In 2017 the veteran Labour MP Frank Field landed himself in hot water after suggesting that some disabled people should be exempt from minimum wage legislation. Back in 2014 Tory minister Lord Freud faced an outcry as well, after making a similar suggestion. In Ontario, Canada, Charlene Riopelle Badour is making the same case as the two UK politicians. Ontario recently raised the minimum wage to C$14 an hour and removed an exemption allowing certain ‘sheltered workshops’ to employ the disabled for less than minimum wage. But Ms. Badour is not a politician. She is the mother of Travis, a 37 year-old who recently lost his job sorting recycling because the employer could not afford to pay him the legal minimum. “My son is 37. He can’t read or write. He’s not worth $14 an hour, but he is worth something,” she says.
The fiasco illustrates two important and self-evident points in the minimum wage debate. Firstly, the obvious economic truth is that if the marginal costs of employing a worker is more than the marginal benefit to the employer, the worker will not be hired. This means that higher minimum wages will reduce employment, and that it is the weakest, least productive workers who will get laid off. This is so obvious that it is not worth spending much time debating. Minimum wage legislation is yet another example of a regressive policy masquerading as compassionate, progressive politics. In a public debate based on emotion, never facts, basic economic theory goes out the window.
This leads us to the second point: political correctness is now so ingrained that it is preventing rational discourse. The issue of minimum wage is just one example of its corrosive effect on public debate. A couple of other examples spring to mind: the so-called ‘gender pay gap’ can be explained by a number of factors that mainly has to do with different choices made by men and women but is always portraited as a result of misogyny and discrimination; a small uptake of minority students by Oxford university was portraited as ‘social apartheid’, ignoring the fact that fewer students from minority background achieve the required three As at A-levels and that those who do disproportionally apply for the university’s most popular courses. Never mind reality. Facts must be manipulated or ignored to present a story that fits with the collectivist group narrative of oppressors and victims that has regrettably come to dominate mainstream political thinking.
Consequently, those who do point out the facts are quickly labelled as bigots. This has become the go-to weapon the left applies to shut down arguments that counter their narrative. Mr Field faced calls to resign as chair of the Commons work and pensions select committee and Lord Freud was branded ‘offensive’ after their interventions. Sadly, the tactics are effective. Then PM David Cameron quickly clarified the Tory position as ‘of course disabled people should be paid the minimum wage’ and Lord Freud grovelingly apologized. Never mind that in the real world, people like Travis cannot economically be employed at whatever arbitrary level the law stipulates. Grotesquely, policy becomes based on pretence that fits the PC narrative, not facts. Counterproductive policy like minimum wage legislation is presented as common sense and those who point out the self-evident flaws are routinely demonized. In such a climate, only a mother, whose intentions are beyond reproach, has the ability to speak up and point out what should be obvious to everyone. Sadly, a lone voice of reason stands little chance against the chorus of the ignorant, indignant PC brigade. For Travis, a future of unemployment awaits.