Work Has No Value

... or at least that's what we seem to be saying with the $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles and similar crazy increases elsewhere. It's all false.

Many times at Catholic Charities I ran into people, almost all men, who just wanted a job. They didn't care if it paid $7 an hour, they just wanted to work and be useful and have a purpose. They would have been willing to live 10-to-an-apartment if only they could show that they were earning their own way.

Here's my prediction for the future in LA: As the minimum wage rises, low-income workers will be laid off, perhaps to be replaced by machines, perhaps to be replaced by sheets of plywood nailed to the outside of shuttered businesses. The progressives who dominate LA will want to help and will create make-work public jobs programs. In order to fund these, the government will borrow money. After a while, the city will go bankrupt.

All through this process, a basic, masculine need will go unfulfilled - the need to work at something meaningful.

We'd be much better off reducing the minimum wage than increasing it.