Will California Be Able to Enforce a $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage?
31st March 2016
Steve Sailer is not afraid to ask the hard questions.
Here’s a question that I haven’t seen discussed much. Everybody has an opinion on what the impacts of the law would be assuming it is implemented the way it says in the law it would be implemented; but I’m wondering more what sectors of the California economy will just ignore this new law the way they currently ignore many of the other laws and regulations?
Whenever governments interfere with a free market, that market re-appears ‘off the books’ — what statists call a ‘black market’ but which is an expression of the irrepressible human desire to arrange their lives to suit themselves rather than those who consider themselves the ruling class.
California is an interesting example of corruption because the government isn’t all that corrupt relative to, say, Illinois, where the government tends to shake down honest businesses. California still has 1910 Progressive government structures that are more resistant to governmental corruption than Chicago. But California now seems to have a high level of private enterprise corruption, with businesses cheating the government over taxes and Medicare and each other via insurance fraud and the like.
A natural reaction to getting your pocket picked.
So, it’s hard to say what will happen with a very high minimum wage. Big companies will have to follow the law, but a huge fraction of small businessmen in California these days are Men in Gold Chains who think laws are only for chumps.
Much as in NAM slims everywhere.
Consider that much of the labor force are ‘undocumented immigrants’ — how eager are they going to be to go to the cops about being paid less than the legal minimum wage?