Criticism of Maximum Wages
Critics of a maximum wage such as Milton Friedman argue that such a policy would reduce incentive to innovate and for highly skilled workers to pursue demanding jobs. This decline in innovation would be problematic as innovation is one source of economic growth.
Austrian economists and Libertarian think-tank from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, argue that inflation is not caused by wages but by governments printing money. In addition, they highlight the fact money is a commodity whose value is subject to supply and demand. They argue likewise that the increased demand for labour brought about by a maximum wage will prevent an economy running at its most effective because people will try to circumvent a situation where wages are kept below free-market levels.
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Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism, maximum and/or wages:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
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—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,—s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)