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Civil Liberties
Balancing Freedom and Security Wages Trade Outsourcing Outsourcing – 2 Immigration School Prayer Guns |
Since the 1960's, the U.S. has been plagued by a high violent crime rate. A cursory examination shows that violent crime has not increased uniformly throughout the country. Most such increases have been confined to large urban areas – New York, Washington DC, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, etc. And, in these areas, most of the increase in violent crime has been confined to ghettoes. The result? If we could reduce the number of ghettoes, or their severity, we could dramatically cut violent crime.
Statistics bear me out on this. The homicide rate among whites in the U.S. is about 3 per 100,000 annually – about the same as in Western Europe. But the rate among blacks is about 20 – over six times as high. And the high rate among blacks is solely due to the high rate in ghettoes. So, what causes inner city poverty? Three major factors come to mind. The first (and probably most important) is the low minimum wage. Had it kept up with inflation the past three decades, it would be seven or eight dollars per hour. Had it kept up with productivity, it would be eleven or twelve. Productivity has improved by fifty percent over the past thirty years; the average American's wages should therefore have risen by fifty percent; instead they've stayed about the same. For people at the bottom, it's even worse. The minimum wage is only a little over five dollars per hour, rather than the eleven or twelve it should be. |
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Of course, even if the U.S. had a decent minimum wage, it might not matter. Wage and hour laws, environmental protection laws, worker safety laws – they've all become voluntary. As long as a corporation can move plants to Mexico, or Vietnam, or China, they don't have to obey any of the laws or regulations the U.S. has adopted.
(The ability to move plants to high-wage countries such as Japan or Germany, or to compete against those countries, is good – it means competing on quality or productivity. Competing against low-wage countries just becomes a contest in who can lower wages or safety or environmental standards the most.) And just in case there are jobs that can't be shipped overseas, or filled at the low minimum wage, we have open-door immigration. Bring in workers from Mexico or some other corrupt, dictatorial, poverty-stricken nation – people who are willing to live in ghettoes and work for next to nothing, in hopes their children or grandchildren might have a decent life. So these are the three factors – a low minimum wage, trade with low-wage countries, and open-door immigration. But there is a fourth – the War on Drugs. After creating these ghettoes, where it's impossible to earn a decent living (or, often, to earn a living at all), we then tell their residents "you can become incredibly wealthy selling illegal drugs." No wonder so many of them risk their lives to do so. This is why the primary sellers of drugs are usually ghetto dwellers, but the primary users are often wealthy suburbanites. The latter have money; the former need it. The bottom line? I recommend four measures: Restricting trade with low-wage countries; Restricting immigration; Scaling back the War on Drugs Top |