Regarding Social Security, it should have been privatized a long time ago... even prior to the President George W. Bush administration talking about it.  Take a look at how much you have paid into it over the course of 1 year and imagine how much that would be worth even at a low interest rate.  Multiply that over the course of your working career and you end up with a much higher figure.  The bottom line is, people, not the government should be responsible for saving for their own retirement.

Minimum wage and maximum working hour laws should be done away with and let the free market sort it out.  Government has no business telling private businesses what to do or how much to pay.

It can't be privatized for basically the same reason.
Today's taxes fund today's retirees. its operating only about a year ahead of its expenses. You're talkin about it suddenly operating 20 30 40 years ahead of its expenses. It would need an enormous one-time cash infusion to make the transition. They could try to do it with quantitative easing, but that could turn into a snake eating its own tail while really messing up the bond market.

It can be phased in.

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"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

Regarding Social Security, it should have been privatized a long time ago... even prior to the President George W. Bush administration talking about it.  Take a look at how much you have paid into it over the course of 1 year and imagine how much that would be worth even at a low interest rate.  Multiply that over the course of your working career and you end up with a much higher figure.  The bottom line is, people, not the government should be responsible for saving for their own retirement.

Minimum wage and maximum working hour laws should be done away with and let the free market sort it out.  Government has no business telling private businesses what to do or how much to pay.

It can't be privatized for basically the same reason.
Today's taxes fund today's retirees. its operating only about a year ahead of its expenses. You're talkin about it suddenly operating 20 30 40 years ahead of its expenses. It would need an enormous one-time cash infusion to make the transition. They could try to do it with quantitative easing, but that could turn into a snake eating its own tail while really messing up the bond market.

Cut it off at say age 55 or so.  People over that age would still get their EARNED SS benefit.  Allow people younger than that age to invest/save for their retirement with the funds that they receive are allowed to keep that they earned and not confiscated by government.

It all comes down to personal responsibility and less big government dictating what we do with our lives.

Me personally (middle 50's) am not counting on SS being there when I do get to retirement age.  Even if it is, I don't DEPEND on it to fund my retirement.  I have saved a "nest egg" for when I do decide to stop working, paid my bills off and don't waste money on the next new phone, "I device, Amazon device" or computer that is popular.

The problem is, most people think that they have "paid in" for their retirement and expect it to be "paid out".  That's really not the case.  Social Security never was and isn't a retirement account.  It was never meant to fund someone's retirement, yet many people rely on it as their sole source of income.

Personal responsibility has been thrown out the window a long time ago.  It's all about "what the government gives me" rather than what a person earned.

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Regarding Social Security, it should have been privatized a long time ago... even prior to the President George W. Bush administration talking about it.  Take a look at how much you have paid into it over the course of 1 year and imagine how much that would be worth even at a low interest rate.  Multiply that over the course of your working career and you end up with a much higher figure.  The bottom line is, people, not the government should be responsible for saving for their own retirement.

Minimum wage and maximum working hour laws should be done away with and let the free market sort it out.  Government has no business telling private businesses what to do or how much to pay.

I'm with you on the first part, not so much the second. Those laws exist because wages and hours were left for the free market to figure out, and it resulted in the majority of Americans getting screwed. The modern idea that minimum wage should be a living wage is ridiculous, but there should be a minimum wage in place to protect smaller towns with few employment options. If Walmart cuts its wage scale in Jacksonville so that cashiers get $5 an hour, Walmart's going to have problems because those cashiers are going elsewhere. If a Walmart in a small town with few other employment options cuts cashier pay to $5/hour, cashiers are screwed because there isn't really anywhere else to go.

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That kind of economic isolation is a problem unto itself.

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Regarding Social Security, it should have been privatized a long time ago... even prior to the President George W. Bush administration talking about it.  Take a look at how much you have paid into it over the course of 1 year and imagine how much that would be worth even at a low interest rate.  Multiply that over the course of your working career and you end up with a much higher figure.  The bottom line is, people, not the government should be responsible for saving for their own retirement.

Minimum wage and maximum working hour laws should be done away with and let the free market sort it out.  Government has no business telling private businesses what to do or how much to pay.

 
I agree with you mostly, but … You had me until minimum wage, maximum hours … If there isn’t a “Wall” (for effect/affect?), someone (Thousands, and thousands) from Nicaragua (pick a country) are going to enter illegally and take your children’s job, work 90 hours a week for three dollars an hour (without overtime pay) under the table at a company that can’t afford the rules the US government has put in place for employers to adhere to (or be fined/shutdown). If your children become an employer, they will not be on the same field as their foreign located and governed competitor. We are handicapping our own economy, our own future. This isn't the USA against a similarly governed, and regulated country. This is unfair government over site that holds the American employer/worker back from equally competing on a global scale.

If you want to fix stuff in the “labor force”, you have to level America’s work force playing field. Force the EPA upon China, force OSHA on Mexico, Force businesses in Pakistan to protect their workers as well as the USA does. Force fair hourly pay, a fair hourly work week and safe workers conditions in competitive countries. As long as our work force is competing against unfair labor laws of other countries, our workers will lose. End OSHA, end the insane EPA restrictions and the government mandated “Rules” of manufacture that all these other countries do not impose at the costly employer level. Check 95% of the stuff on Amazon … Made in China. Nearly every order on Amazon goes to a China pocket. Employer cost are low when foreign countries don’t hold their employers as accountable as Western countries do. We can’t compete given our “ worker safety rules”.

The US Government oversite of US employers choke them out of the competition with extreme safety guidelines that aren’t leveled upon other countries employers. OSHA, the EPA, and Insurance requirements are huge killers to the US economy. We can’t have our three largest industries being the Health Care Industry, The Insurance Industry, and the “Protect our workers industries”. But, we are headed there.

The most important vote we can all place is to protect your children’s future. I was once fined $1,000.00 for not having the ground leg on a $15.00 extension cord (by OSHA) that had broken off. Made in China and only one out of 100 in the shop. … Would that $1,000.00 be a fine in Mexico, or China? That took money out of my workers pocket. Our employers are competing against unfair rules, and we pay US government agencies to enforce those rules. We pay people to make those rules even harder for our own workforce to compete under.
 
So yeah … somewhat what you said.

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That kind of economic isolation is a problem unto itself.

It is. Ever been to central Kansas, away from I-70? A tiny town every ten miles, after going through seven or eight of those you get to a slightly bigger one with a Walmart, and you realize it's probably providing a living for half of its town.

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Regarding Social Security, it should have been privatized a long time ago... even prior to the President George W. Bush administration talking about it.  Take a look at how much you have paid into it over the course of 1 year and imagine how much that would be worth even at a low interest rate.  Multiply that over the course of your working career and you end up with a much higher figure.  The bottom line is, people, not the government should be responsible for saving for their own retirement.

Minimum wage and maximum working hour laws should be done away with and let the free market sort it out.  Government has no business telling private businesses what to do or how much to pay.

 
I agree with you mostly, but … You had me until minimum wage, maximum hours … If there isn’t a “Wall” (for effect/affect?), someone (Thousands, and thousands) from Nicaragua (pick a country) are going to enter illegally and take your children’s job, work 90 hours a week for three dollars an hour (without overtime pay) under the table at a company that can’t afford the rules the US government has put in place for employers to adhere to (or be fined/shutdown). If your children become an employer, they will not be on the same field as their foreign located and governed competitor. We are handicapping our own economy, our own future. This isn't the USA against a similarly governed, and regulated country. This is unfair government over site that holds the American employer/worker back from equally competing on a global scale.

If you want to fix stuff in the “labor force”, you have to level America’s work force playing field. Force the EPA upon China, force OSHA on Mexico, Force businesses in Pakistan to protect their workers as well as the USA does. Force fair hourly pay, a fair hourly work week and safe workers conditions in competitive countries. As long as our work force is competing against unfair labor laws of other countries, our workers will lose. End OSHA, end the insane EPA restrictions and the government mandated “Rules” of manufacture that all these other countries do not impose at the costly employer level. Check 95% of the stuff on Amazon … Made in China. Nearly every order on Amazon goes to a China pocket. Employer cost are low when foreign countries don’t hold their employers as accountable as Western countries do. We can’t compete given our “ worker safety rules”.

The US Government oversite of US employers choke them out of the competition with extreme safety guidelines that aren’t leveled upon other countries employers. OSHA, the EPA, and Insurance requirements are huge killers to the US economy. We can’t have our three largest industries being the Health Care Industry, The Insurance Industry, and the “Protect our workers industries”. But, we are headed there.

The most important vote we can all place is to protect your children’s future. I was once fined $1,000.00 for not having the ground leg on a $15.00 extension cord (by OSHA) that had broken off. Made in China and only one out of 100 in the shop. … Would that $1,000.00 be a fine in Mexico, or China? That took money out of my workers pocket. Our employers are competing against unfair rules, and we pay US government agencies to enforce those rules. We pay people to make those rules even harder for our own workforce to compete under.
 
So yeah … somewhat what you said.

Hear hear!

---

My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Perhaps I should defend my reasoning for the minimum wage/maximum working hours comment that I made.

My take on it is geared more towards small business and/or some of the unskilled labor part of the work force.  As an example, a franchise owner (say McDonalds) shouldn't be forced to pay a wage that is not equal to the work involved.  $15 per hour is way too much to pay for what is required in an entry level job.  That kind of job never was intended to be a career for someone.  In my younger days it was either a "stepping stone" to a higher position, or a means for a young (high school age) worker to get some work experience and earn a few bucks.  The same could be said about some other labor type jobs such as a construction laborer not in an apprenticeship or someone mowing grass for a landscape company.  $15 per hour would be appropriate say for an electrician apprentice in a program where they go to school and learn the trade, but it's not appropriate for someone that just carries a toolbox, digs trenches and pulls wire (my opinion).  An entry level job should be just that... a means to start, gain some experience and move on to a career.

Regarding maximum working hours, some jobs require more time to be put in... more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week.  I personally have worked in some jobs that required me to sometimes work 12 hour days and 7 days per week for stretches of time with no overtime pay.  The first job that comes to mind was my time in the U.S. Navy.  Since then I have also worked jobs that paid a salary rather than an hourly wage that sometimes demanded that kind of work schedule.

One other occupation to consider (though not common) is working on a farm and/or as a ranch hand.  I have done it and for the most part the work is done pretty much from sunup to sundown year 'round.

The bottom line is, a person will work a certain job for a fair wage and reasonable work schedule.  Let the free market compete and decide what the job is worth and what the work requirements are.

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Perhaps I should defend my reasoning for the minimum wage/maximum working hours comment that I made.

My take on it is geared more towards small business and/or some of the unskilled labor part of the work force.  As an example, a franchise owner (say McDonalds) shouldn't be forced to pay a wage that is not equal to the work involved.  $15 per hour is way too much to pay for what is required in an entry level job.  That kind of job never was intended to be a career for someone.  In my younger days it was either a "stepping stone" to a higher position, or a means for a young (high school age) worker to get some work experience and earn a few bucks.  The same could be said about some other labor type jobs such as a construction laborer not in an apprenticeship or someone mowing grass for a landscape company.  $15 per hour would be appropriate say for an electrician apprentice in a program where they go to school and learn the trade, but it's not appropriate for someone that just carries a toolbox, digs trenches and pulls wire (my opinion).  An entry level job should be just that... a means to start, gain some experience and move on to a career.

Regarding maximum working hours, some jobs require more time to be put in... more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week.  I personally have worked in some jobs that required me to sometimes work 12 hour days and 7 days per week for stretches of time with no overtime pay.  The first job that comes to mind was my time in the U.S. Navy.  Since then I have also worked jobs that paid a salary rather than an hourly wage that sometimes demanded that kind of work schedule.

One other occupation to consider (though not common) is working on a farm and/or as a ranch hand.  I have done it and for the most part the work is done pretty much from sunup to sundown year 'round.

The bottom line is, a person will work a certain job for a fair wage and reasonable work schedule.  Let the free market compete and decide what the job is worth and what the work requirements are.

I did this when I was younger and I absolutely loved it as a summer job. It was pretty good money and I was able to be outside all day.

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Perhaps I should defend my reasoning for the minimum wage/maximum working hours comment that I made.

My take on it is geared more towards small business and/or some of the unskilled labor part of the work force.  As an example, a franchise owner (say McDonalds) shouldn't be forced to pay a wage that is not equal to the work involved.  $15 per hour is way too much to pay for what is required in an entry level job.  That kind of job never was intended to be a career for someone.  In my younger days it was either a "stepping stone" to a higher position, or a means for a young (high school age) worker to get some work experience and earn a few bucks.  The same could be said about some other labor type jobs such as a construction laborer not in an apprenticeship or someone mowing grass for a landscape company.  $15 per hour would be appropriate say for an electrician apprentice in a program where they go to school and learn the trade, but it's not appropriate for someone that just carries a toolbox, digs trenches and pulls wire (my opinion).  An entry level job should be just that... a means to start, gain some experience and move on to a career.

Regarding maximum working hours, some jobs require more time to be put in... more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week.  I personally have worked in some jobs that required me to sometimes work 12 hour days and 7 days per week for stretches of time with no overtime pay.  The first job that comes to mind was my time in the U.S. Navy.  Since then I have also worked jobs that paid a salary rather than an hourly wage that sometimes demanded that kind of work schedule.

One other occupation to consider (though not common) is working on a farm and/or as a ranch hand.  I have done it and for the most part the work is done pretty much from sunup to sundown year 'round.

The bottom line is, a person will work a certain job for a fair wage and reasonable work schedule.  Let the free market compete and decide what the job is worth and what the work requirements are.

I did this when I was younger and I absolutely loved it as a summer job. It was pretty good money and I was able to be outside all day.

I do it now (somewhat), though not every day and not for money.  My wife and I own 35 acres in Putnam county that we are developing into a ranch/farm/homestead for our retirement.  I only get to work on it during the weekends, but the work is still pretty much sunup to sundown.  I have hired people to work for us with the understanding that those are the working hours, and I have people basically "standing in line" for the next project.  It doesn't matter if it involves cutting trees down, cutting firewood, setting fence posts and putting fencing up...  they are willing to come and work for what I pay them and what the working hours are.  I'll throw in as well that sometimes we feed them 3 meals while they are there working for us.

My point is, so often the argument is made that illegal aliens are "willing to do work that nobody wants to do" is not correct.  Will they do it for less money?  Certainly.  However, every person that I have come and work for us is most certainly a U.S. citizen willing to work.  They are all local people (many young ones) that just want a "leg up" rather than a hand out.

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Perhaps I should defend my reasoning for the minimum wage/maximum working hours comment that I made.

My take on it is geared more towards small business and/or some of the unskilled labor part of the work force.  As an example, a franchise owner (say McDonalds) shouldn't be forced to pay a wage that is not equal to the work involved.  $15 per hour is way too much to pay for what is required in an entry level job.  That kind of job never was intended to be a career for someone.  In my younger days it was either a "stepping stone" to a higher position, or a means for a young (high school age) worker to get some work experience and earn a few bucks.  The same could be said about some other labor type jobs such as a construction laborer not in an apprenticeship or someone mowing grass for a landscape company.  $15 per hour would be appropriate say for an electrician apprentice in a program where they go to school and learn the trade, but it's not appropriate for someone that just carries a toolbox, digs trenches and pulls wire (my opinion).  An entry level job should be just that... a means to start, gain some experience and move on to a career.

Regarding maximum working hours, some jobs require more time to be put in... more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week.  I personally have worked in some jobs that required me to sometimes work 12 hour days and 7 days per week for stretches of time with no overtime pay.  The first job that comes to mind was my time in the U.S. Navy.  Since then I have also worked jobs that paid a salary rather than an hourly wage that sometimes demanded that kind of work schedule.

One other occupation to consider (though not common) is working on a farm and/or as a ranch hand.  I have done it and for the most part the work is done pretty much from sunup to sundown year 'round.

The bottom line is, a person will work a certain job for a fair wage and reasonable work schedule.  Let the free market compete and decide what the job is worth and what the work requirements are.

I agree with most of what you said.
I think we need very basic minimum wage and Max hour laws, not too different from what we have now.
The minimum wage should be low enough that 90% or so of employers don't even have to worry about it. I disagree with the $15/ hour folks.
I think Obama had a good idea in trying to help more people qualify for overtime pay, but the basic scheme we have there is basically right already, for the reasons you state.  Some jobs will always need a lot more than 40 hours.

The only reason I brought any of this up is because none of these types of laws were considered constitutional until FDR threatened to pack the court. Even child labor laws were questioned.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Regarding Social Security, it should have been privatized a long time ago... even prior to the President George W. Bush administration talking about it.  Take a look at how much you have paid into it over the course of 1 year and imagine how much that would be worth even at a low interest rate.  Multiply that over the course of your working career and you end up with a much higher figure.  The bottom line is, people, not the government should be responsible for saving for their own retirement.

Minimum wage and maximum working hour laws should be done away with and let the free market sort it out.  Government has no business telling private businesses what to do or how much to pay.

I'm with you on the first part, not so much the second. Those laws exist because wages and hours were left for the free market to figure out, and it resulted in the majority of Americans getting screwed. The modern idea that minimum wage should be a living wage is ridiculous, but there should be a minimum wage in place to protect smaller towns with few employment options. If Walmart cuts its wage scale in Jacksonville so that cashiers get $5 an hour, Walmart's going to have problems because those cashiers are going elsewhere. If a Walmart in a small town with few other employment options cuts cashier pay to $5/hour, cashiers are screwed because there isn't really anywhere else to go.

This is precisely why AOC for all her factual errancy and her 12 year old personality has already won!  (can anyone deny that the last century has been dominated by a dramatic shift towards statism.)  This idea that the Market itself is inherently evil and that we need a set of Harvard educated benevolent disinterested expert to sort our lives out for us.  Today its common for people to say things like: If left to the market, our employers would pay us peanuts.  If left to the Market our producers would sell us products that would kill us.  If left to the free market this that or the other thing...  

No one ever steps up and points out: If left to the Market There never would have been a great depression.  If left to the Market there never would have been a great recession.  If left to the market everyone's retirement would be orders of magnitude more wealthy because of their participation in the most powerful economy the world has ever seen instead of begging for crumbs from a ponzi scheme.  If left to the market, doctors would be free to form Co-operatives and self insure and provide better care for less cost.  It's all true, and verifiably so.  But it's not something we say, its not polite.  It's not good form.  

Minimum wage:  Let's look at some basic numbers.  Right now roughly about half a million people earn the minimum wage.  That's less than 1% of all wage earners.  the overwhelming majority of those are the teenagers with part time gigs that still can't mop the WHOLE bathroom floor before they go on break.  Throughout the economy we just saw something close to 3% wage growth for 2018.  Was that driven by government fiat?  Are the other 99.5% of wage earners being floated by some invisible government mandate?  Of course not.  So why on Earth do we persist with the innate feeling that Freedom inherently = a race to the bottom.  

Maximum hours (The 40 hour work week):  Artificially inflating the price of labor leads to less of it.  Instead of investing more in the hourly employees companies hire more and more bean counters to make sure that everyone clocks off at 39.5 hours.  Thank God the employer mandate was never fully implemented or the work week would have been reduced to 30 hours.  And when there is extra work to be done, that just means more falls on the plate of the salary managers or God forbid people silly enough (like me) to be self employed or a small business owner to avoid paying overtime.  For the productive hourly workers there is less money in the system to differentiate their pay from the average hum drum hourly worker and if they are productive enough they become salary managers to pick up the slack associated with making sure their charges don't work more than 40 hours.  There are a lot of people who work hourly full time who would happily take on another shift at their normal rate that can't.  Instead the employer has to hire someone less qualified to take the shift and the extra work experience associated with it.  

Economic Isolation:  For the most part the poorest pockets in this country (and the world) are pockets of dramatic geographical isolation.  If you live in a mountain community cut off from society, then there are a myriad of challenges associated with providing goods and services to your community and thus a major drag on economic growth and in turn wages.  That isolation in and of itself is the problem.  A minimum wage law isn't going to change or alter then challenges associated with an individual in that community producing enough economic output to justify an artificial wage.  On the contrary, in the event that a person can't produce enough economic output to justify their wage (even in a pre-existing business model [larger chain store located in their community]) then it won't be paid (how minimum wage laws result in unemployment.)  So either a.) there isn't enough economic potential to justify the wage level in question and people in that community need to work at a wage level their output can justify or b.) there is enough economic potential and there will be competition for labor and positive wage growth.  

Child labor laws:  No one wants to see children being forced to work at the same level as adults.  Childhood is precious and should be protected.  At the same time, reducing or eliminating the ability of children to help feed and close themselves places higher and higher economic burdens on their prospective parents and creates and even greater disincentive for having children.  Luckily, we came up with a solution for that.  We just get rid of the children (about 1.5 million a year at current clip.)  If we could go back and poll the 60 million children that have been aborted since our betters in Black decided that natural rights was a quaint anecdote, I'm sure they would have a much different opinion about the COMPASSION of not letting them sweep out a corner store or carry around a craftsman's tools.  In the second case, the second leading indicator for the eventual economic success of a child is the age at which they start earning money outside the home.  In our current model we have created a society of prolonged adolescence where most kids aren't expected to work to provide for themselves into their mid twenties.  As a result that absence of character or experience in the real world leads to the same basic sense of entitlement and devaluation of work that lead to this very thread!

Moreover: I'd like to point out that those in the thread so far are talking about a true minimum wage for entry level employees not the living wage lunacy of the progressives. Unfortunately, throughout the history of the country there have been times when the raising of minimum wage laws had adverse affects on real employees and job seekers that had low skill but the will to work. During the later part of the 19th and early 20th century black kids and white kids had relative parity in teen unemployment. In some years black teen unemployment was actually lower than white teen unemployment. Obviously during that time was the greatest difference in wealth and earning capacity for white and black households thus the relative skill level for children raised in black households with less or no access to education was different from that of white. With the introduction of minimum wage laws we priced out a lot of teen blacks from the labor market and the difference between the two unemployment rates skyrocketed. During the 50's there was an overall decrease in the black poverty rate from around 87% to around 47%. One of the greatest unsung economic miracles in the history of the world, much less this country given the environment that blacks had to deal with at the time. This was driven by GI's returning from the second world war having proven their worth on the battlefield and generations of kids that had worked from a very young age growing up with developed trade that they could demand wages for. When the unemployment rate for black teens went from single digits to the 20s 30s 40s and at some points 50s and 60s that served to arrest the trajectory of black ascendency.

At large parts over the same time, black marriage rates were actually higher than that of their white counterparts. Thanks to the benevolent compassion of Lyndon Johnson and the Great society a black child that had a 75% chance of being born into a two parent household in 1960 has a 75% chance of being born into a single parent home in 2019 (the leading factor in child poverty.)…

If only it had been LEFT TO THE MARKET!!!

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As big a fan I am of the market, it does need some oversight. I think you grossly underestimate the amount of stupid and complacent people in this world. The market will take advantage of them. If you're cool with that, then it is what it is. I am for government rules that enforce competition. When there are regulations put in place, they should try to operate in the free market and have clear indicators when/how it doesn't.

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As big a fan I am of the market, it does need some oversight. I think you grossly underestimate the amount of stupid and complacent people in this world. The market will take advantage of them. If you're cool with that, then it is what it is. I am for government rules that enforce competition. When there are regulations put in place, they should try to operate in the free market and have clear indicators when/how it doesn't.

Quite the contrary.  I have no illusions about how many stupid unproductive lazy incompetent people there are in this world.  However, I am not in favor of giving those lazy incompetent people absolute power over the productive members of society just because it makes people feel better. 

In the example that we were discussing previously when you look at the long term performance of mutual funds and social security (which were both developed at roughly the same time) it's like comparing a thermonuclear reactor to a camp fire.  Who among us is silly enough to thank our benefactors for saving us from the greatest economic engine in the world.  The Federal reserve system was developed to protect us from PANICS and economic down turns. It's policies CAUSED and PRESIDED OVER more panics, more downturns and the two most severe recessions in our countries history.  We've redistributed over 20 trillion dollars over the last half century.  At what point do we take stock to determine if that money forced from our hands at the point of a gun has done a darn thing to actually reduce the amount of unproductive people.  On the contrary, when you see large scale economic intervention in a sector of the economy it becomes LESS PRODUCTIVE and when you see economic intervention on the part of groups of people they become more dependent not less.  

The role of the state is to enforce contracts and property rights, nothing more.  The idea that the state somehow is going to substitute its own infallible ideas for the whims of the ignorant self interested masses has been proven a failure time and time again, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and inordinate strain on the treasuries of the west putting us on a collision course with insolvency.

---

I'm with you on the first part, not so much the second. Those laws exist because wages and hours were left for the free market to figure out, and it resulted in the majority of Americans getting screwed. The modern idea that minimum wage should be a living wage is ridiculous, but there should be a minimum wage in place to protect smaller towns with few employment options. If Walmart cuts its wage scale in Jacksonville so that cashiers get $5 an hour, Walmart's going to have problems because those cashiers are going elsewhere. If a Walmart in a small town with few other employment options cuts cashier pay to $5/hour, cashiers are screwed because there isn't really anywhere else to go.

This is precisely why AOC for all her factual errancy and her 12 year old personality has already won!  (can anyone deny that the last century has been dominated by a dramatic shift towards statism.)  This idea that the Market itself is inherently evil and that we need a set of Harvard educated benevolent disinterested expert to sort our lives out for us.  Today its common for people to say things like: If left to the market, our employers would pay us peanuts.  If left to the Market our producers would sell us products that would kill us.  If left to the free market this that or the other thing...  

No one ever steps up and points out: If left to the Market There never would have been a great depression.  If left to the Market there never would have been a great recession.  If left to the market everyone's retirement would be orders of magnitude more wealthy because of their participation in the most powerful economy the world has ever seen instead of begging for crumbs from a ponzi scheme.  If left to the market, doctors would be free to form Co-operatives and self insure and provide better care for less cost.  It's all true, and verifiably so.  But it's not something we say, its not polite.  It's not good form.  

Minimum wage:   Let's look at some basic numbers.  Right now roughly about half a million people earn the minimum wage.  That's less than 1% of all wage earners.  the overwhelming majority of those are the teenagers with part time gigs that still can't mop the WHOLE bathroom floor before they go on break.  Throughout the economy we just saw something close to 3% wage growth for 2018.  Was that driven by government fiat?  Are the other 99.5% of wage earners being floated by some invisible government mandate?  Of course not.  So why on Earth do we persist with the innate feeling that Freedom inherently = a race to the bottom.  

Maximum hours (The 40 hour work week):  Artificially inflating the price of labor leads to less of it.  Instead of investing more in the hourly employees companies hire more and more bean counters to make sure that everyone clocks off at 39.5 hours.  Thank God the employer mandate was never fully implemented or the work week would have been reduced to 30 hours.  And when there is extra work to be done, that just means more falls on the plate of the salary managers or God forbid people silly enough (like me) to be self employed or a small business owner to avoid paying overtime.  For the productive hourly workers there is less money in the system to differentiate their pay from the average hum drum hourly worker and if they are productive enough they become salary managers to pick up the slack associated with making sure their charges don't work more than 40 hours.  There are a lot of people who work hourly full time who would happily take on another shift at their normal rate that can't.  Instead the employer has to hire someone less qualified to take the shift and the extra work experience associated with it.  

Economic Isolation:  For the most part the poorest pockets in this country (and the world) are pockets of dramatic geographical isolation.  If you live in a mountain community cut off from society, then there are a myriad of challenges associated with providing goods and services to your community and thus a major drag on economic growth and in turn wages.  That isolation in and of itself is the problem.  A minimum wage law isn't going to change or alter then challenges associated with an individual in that community producing enough economic output to justify an artificial wage.  On the contrary, in the event that a person can't produce enough economic output to justify their wage (even in a pre-existing business model [larger chain store located in their community]) then it won't be paid (how minimum wage laws result in unemployment.)  So either a.) there isn't enough economic potential to justify the wage level in question and people in that community need to work at a wage level their output can justify or b.) there is enough economic potential and there will be competition for labor and positive wage growth.  

Child labor laws:  No one wants to see children being forced to work at the same level as adults.  Childhood is precious and should be protected.  At the same time, reducing or eliminating the ability of children to help feed and close themselves places higher and higher economic burdens on their prospective parents and creates and even greater disincentive for having children.  Luckily, we came up with a solution for that.  We just get rid of the children (about 1.5 million a year at current clip.)  If we could go back and poll the 60 million children that have been aborted since our betters in Black decided that natural rights was a quaint anecdote, I'm sure they would have a much different opinion about the COMPASSION of not letting them sweep out a corner store or carry around a craftsman's tools.  In the second case, the second leading indicator for the eventual economic success of a child is the age at which they start earning money outside the home.  In our current model we have created a society of prolonged adolescence where most kids aren't expected to work to provide for themselves into their mid twenties.  As a result that absence of character or experience in the real world leads to the same basic sense of entitlement and devaluation of work that lead to this very thread!

Moreover: I'd like to point out that those in the thread so far are talking about a true minimum wage for entry level employees not the living wage lunacy of the progressives.  Unfortunately, throughout the history of the country there have been times when the raising of minimum wage laws had adverse affects on real employees and job seekers that had low skill but the will to work.  During the later part of the 19th and early 20th century black kids and white kids had relative parity in teen unemployment.  In some years black teen unemployment was actually lower than white teen unemployment.  Obviously during that time was the greatest difference in wealth and earning capacity for white and black households thus the relative skill level for children raised in black households with less or no access to education was different from that of white.  With the introduction of minimum wage laws we priced out a lot of teen blacks from the labor market and the difference between the two unemployment rates skyrocketed.   During the 50's there was an overall decrease in the black poverty rate from around 87% to around 47%.  One of the greatest unsung economic miracles in the history of the world, much less this country given the environment that blacks had to deal with at the time.  This was driven by GI's returning from the second world war having proven their worth on the battlefield and generations of kids that had worked from a very young age growing up with developed trade that they could demand wages for.  When the unemployment rate for black teens went from single digits to the 20s 30s 40s and at some points 50s and 60s that served to arrest the trajectory of black ascendency.  

At large parts over the same time, black marriage rates were actually higher than that of their white counterparts.  Thanks to the benevolent compassion of Lyndon Johnson and the Great society a black child that had a 75% chance of being born into a two parent household in 1960 has a 75% chance of being born into a single parent home in 2019 (the leading factor in child poverty.)…  

If only it had been LEFT TO THE MARKET!!!

You've got a lot of your history right.
Black unemployment did get reduced during the 50s and then increase in the 60s.  But there had been a federal minimum wage since 1938, so it was there in both the good time and the bad time that you describe.  This minimum wage wasn't inherently bad; they just might have set it too high in the mid to late 1960s.

But your narrative connecting child labor to birth rates and abortion is specious at best.  Child labor laws at the federal level again date back to 1938.  Suction abortion wasn't attempted in the US until 1967. Before that, earlier abortion procedures were much more risky for the mother's health.  The timing of the baby boom also contradicts your argument there.

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As big a fan I am of the market, it does need some oversight. I think you grossly underestimate the amount of stupid and complacent people in this world. The market will take advantage of them. If you're cool with that, then it is what it is. I am for government rules that enforce competition. When there are regulations put in place, they should try to operate in the free market and have clear indicators when/how it doesn't.

I agree with you here, but from JJ's perspective, you are probably talking out of both sides of your mouth.  I get the distinction between what you mean by "free market" and what he means by it, but he probably doesn't.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Inflation effectively repeals mw laws over time. So when natural market forces make it irrelevant that's a credit to the market not the laws themselves.

And yes, legalizing and mainstreaming abortion made it much more prevalent, despite what our BETTERS promised. The delay between legalization and the decreased economic capacity of offspring doesn't negate the underlying contributing economic factor.

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Inflation effectively repeals mw laws over time.  So when natural market forces make it irrelevant that's a credit to the market not the laws themselves.  

And yes, legalizing and mainstreaming abortion made it much more prevalent, despite what our BETTERS promised.  The delay between legalization and the decreased economic capacity of offspring doesn't negate the underlying contributing economic factor.

Florida's minimum wage has been indexed to inflation since 2004.

The baby boom, depending on who you ask, ended between 1960 and 1964.
The FDA approved the first birth control pills in 1960.  Birth control became legal in all 50 states with a 1965 court decision.    

I agree abortion law has had an impact on birth rate.  But child labor laws? No way.  No evidence.

The main driver is birth control.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

The. You were referring to was in the 1950 / 60s where periods of inflation did effectively repeal the minimum wage law of 1938. Dr Thomas Soul talks about this extensively. In in Florida the prevailing wage in most Industries is well above that 8.46 dollars that the minimum wage is currently set at even indexed to inflation. My wife is having a heck of a Time retaining employees at two and a half dollars more than that. And that also does not negate the fundamental underlying economic reality that when you over price labor artificially with no direct correlation to an increase in economic capacity of the employee you fundamentally cause unemployment. The greatest driver of positive wage pressure is the increase in the amount of suppliers and competition for underlying labor not government Fiat!

As for the diminished economic impact of children I guess the 60 million children that were aborted since the legalization of abortion were because breastfeeding is politically incorrect as opposed to the potential economic drag of rearing a child in a modern economy. Granted it's going to direct one-to-one correlation the greatest contributing factor is the modernization and complexity of the modern economy that requires ever and ever more complex actions even at the lower end of the labor distribution but that doesn't negate the fact that in instances where children are viewed as an economic positive or economically neutral there is a diminished incentive to abort a child then if a child is a pure economic drag.

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Did the government create the Fed or did capitalists? I am not debating social security. I simply think free market theorists underestimate the role the "Free Market" plays in government intervention. The free market is far superior than any other institution when it comes to wealth generation. You won't get an argument from me in that regard. But, how do you keep it free? The best and brightest are equally adept at creating solutions as they are at creating loopholes.

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Did the government create the Fed or did capitalists? I am not debating social security. I simply think free market theorists underestimate the role the "Free Market" plays in government intervention. The free market is far superior than any other institution when it comes to wealth generation. You won't get an argument from me in that regard. But, how do you keep it free? The best and brightest are equally adept at creating solutions as they are at creating loopholes.

Constitutional republicanism and an informed electorate.  

You're right.  Most often it's special business interests down @ the state House looking for special protections or subsidies @ the expense of the consumer/taxpayer.  That kind of economic fascism should be pointed out and exposed.  

Moreover, alinsky was extremely clear that he was 100% comfortable using the perverse incentives of big business interests to finance his quest for social revolution.

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