourish is dependent upon the contributions of many economic players. The value of each player’s contribution to this productive process varies and is dependent upon many factors. But all through that process – from the discoverer of new knowledge to the final material product put together by the worker – the value added represents, at root, the application of the mind.

“[W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

“When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think…” (Page 1064)

Labor Day, according to the DOL, was created in 1882. That was the heyday of Karl Marx’s rise to prominence among the American intellectual elite. Marx was the theoretician of “Dialectical Materialism”, the idea that man’s consciousness – his spirit, his intellect, ability, and logic – plays at best a minimal role in the production process. Human beings, according to Marx, are conditioned by the physical world around them, including the means of production like tools and factories, which just happened into existence. Our modern, complex, and advanced industrial society is the product of mindless, conditioned muscular movements, according to Marx (and others). It is owing to the Marxist theory of the mind – i.e., spiritual values - as of little consequence that gave rise to the myth that labor and those that perform it are the primary engines of economic progress.

Labor Day, whether one knows or wants to admit it or not, is an outgrowth of Marxism and the “labor theory of economic value” that so enamored late 19th century American intellectuals.

The DOL concludes its Labor Day salute as follows:

"It is appropriate … that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

Not quite. Instead, we should pay tribute to the creator of the American worker.

This Labor Day, we should celebrate not workers, but those who made our jobs and prosperity possible. This country was not built by physical labor. It was built by intellectual labor applied to physical labor under a system of individual rights that allowed everyone the freedom to think and, above all, to act on his thinking. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for our labor, we “workers” should reflect on the mental efforts that we had to expend in order to acquire the previously discovered knowledge that makes it possible to perform our jobs. We should stop selling ourselves short. Labor Day is an insult to the American Worker.

More importantly, we should give silent thanks to all of those intellectual “laborers” who came before us – the discoverers, the inventors, the investors, the businessmen - who made our well-paying jobs possible.

Instead of Labor Day, we should celebrate Intellectual Labor Day.

Or, better yet, we should celebrate political and economic freedom—i.e., Capitalism – the social system of the United States of America. Capitalism unleashed the individual human mind. It is Capitalism that liberated the inventor, entrepreneur, businessman, and industrialist, who in turn made it possible for the American worker to have acquired the means to rise to middle class status and prosper. The labor movement fought for better working condiditions, shorter work weeks, and the like. But those victories couldn't have been possible without the tools of increased worker productivity and consumer products created by the inventor/entrepreneur/businessman/industrialist, who wouldn't have been possible without capitalism. The labor movement could not have been possible in any other era in human history. Capitalism made the labor movement possible.

It is Capitalism’s liberated human mind that from rude nature has delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.

Capitalism is what I will be quietly rejoicing as I enjoy my long weekend.

Happy Labor Day!!

Related Reading:

Atlas Shrugged—Ayn Rand

To Whom Does the American Worker Owe His Prowess?

Did Unions Create the Middle Class?

QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'

Don’t Forget to Celebrate Capital on Labor Day, Too

"Labor is ennobling because it’s an important source of such values as self-esteem, personal fulfillment, responsibility, accomplishment, and voluntary cooperation. It’s both a vehicle and an outlet for our talents and ambitions. Good parents instinctively teach their children that work is a virtue and a benefit, while idleness and laziness are to be avoided.

"But all of that could also be said of another vital ingredient in our standard of living—capital. Most of us would starve without it. Creating it and then deploying it to increase material wealth is ennobling just as much as labor is, and for the same reasons. The creator and user of capital is furthering his talents and ambitions in the process. And every parent who tells his child to mow the lawn hopes he’ll do it with a piece of capital equipment like a lawn mower instead of his teeth."

True. But never reverse cause and effect. Without labor -- especially the labor of the mind -- capital is useless. In fact, it doesn't exist.

‘We’ Did Not Create the ‘Mighty Middle Class’: ‘I’ Did

In a January 2019 editorial, The $15 wage: Reaffirming what New Jersey stands for, the New Jersey Star-Ledger lauded Nj politicians for enacting a phased-in $15 minimum wage. What’s important here is not the rise in the minimum wage, bad as that is. What caught my eye is the Star-Ledger’s rationalization for it.

This historic act, made by people who value the dignity of work, will enable nearly a million more New Jerseyans to soon make something that approximates a living wage.

Our state took a prodigious step toward addressing decades of economic injustice, and all it took was for our elected leaders to affirm what we believe in. For centuries, when we saw someone who needed a hand up, we had the compassion and wisdom to do it without overdoing it. We welcomed immigrants from every corner of the world and brought them into the circle of opportunity. We took the poor and made them middle class. We took the middle class and made it mighty.

I left these comments, somewhat expanded and edited for clarity:

“When we saw someone who needed a hand up, we had the compassion and wisdom to do it”

There’s a fundamental difference between a voluntary ‘hand up’ and a government-forced hand out. The first is compassion, the second injustice. Notice the heartless collectivist repudiation of individual self-reliance; “We took the poor and made them middle class. We took the middle class and made it mighty.” No, “We” didn’t. The middle class stands for individual productiveness and upward mobility, achieved through individual effort and voluntary association based on mutual consent. Each individual earned it. The collectivist worldview of the Star-Ledger and its ilk leaves no room for the value of the individual. It’s all about some mystical “We” to which each of us is only a helpless cog. But in fact, “We” didn’t create the middle class. “I” created the middle class.

Collectivism is the weapon of the statist who imagines that he can simply legislate a “living wage.” There is no economic justice in getting a wage forced on your employer, the job creator. There is no dignity in an unearned “living wage”. There is no dignity in losing a job, or being unable to find a job, because your skill level doesn’t yet warrant the $15 some politician mandates. And if you manage to keep your job at the higher coerced wage, there is certainly no dignity is profiting at the expense of someone else’s being forced into unemployment by the same law that “gave” you your raise.

The economic destructiveness of price controls is well-known and undisputed. Force up the price of something, including of labor, and you get less of it--in this case, fewer jobs and fewer sustainable businesses. But minimum wage laws are also immoral, because they not only force businesses to pay more than voluntarily agreed to, but deny entry level and low-skilled workers the right to accept a job at less, thus denying them access to the economic opportunity that the lower rungs of the “economic ladder of success” offers.

-----------------------------------------------

Once again we can see the “You didn’t build that” weapon that Obama set up. The worst thing Obama did was to establish a philosophical springboard for American socialists to complete the task of fundamentally transforming America into a socialist state. If “you didn’t build that”--if “We” made the middle class--then created wealth is a tribal product. If wealth is due to tribal “effort”, rather than at root an individual effort, then there is no reason that the tribe’s--i.e., society’s--wealth should not be controlled and distributed by the tribal chiefs, the government.

If you don’t understand how markets work--how wealth is created and distributed by individuals contracting, collaborated, and trading---and how the infinitely intricate price mechanism sorts out who built and thus deserves what--then you will always be susceptible to the kind of poison Obama has fed us. Unfortunately, too many Americans buy into what is essentially the savages view of wealth as a tribal product. Too many Americans either are ignorant or, worse, know better but buy into the “you didn’t build that”/“We built the Middle Class” view for their own sinister reasons. Welcome to a socialist America.

Related Reading:

From ‘You Didn’t Build That’ to ‘The Nation's Wealth’

Ayn Rand Anticipated Obama's "You Didn't Build That" Outrage

How You Build That

Piketty's "Capital" and Obama's "You Didn't Build That": Perfect Together

If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?

Gas Station Workers Rewarded for Breaking the Law

“Owners of 24 gas stations in New Jersey will have to pay attendants more than $2 million in back compensation for failing to pay workers minimum wage and overtime since January 2017,” reported Caitlyn Stulpin for NJ.com on May 2, 2018.

I left these comments:

So these workers broke the law by agreeing to work for an outlawed wage--that is, a wage below what the politicians say they should have been paid.

If it’s true that these business owners broke the law, then by definition so did the workers. Yet the employees get rewarded with “back pay” to compensate for being paid what they agreed to work for. There certainly is a double standard here. You have two parties mutually conspiring to skirt the wage laws, and one gets punished while the other gets rewarded. It looks like its the 5th and 14th Amendments that are being skirted *.

I suggest levying the fine equally between the employers and employees. Better yet, let’s demand that our government protect the rights of employers and employees to forge voluntary compensation agreements without any government interference.

* [According to the Legal Information Institute,

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from denying any person within its territory the equal protection of the laws. This means that a state must treat an individual in the same manner as others in similar conditions and circumstances. The Federal Government must do the same, but this is required by the Fifth Amendment Due Process.

The point of the equal protection clause is to force a state to govern impartially—not draw distinctions between individuals solely on differences that are irrelevant to a legitimate governmental objective. Thus, the equal protection clause is crucial to the protection of civil rights.

I think a convincing constitutional case can be made to challenge minimum wage laws on equal protection and due process grounds. I wonder if its ever been attempted.]

Related Reading:

If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?

NJ’s Discriminatory ‘Pay Equity’ Bill Threatens Freedom and Competence

With a new Democrat governor, New Jersey’s Progressives are racing ahead to roll back economic freedom in the state. As Susan K. Livio reports for NJ.com in an article published in the NJ Star-Ledger, N.J. could soon get the strongest equal pay law in America:

New Jersey is now on the brink of enacting the most sweeping equal pay legislation in America.


A "historic" bill protecting women and minorities in the state from workplace discrimination passed both houses of the state Legislature on Monday, and Gov. Phil Murphy has already pledged to sign it into law.

Women working full-time in America in 2015 earned just 80 cents for every dollar that men earned, and at this rate, women won't reach pay equality until 2059, according to a report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

I left these comments, edited and expanded:

“Women working full-time in America in 2015 earned just 80 cents for every dollar that men earned. . .”

I can’t believe Livio is using that statistic, especially in an article for the Star-Ledger. Way back on 7/1/2012 the Star-Ledger Editorial Board said, “The 77-cent figure that’s used by the Obama administration to discuss how much a woman earns compared with a man’s dollar is bogus. It’s wrong to use that number as the basis for any corrective government policy.” (“Gaming the gap: Let's get real about gender and pay”)

The SLEB reiterated that stand often, such as on 1/26/2017, when it wrote that “An oft-cited 77-cent number is a bogus exaggeration.” (“N.J. senator gives rare insight into what a white man thinks about pay equity for women”) Maybe that gap has shrunk to 80-cents—but it’s still bogus. In 2012, The SLEB reported that “when [economists] take life choices into account, they estimate [the gap] at somewhere between 91 and 95 cents to a man’s dollar.”

In any event, statistics prove nothing, including broad-based discrimination against women, even though some employers undoubtedly do. Statistics can’t differentiate between unfair discrimination or differences in compensation based on life choices, productiveness, reliability, or myriad other factors. That’s why statistics rank below damned lies on the scale of honesty. It’s terrible to use statistics, especially bogus statistics, to justify laws. Especially one-size-fits-all laws that violate fundamental individual rights such as the moral right of employers and employees to freely contract on mutually agreed terms.

At best, this terrible law empowers whiners who, failing to get paid what they think they deserve by mutual agreement, to turn to law--the government's guns--to get it by force; or to empower women and “minority” (but not male non-”minority”) mediocrities and achievement-haters to undermine more competent co-workers’ well-deserved raises or bonuses from employers fearing “discrimination” lawsuits.* In effect, this anti-discrimination “pay equity” bill discriminates against competence, ability, intelligence, productiveness, and the good character that makes those qualities possible,

At worst, it is an attack on one’s freedom to make work choices and negotiate compensation terms based on one’s own life choices.

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And if you think you can turn to NJ Republicans to defend individual rights to freedom of contract and association, consider this:

The Senate voted 35-0 to pass the bill. The Assembly's vote was 74-2 ,, with Assemblymen (sic) Michael Patrick Carroll, and Assemblyman Jay Webber, both R-Morris, voting no.

None of the 15 Republican Senators, and only 2 of the 26 Republican members of the Assembly, voted against this bill.

* [I put “minority” in scare quotes because the smallest minority is the individual, and individuals come in all colors and sexes.]

Related Reading:

Collectivist Left on 'Pay Equity for Women'

How Anti-Discrimination Laws Undermine Free Speech

There is No ‘Right to Equal Treatment’; Only the Right to ‘Equal Protection of the Law’

Does rescinding laws banning private discrimination make a moral statement in support of bigotry?

The Right to Discriminate is About Contract, Not Religion