Policy reversal

As somebody who attempted to study classical economics, I never supported raising the minimum wages. Although the prince of Princeton and his grandfather from Cambridge proclaim that all the world’s ills could be cured by simply borrowing money and burying it in the ground, intuition should tell any normal thinking human that it sounds just a bit too easy. After all, those who experience a hang over know well that only time and headaches could cure. And, basic economics instructs that profit motive in an efficient market system has the best chance of optimizing societal utility. Raising the minimum wages, almost fully concocted by the liberal economists, stand in stark contrast to the ideas of the champion of wealth redistribution.

However, I am now ready to reverse this belief – not because that the “other side” had it right but rather, I missed something much more subtle. As the airwaves are filled with the moans and groans to save the middle class, one has to wonder what the middle class actually do. For example, in the middle of a large company, one finds the “middle-managers,” who follow the constructs handed over to them from the industrial revolution. They watch over the “workers” as they build automobiles and industrial food as if such “watching” actually improves the productivity of the system. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. They drain shareholder value and give those who actually produce value, a bad name.

In spite of the popular belief that the “top 1 %” actually work very hard, paying most of the taxes and many hardly make “minimum wages,” if you actually count the effort that goes into building companies and new ideas. And, the bottom 50% also work extremely hard and if they are given the right incentives to live and work could substantially improve the productivity of the nation. In the middle, we have incompetence – just as in large companies. They go to work adorned in suites and ties but contributes much less to society. In this context, raising the minimum wages will shock the system and ferret out the middle layer in companies and societies – fat, happy and incompetent. It will drive the owners of firms to question their organizational structures and it may substantially increase labor participation and thus lift the GDP.

Those who argue for a hike of minimum wages may have had it right but for the wrong reasons.