Do We Hate Each Other?

In discussions of politics, I always argue for liberty and freedom. Freedom for rational adults to do what they wish as long as they do not infringe on the equal rights of others has been a staple of our society ever since the founders formed our government so many years ago. Although almost everyone believes in liberty as an abstract concept, many seem to loose their faith in the principle of freedom when it is applied to practical matters.

Ludwig vonMises said, "Freedom allows men to do the right thing and to do the wrong thing." Most of us realize this without even thinking about it. The problem that interventionists and statists everywhere seem to have is a lack of faith in humanity to do the right thing when given the choice in a state of unadulterated liberty.

People are, by nature, compassionate beings. It is true that our first instincts are toward self-preservation, but, once our own requirements for survival are fulfilled, it is human nature to turn our affection towards our fellow man. Many would say that this assumption gives humanity far too much credit, but common experience would tend to show otherwise. In fact, when we think about a spouse's care for his or her partner, or a parents love for their child, we see every day acts of love and kindness that would dispute the presumption of man's self-love as his most basic instinct.

It is true that humans have an indomitable will to survive embedded within us; this desire, no doubt, has been placed in us all by nature for our own good. However, when it comes to our loved ones, and in fact to most all of our fellow man, we often act in opposition to our own self-interest. We can easily think of the husband that would step in front of a bullet for his wife, or a mother who would go without food so that her child could be fed. These are acts of self-denial rather than self-love, yet we consider it so much a part of human nature for people to act in this way, that the case of a husband who protects his wife seems to pass without any particular notice, while the husband that would abuse his wife draws the ire of everyone. It is not the mother that goes hungry for her children that garners recognition; rather it is the mother that lets her children starve that draws our attention.

One might argue that while certainly this self-denial is in human nature to preserve our loved ones and those close to us, we often do not show the same type of behavior to strangers or even neighbors. People that promulgate such opinions would have us believe that humans are calloused to the suffering of our fellow man-that, in fact, we do not care about another's misfortune so long as it does not directly affect us. We don't care about the grocer that can't make it to work because of car trouble unless he closes the market and we cannot get any bread. Then and only then will we offer him a ride. We don't care about the poor person without insurance so long as they are not seen in front of us in the emergency room. Then and only then do we think about how insurance could be offered to everyone. We do not think of the drug addict in the ghetto unless they come and rob us for drug money, and on and on this way of thinking goes. However, this is clearly not the case.

In fact, people show self-hate all the time when it would be easier to practice self-love. Every act of kindness towards a stranger deprives the person giving the favor of whatever resources or time they would have retained if they had not given it to the person in need. A person that drops a dollar in a collection plate is showing a small degree of self-loathing. That dollar could have been spent on them or their family, but they were glad to give it, because they were happy to help their fellow man once their own basic needs were provided for.

The person who stops to offer a ride to a young woman whose car has broken down along the highway does the same thing. Though they may not take any alternate path into town or give the girl any money directly, the time that it takes to stop and pick the person up in itself could be considered a resource. It could have spent on a million different selfish purposes, yet the person is glad to trade the time for the benefit of the one who he bestows it upon. In this way, this person, too, has shown a certain disdain for themselves since, surely it requires less effort to pass by without stopping than to pull over to the side and offer a ride, no matter how inconsequential this small action may seem.

We see selfless acts of kindness like this everywhere and-again-we see it as human nature. The good Samaritan rarely is taken note of. In fact, the person that would take advantage of a fellow human being in the situation described above is considered the rare bird. We never read in the newspaper of the man who gives the young girl a ride into town or calls for help, but if a man or group of men were to set upon the hapless lass and rob her or rape her, this would make the evening news.

It is true that stories of violence and gore make the news because the sensational nature of these crimes sells newspapers and draws good ratings. This also, though, is an affirmation of the goodness of mankind to one another. Violence and gore are sensational; that should give us reason for hope. If violence and gore were the norm, they would be considered mundane, nothing to take note of; what makes them sensational is the fact that they are rare.

Why, then, do people say that humans are generally selfish, greedy, and uncaring, then turn to the news reports of violence and debauchery to provide proof for their theory? It is self- contradictory.

Let us consider an example. What would you do if a woman were to knock on your door at 2:00 am claiming that a man was trying to kill her, and immediately you saw a man just afar off running towards your door with a knife, all the while screaming at the poor subject in front of you? How many of us would not quickly usher the beleaguered person inside and lock the door in an attempt to save them from harm? We would do so in spite of the very real risk of injury to ourselves. Assuming the person was attempting to hurt our new friend in earnest, he would probably have no better designs for the person that would shield her from his abuse. Yet, we would think it inhumane to not take this risk onto ourselves in order to preserve her. You see, it is not only human instinct to act in order to preserve ourselves. We, in fact, act instinctively to preserve all humanity, often at our own peril.

Our opening statement about self-preservation could be put another way: We always act in the best interests of others unless our own survival is directly challenged by it. Even then, we sometimes put others above ourselves, as is shown in the example above. Simply put, we do not, as a matter of instinct, take actions that will harm our fellow man until he directly challenges our survival.

When it comes to a mutually exclusive decision in which we must harm (or kill) another in order to preserve ourselves, or allow ourselves to be harmed (or killed) at the hands of another and allow them to survive, then, and only then, will we instinctively take actions to harm our fellow man. This is so widely accepted as a principle of human behavior that, in almost any civilized society, the only acceptable reason to kill another human being is self-defense.

Still the argument may persist along a couple of different lines. This hypothetical girl who knocked upon our door, it may be said, falls into the category of the person who we do not care about so long as their suffering does not directly affect us. Once she has woken us at 2:00 am, we then take an interest in her plight in order that we might be rid of the nuisance she has caused by waking us and then resume our preferred activities-presumably that of sleeping.

However, the same principle applies to the young woman on the side of the highway mentioned before. She did not run out in front of our car or do anything that would make our helping her necessary to our own happiness. Yet we still would subject ourselves to the risk that she might shoot us as soon as she got into the car with us, because the overwhelming tendency in our nature is to help our fellow man. In the process, we often expose ourselves to these types of risks, or put these types of possibilities to the back of our thoughts.

However, the chances of this happening, it might be argued, are very small. To give an example that would subject the good Samaritan to a similar level of risk then, let me ask: How many of us would not attempt to help a person that we happened to walk by that was being robbed or severely beaten? Though they prayed not upon our good will-perhaps they were not even aware that we were passing by-would we not still help them as best we could, presumably at a similar level of risk involved in helping the woman who knocked on our door in the middle of the night? Not only would we, but we would consider it inhumane not to do so.

A second line of argument might be made pointing to the severity of the cases mentioned. Of course, it might be said, the majority of us would rescue a fellow man in extreme peril, but, in day to day activities, we show far less concern for the plight of others. Is this true? Hardly.

Think of every time someone offered you a ride when you had no way to get somewhere, picked you up when you'd run out of gas, or gave you a jumpstart when your car battery was dead. Think of every time you dropped a dollar in the collection plate, donated to charity, or gave a buddy an interest free, five-dollar loan he could pay back on payday. Think of every time you bought overpriced sausage for the boy's troop, or overpriced cookies for the girls troop. Think of every time someone donated vacation time to a coworker who had to take time off to care for a loved one, or a time when church families delivered meals to a grieving widow. Think of the millions of charities that exist or the millions of different ways people help each other without ever thinking of themselves.

Every one of these acts is an act of self denial. We cannot help someone else without using resources that we could have just as easily used to serve our own interests. In fact, the phrase used above 'helping someone without thinking about yourself' is redundant in that helping someone automatically means thinking of them instead of yourself, or at least putting your own self-interest aside.

These type of actions are those that we take out of instinct. These are the actions that we take for granted will be performed for one another. Violence, greed, disdain, discrimination, and all the characteristics we hate in humanity-these are not the nature of man. These actions require a specific thought process, a specific effort to carry out, while the actions of human kindness are performed instinctively without thought.

Humans naturally crave peace, not war; harmony, not tension; love, not hate. Adam Smith's famous quote on charity has been referenced in these same pages before, but it bears repeating here. Smith said in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it."

This statement stands up as perhaps the most accurate summary of man's nature in all of philosophy for a good reason, namely that it assesses human nature correctly. We as humans do have in us this nature that makes our fellow man's happiness necessary to us even though we don't get anything out of it other than the pleasure of seeing it. It's called compassion, and it is in our nature. In fact, it is the dominant feature of our nature. The only thing left to do is to start giving ourselves credit for it.

Minimum Wage Hurts the Working Man


Now that the Democrats have officialy taken over control of the Congress, the time is has come, if not already passed, for us to carefully evaluate what effects their proposals will have on the issues they aspire to address. The living wage has been at the forefront of the Democrat's agenda every since FDR initiated the program in 1938 as part of the socialistic government programs of the New Deal. It should come as no surprise that Democrats have stated publicly that raising the minimum wage will be atop the list of initiatives for new speaker Nancy Pelosi's 100 Hours agenda. Luckily, much light has already been shed on the matter for us.

Advocates of the living wage like to grandstand and ballyhoo about corporate giants taking advantage of low-sklilled, uneducated workers by having them work for the same low wages year after year while the company rakes in millions, if not billions, of dollars in profits off of their labor. They pull at our heartstrings with stories of single parents struggling to make ends meet on an income of $10,000 a year or less. How, they ask, can a person support a family, provide healthcare, and feed and clothe a family on minimum wage when it stays the same year after year, while the costs of living continues to increase? Those who promulgate these sophisms are naive at best and malicious at worst.

The facts paint a much different picture about the state of the typical minimum wage worker. Most minimum wage workers are not, as it turns out, employed by large corporations that could easily (at least easily by the standards of those promoting these fallacies) absorb an increase in the standard with nominal effects on profits. (Again, the effects would be 'nominal' as long as they are talking about your money.) Most minimum wage workers are not struggling to support a family on their salary. Finally, minimum wage workers do not continue earning the same low salary year after year.

Advocates of the minimum wage increase frequently paint the image of a giant corporation artificially holding down wages to increase mammoth profits even further. This simply is not the case. The statistics on the matter show that 54 percent of all minimum wage workers work for companies with less than 100 employees and approximately 67 percent working for companies with less than 500 employees. An increase in the minimum wage will put an extra strain on the resources of such companies, making it harder for them to even exist, let alone continue hiring growth.

These facts become even more important when we look further at the hiring practices of small businesses. Research shows that small businesses are more likely to hire minorities, young people, the poor, and people with lower levels of education at the entry level than large companies. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that employees with less than a high school education work in small businesses over large corporations at a ratio of nearly 2 to 1.

So, if these types of laws make it harder for small businesses to continue hiring growth, and small businesses are a primary source of employment for the disadvataged, how do they help the people they aspire to help? It seems that this is the type of logic we must combat when addressing these issues.

The second subject we must address when addressing the minimum wage increase is the identity of the typical minimum wage worker. The advocates of the living wage would have us believe that an average minimum wage earner is a single mom, working hard, but struggling to make ends meet, or some variation on this theme. Do the statistics bear this out? In fact, they do not.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that only 8 percent of those earning the minimum wage are single parents. Fifty-three percent, however, are students living in households that make an average of $52,893 annually-hardly the picture of abject poverty we are so often asked to imagine.

Research shows that age and education are the largest factors determining income. Those under the age of 25 often have not fully developed education and skill simply because of their age or lack of experience. Also, employees without a basic education have been shown to lack earning power regardless of age. The facts in the matter show that the biggest majority of minimum wage earners are either young or lacking in basic education.

Another common fallacy we must address in relation to the miniumum wage debate is the idea that businesses hold wages down, leaving employees to languish year after year at the same low rate while companies increase profits. This is completely erroneous.

In June of 2004, William E. Even and David A MacPherson of the Employment Policies Institute released research they had conducted on the wages of minimum wage workers. Their statistics showed that, in the years from 1989 to 2001, employees earning the minimum wage at the beginning of any respective year received an average increase in real wages of 8%. Employees earning more than the minimum wage experienced a yearly increase in real wages of between 1.5- and 2% for the same period. So, in fact, most minimum wage earners experience much more rapid growth in wages than the average worker.

We really don't need a fancy study to show us this. Just think about it for a second. Many minimum wage jobs are, quite naturally, entry level positions. Furthermore, we have already shown that many minimum wage workers are young people. For many it may be their first job. They have yet to develope a strong work history and may still be developing the most basic job skills such as promptness, ability to follow directions, and interacting with coworkers.

What we know from experience and common sense-and what the statistics quoted above bear out-is that, once a person has shown themselves to possess these basic job skills, and to be an asset to their employer, they almost always will be compensated accordingly. After all, any smart businessman would rather pay a bit more to retain an employee that has shown themselves to possess basic job skills, has been trained to the particulars of the job they are filling, and has been trusted with some degree of responsibility, than hire a new employee off of the street that they know nothing about.

The facts presented thus far should be enough to carry the day in the debate, at least where those engaged in it concern themselves primarily with logic and reason. However, there are always those who cling so tightly to an idea, no matter how flawed, that they are readily willing to go outside of these bounds to show a case, no matter how isolated, where their argument might be valid. At the risk of placing an unbearable burden upon the faithful reader, I here shall be fain to address these concerns also.

One might persist, even in the face of the arguments presented above, that there surely must be some employers who simply refuse to raise wages for their employees, leaving them to suffer year after year with the same low rate of pay while expenses rise. Shouldn't this law go into effect so these stubborn money-grubbers will be forced to raise wages to a decent level for their faithful employees?

First, let us be clear: these cases represent a very small fraction of all situations. In order to answer the question more directly, I will be very clear. The answer is an emphatic NO! The pernicious effects that the law would have on all other businesses far outweigh any possible positive effect for this very minute percentage of the population. Why should we place a burden on 99% of the businesses employing minimum wage workers to force 1% to do the right thing?

If a person does actually find themselves in this situation, the logical thing to do would be to seek employment elsewhere. If they have shown themselves to be a good employee, they should have no problem finding other opportunities where they will be more justly compensated. If they continue to have difficulty finding an employer who is willing to increase their compensation after a trial period of employment, perhaps they should be honest with themselves about the type of employee they have shown themselves to be.

Then again, one may say, an employee may stay in a situation like this because of the fear of starting a new job, or because of an undervalued sense of their own worth, not because they are not a good employee. This may be true, but don't ask the rest of America to accept artificially high wages because of a lack of intestinal fortitude on the part of a very small minority.

One might persist even further, even in the face of the arguments presented above, that surely there are a few employers who refuse to pay employees what the job they are performing is 'worth'. Surely this law would be useful to force these stinkers to be fair with their employees. This thinking is flawed. How could a government bureaucrat sitting in an office somewhere in Washington D.C. know better than a business owner what a job is worth?

One might argue that a hard-hearted, profit-seeking, business owner would not care if he were paying less that what a job was worth. He would not have a problem underpaying his employees in order to increase his own gain. However, this would not be possible even if this were his attitude.

You see, in a free job market, employers compete for employees. If an employee can earn more for the same job elsewhere, they will work for that employer and leave the under-paying employer behind. When an employer is paying less than what a particular job is worth, it will be painfully obvious. He will not be able to retain employees!

Thus it has been said, and I agree, that the term 'underpaid' cannot even exist in a free society. Everyone is free to choose with whom they employ themselves, meaning the arrangement is always voluntary. When one person says, "I am willing to pay X amount of dollars in salary for a person to perform such and such job" and another says "I am willing to work for that amount of dollars in salary to perform that job" how can either of the two parties, or a third party for that matter, then say that one person or the other in the agreement is being 'taken advantage of' or being underpaid? Until we have people holding guns to the head of employees to stay at a particular job, every employee in America is working for a salary they have agreed to work for.

Now this is the one that always gets me. Many of our friends who have no idea about what it would be like to own a business will argue that, if a small business owner is really worth their salt, they will become more efficient and find additional savings somewhere else in the business to make up the difference in the increase of wages. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most business owners are already running their business in the most efficient manner possible. Businesses that are inefficient to start with rarely last very long in the competitive marketplace. The fact that a business has stayed afloat for any significant period of time is, in itself, a pretty reliable indicator that they are running their operations in the most efficient way possible.

Just to be sure, though, let's delve into that realm of the small minority that proponents of these type of interventionist laws always seem to operate in. Maybe in these rare cases, their concerns will prove to have a small degree of validity.

Let's just suppose, for the purposes of the argument, that there were a more efficient way to run a particular business. Let's suppose that this particular businessman was not doing everything he could to keep costs down. He let things go here and there. Now let's say he eliminated these redundancies and tightened up the workings of his operation to become more efficient. He found savings in his business and gained profits that he had not realized in times past. Who should those savings go to? It would be easy to theorize what would be the moral or right thing to do, but let's consider what we would do ourselves in the same situation.

"But," you may say, "I don't own a business. I make a living for my family going to work for someone else every day." Then you do, in fact, make this same decision all the time.

Let's say you and your family have a monthly budget of a certain amount of dollars. A portion of this budget goes towards bills and the necessaries of life, and a portion is left over for leisure. What would happen if you were to find a more fuel-efficient car with the same monthly payment as your current one? Let's say you switched cars and now were paying the same amount towards your payment, but were now paying less for fuel. What would you do with the extra money? How many of us would say to our neighbor, "I would like to donate this extra money to you. I have gone through the trouble of seeking out a better, more efficient car; I have used my own ingenuity and wisdom to save myself money on my fuel, but I will give the money to you even though you continue to drive that huge, gas-guzzling SUV."?

Imagine you have a mortgage of a certain amount of dollars. This item is budgeted into your family finances as a regular item. Suppose you were to research different mortgage companies and find a loan that you could qualify for that would carry a better interest rate than your current loan, thereby lowering your monthly payment. Most of us would make the switch. Would we give away the extra money, or would we keep it to ourselves to provide for ourselves or our families in another way? Raise your hand if you would go to your neighbor and say, "Would you like some extra money? I know I've done all the work to save myself this money, but I would like you to take it and apply it to your payment, and I will continue to pay my same, larger payment." Come on, where are those hands? That's what I thought. You all are keeping that money for yourselves. Don't feel bad, I'd do the same thing.

When we say that businesses can be more efficient to pay the extra money for a wage increase, we are asking them to do what hardly any of us would do in our personal lives. We are asking them to become more efficient in their businesses, then turn and give that money to someone else.

I don't see any minimum wage workers running businesses. I don't see them poring over budgets, analzying margins and trying to find cost savings. Therefore, if a business owners do become more efficient in their operations, why should the savings not go to them or their investors? If they choose to give that money to their employees in the form of a pay raise, that would certainly be their choice, but why should we force them to give that money to someone who has not necessarily done anything to deserve it?

Finally, people will say "John, you said yourself that 8 percent of minimum wage workers are single parents. What about that miniscule percentage of minimum wage workers that are trying to make ends meet for a family on less than $10,000 a year?" Even this last fledgling argument holds no weight.

Statistics show that 98% of people who earn a high school education and do not have a child out of wedlock will stay above the poverty level. When someone is trying to raise a family on minimum wage, it tells me something. There is a 98% chance that this person has done something very irresponsible. They have made the decision to bring another person into this world without the basic means by which to support them. How can we, in good faith, ask the majority of society to atone for the mistakes of a very irresponsible few? Or will these same people now say that, for the vast majority of people, having a child or not completing high school is not a choice?

Let us be clear: there is no scenario under which artificially raising the minimum wage can be seen to have a positivie effect either on society as a whole or, specifically, on low-income workers. I think we have been pretty thorough here in showing that in almost every case, no matter how common or isolated the case at hand might be, (and, unfortunately, we are so often forced to operate in the periphery of society to find the examples presented for a these types of arguments) implementing this law would either be extremely unfair to society, or detrimental to the very goals that the law and those who support it pretend to concern themselves with.

Since the birth of our nation, the one principle that Americans have held in common is that all of us are created equal. However, we make a mistake when we twist these words to mean that we will all acheive equally. We are only equal at the starting point. What we do with our lives will be very different, thus we are not guaranteed equal compensation, equal hapiness or equal portions of anything else in life. The decisions we make along the way will determine what levels of success we enjoy in the different areas of our lives and the area of compensation is no different.

We should not fret, though. This is natural. After all, how many of us would think it fair for an uneducated teenager to earn as much as a well educated doctor? We don't. What we should realize is that those earning minimum wage are only at the starting point of their financial maturity. The great thing about America is that, with hard work and dedication, anyone can advance beyond their current place in society and enjoy prosperity. Thousands before us have done it and thousands will do it from this point forward.

In the meantime, we must realize that we are not all equal. Some of us have put forth unimaginable effort to elevate ourselves to the place we are by way of earning a degree, aquiring a valuable skill, or starting a business. Others of us have taken different paths, with less focus on financial opportunity. Others of us are just at the starting point in our careers. We must realize we will be compensated accordingly.

The reality is that uneducated people, young people, and those with limited work experience represent a risk for a potential employer. What to they have to go off of, in the absence of these factors, to persuade them that this person will be a valuable employee to them? When lawmakers force employers to pay these people more than they would under normal circumstances, employers do not simply continue to hire these people regardless of experience, education, etc. and simply pay them the higher rate. They become more careful. They take less risks in their hiring practices because being wrong is more costly.

When the first entrly level position comes open for a business under the new minimum wage requirements, managers and business owners will have to make a decision. Knowing that they will have to pay this employee at a significantly higher rate, will they give the job to an at-risk employee-someone without a basic education, someone without experience, someone without a strong job history-or will they simply hire someone that already has some of these qualities. Might they try to make it with the employees that they already have and simply not hire anyone at all? These questions-let alone the answers to them-do not bode well for the supposed 'beneficiaries' of the minimum wage increase.