Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: The static state and the technology of economic reform / Thomas Nixon Carver

Collection:: Economics Books

STATIC STATE AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF ECONOMIC REFORM 33 Again, such an artificial advance in a country to which immi- grants have been coming may, under certain special conditions, be made a means of retarding rather than of accelerating immigra- tion. If the artificial wage scale creates unemployment, and immigrants are discouraged from coming until they actually have jobs, such a measure would practically stop immigration. On this general ground, a drastic minimum wage law, rigidly enforced, could consistently be advocated. If such a law were rigidly enforced, and no one was given a special dispensation to work for less than the legal minimum, then every laborer who could not get the minimum wage would automatically become a pauper. If the resulting large number of paupers of breeding age were segregated and prevented from multiplying, it would tend to thin out that class of laborers, at least by the second generation. In this way, not only would the legal minimum wage tend to become the equilibrium wage, but such a law would prob- ably work eugenically besides.” If the problem of the unemployed can be dealt with in any of these ways, the higher wages received by those who are fortunate enough to find employment may also, in many cases at least, act as an educator to raise the standard of living and thus keep down the birth rate among them. In other cases, especially in the cases of those of lowest intelligence, unless they are automatically forced into the pauper class, the higher wages may merely result in earlier marriages and larger families. If sufficient numbers should react in this way, the numbers of laborers would increase, and the country with a minimum wage law would be perpetually burdened with a problem of artifically created pauperism. In spite of all these qualifications, it is clear that these direct methods of raising wages are permanently effective only on con- dition that some of the original factors in determining the equilibrium wage are so changed as to produce a new equilibrium of forces which will make the legally decreed wage the actual equilibrium wage. It is well to remember that if some of these original factors could be intelligently changed, a new equilibrium and a new equilibrium wage would result anyway, semi-auto- matically, and without direct legislative wage fixing. * The writer has, on these grounds, for many years persistently advo- cated minimum wage laws.

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