Roger D. McKinney lives in Broken Arrow, OK with his wife, Jeanie. He has three children and six grandchildren. He earned an M.A. in economics from the University of Oklahoma and B.A.s from the University of Tulsa and Baptist Bible College. He has written two books, Financial Bull Riding and God is a Capitalist: Markets from Moses to Marx, and articles for the Affluent Christian Investor, the Foundation for Economic Education, The Mises Institute, the American Institute for Economic Research and Townhall Finance. Previous articles can be found at facebook.com/thechristiancapitalist. He is a conservative Baptist and promoter of the Austrian school of economics.
Some readers may have been convinced of the immorality of a minimum wage. Still, they worry about the consequences of not having one. After all, minimum wage laws affect only entry level jobs that require no experience or skills. Won’t the wages of the poorest workers collapse? The question illustrates one of the most important principles of economics, what is seen vs. what is not seen, or the short-term vs. the long-term. The media and the public focus exclusively on the most visible aspects of
As a Boomer, I thought socialism died in its 1989 collapse in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I was wrong. Based on the popularity of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other self-proclaimed socialists, the philosophy has climbed out of its grave and stalks the country with the popularity of zombie apocalypse movies.
Economists have proven that a minimum wage above the market rate for unskilled entry level workers will harm the people that socialists intend to help, but socialists don’t believe them or don’t care. Socialists insist that a minimum wage is moral and should become law regardless of the consequences. In this and this article I showed that a minimum wage is immoral from two perspectives. Here is another.
Few families in the U.S. can afford healthcare insurance. The average premiums for family coverage is about $15,000 per year, about the same as a mortgage in Oklahoma. Then why do most Americans have healthcare insurance? Because their employers pay up to two thirds of the cost.
The minimum wage law is more popular today than ever. I recently demonstrated the racist origins of modern minimum wage laws in the progressive eugenics movement of the early 20th century. Today, socialists ignore their earlier arguments that such laws hurt minorities and insist they help the poor. Every intervention into the market by the state benefits some at the expense of others.
President Biden’s proposal to raise the nation’s minimum wage to $15 per hour has been upstaged by his stimulus and infrastructure spending proposals, but the administration hasn't given up, and some well-meaning but historically and economically naïve Christians are on board.
Prices rising in April this year over 4% from April of last year shocked many people because Americans have enjoyed decades of very low levels of price inflation. Should you be concerned about higher inflation? A one-month rise in prices isn’t a trend and if it were, it is nothing like the 30% increase in 1778 or the 20% rise in 1917. By world standards, the U.S. has enjoyed low levels of price increases.
Not all Democrats have guzzled the Modern Monetary mania that the national debt, currently at $68,400 per citizen or $183,000 per taxpayer, doesn’t matter. To pacify them, President Biden proposes raising taxes to pay for some of his binge spending.
President Biden pointed to the federal government’s promotion of railroads in the 19th century to show that Americans have always supported state-built infrastructure. He said, "Two hundred years ago, trains weren't traditional infrastructure either until America made a choice to lay down tracks across the country."
Congress passed President Trump’s $900 billion COVID relief package last year and recently added President Biden’s $1.9 trillion bill with the approval of 63% of Americans. Why shouldn’t people be happy about getting money they didn’t have to work for?
