Freedom Line Blog

It might surprise many people to learn that Switzerland has no minimum wage, as The Wall Street Journal reports:

Switzerland will decide Sunday whether the country’s workforce should get something it has never had before:  a minimum wage.  On May 18, the Alpine nation will vote on an initiative to introduce a minimum wage of 22 Swiss francs ($25) an hour, a level that would be the highest in the world.”

But note the remarkably low Swiss unemployment rate:

Switzerland has an enviably low unemployment rate of 3.2%, but Boris Zuercher, head of the Swiss labor office, said the proposal would hurt the people it is designed to help if it makes it too expensive to hire low-skilled job seekers.”

So no minimum wage, low unemployment, and a famously high standard of living.  The Swiss example is obviously something that domestic proponents of a minimum wage increase, including Barack Obama, should internalize.

Talk about a New York state of mind.

In the run-up to the 2014 election, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “charts an agenda for Congress that includes extending unemployment benefits, raising the minimum wage, making college more affordable and investing in infrastructure,” according to the L.A. Times.

“Times are now ripe for a renewed and robust defense of government,” Schumer said in a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. And he clearly doesn’t fear any potential downside. “The best way to deal with the tea party’s obsessive anti-government mania is to confront it directly, by showing the people the need for government to help them out of their morass.”

Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The real maniacs in Washington, D.C. are liberals like Schumer who think Americans are eager to be told how government will meddle even more in the economy. Raising the minimum wage in an anemic employment market is a sure way to increase joblessness. But maybe that’s the point. The result is more people directly dependent on government outlays for their daily needs.

And then there is the inflationary effect of government spending on the price of college tuition, as well as the fact that ‘infrastructure investment’ is really code for pork barrel projects channeled to public employee unions.

Schumer’s call for a full-throated defense of government may get cheers in the liberal salons of the NYC-DC corridor, but echoing it would bring swift electoral defeat for his colleagues in more conservative states.

The Daily Express reports from the U.K. today that the BBC is taking a new approach to climate change skeptics: ignoring them outright. Here’s how the paper has it:

THE BBC was criticised by climate change sceptics yesterday after it emerged that their views will get less coverage because they differ from mainline scientific opinion.

In a report by its governing body, the BBC Trust, the corporation was urged to focus less on opponents of the “majority consensus” in its programmes.

It said coverage should not be tailored to represent a “false balance” of opinion if one side came from a minority group.

… Although he found no evidence of bias in BBC output, he suggested where there is a “scientific consensus” it should not hunt out opponents purely to balance the story.

Needless to say, the BBC’s decision strikes at the heart of both scientific and journalistic integrity. These are two fields where it should be universally recognized that truth is not whatever the majority says it is. As long as the BBC is going to be playing this game, however, let’s make it a fair fight. 

Clearly, we should not expect to hear minority points of view on the following propositions, all of which are supported by the vast majority of economists: Free trade is beneficial, the minimum wage is a job-killer, and outsourcing is a positive good. Since the experts have weighed in, we’re confident that the BBC will now get to work suppressing dissenters as a matter of civic hygiene. We look forward to their objectivity.