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The Minimum Wage: Enemy of the Poor

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Whenever politicians wish to score political points, they recommend raising the minimum wage. Parading as champions of the poor and downtrodden, they cry out against all those selfish and greedy employers who are paying less-than-subsistence wages to their employees. The truth is that whenever public officials enact or raise a minimum wage, the only people who get harmed are the very people who are supposedly helped-those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. In every voluntary economic exchange, both parties benefit. Each party to the transaction gives up something he values less for something he values more. If such were not the case, he wouldn't enter into the transaction. The principle applies to labor relations. When an employer and employee voluntarily enter into working relationship, both of them benefit. The employer values the employee's work ...

A Libertarian Visits Costa Rica

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Last spring, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation of Fairfax, Virginia, invited me to participate in two conferences in Costa Rica. One conference was to celebrate the inauguration of a new Costa Rican libertarian think tank named INLAP. The other was a conference of 1,000 international business people who were gathering to make free-market recommendations to the international negotiators of a new free-trade agreement. It has been almost 20 years since I have spoken Spanish on a regular basis. So, in order to get my Spanish up to snuff, I decided to leave two weeks early to attend an intensive, language-submersion course at the Forester Instituto in San José, the capital of Costa Rica. The Spanish course consisted of six hours of Spanish conversation every day. During the four-hour course in the morning, there were two students and one professor. In the two-hour afternoon class, it was only the professor and I. The morning class consisted of grammar, vocabulary, and conversation about ...

Compromise and Concealment-The Road to Defeat, Part 6

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Libertarianism is one of the grandest movements in history. And every single libertarian should feel proud to be a part of it. We follow in the tradition of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, David Crockett, Jim Bowie, William Travis, and so many others who have fought so hard to capture or recapture their freedom. And our principles follow the tradition of such things as Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Those who should feel terrible shame for what they have done to this country are the leftists and the conservatives, who have not only abandoned the legacy and principles of our ancestors but have done so in the name of "freedom." The New Deal. The New Frontier. The Great Society. The war on poverty. The war on ...

Property as the Key to Self-Determination

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In political philosophy, no concept is as controversial as property. It excites libertarians, repulses socialists, and leaves inconsistent statists ("liberals" and conservatives) confused. What is it about property that packs such power? To answer that question, it is important to realize that flawed political philosophy will lead to flawed notions of property. Good-faith socialists (those not motivated simply by envy) ...