Free to choose: Minimum wage, drug laws and taxes.

Last night I was watching a program on PBS about one of my heroes of the world, an economist Milton Friedman (my other hero is another economist Alan Greenspan). Now you might say ohh boring, but these people are not my heroes because they can lift a thousand pounds, or there charisma overwhelms you, or even that they held any major (suggestive) positions in the world. But they are my heroes because they sought to think differently. There was this story about Friedman on the show. Back in the 1960’s close to the 70’s during Vietnam, Friedman was called in to discuss the possibility of ending the draft. The generals at the time were opposed to that idea, and the lone person in the room with the smallest voice was the only one brave enough to stand up and say he supported ending the draft. Of course the generals tried to shout him down by saying if the army was voluntary, then we would have a bunch of mercenaries calling themselves soldiers. Friedman calmly shot his mercenary argument down by stating his belief that for anything in life to succeed then we must have freedom to choose the best out of the multiple solutions. He looked at the general and said “well, today I have an appointment with my mercenary doctor, oh I’m also going to see my mercenary lawyer and the coffee lady who just choose to serve you coffee, you better watch her cause she’s a mercenary”

Coincidentally the draft was outlawed, a year later. Now, I or Friedman is not saying he ended the draft, because there was a lot of scholars and sensible people who were calling for the same thing. But imagine if no one had stood up and had a dissenting.

With the issue of minimum wage, Friedman had one quote which I liked and basically has impacted me in my thinking about the world and business, “The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit “ - Milton Friedman

That quote is essential in any economy, communist, capitalist, socialist. Even in slavery, with our people being taken from the motherland, but sold by our own brothers. If we had organized as one and fought, i am not saying slavery would have never happened, but I am saying we would have all died preventing it from happening. Let me get off my soapbox now. With minimum wage, if we force employers to pay there workers, an X minimum amount, then I as an employer will only pay my workers X minimum amount because all the other stores are doing the same thing. But let’s say, store M is paying 8 dollars and I am paying 6.50, store M has the luxury of choosing the best candidates that will fit there/industry needs, and I will only receive the scraps of the lot. Therefore I will have to raise pay to 8 dollars. Now, 2 things can happen to select the best candidates, 1. We can start a wage war that will benefit only the workers, or we can give the workers benefits, such as health insurance in order to be competitive. Now of course there are certain abuses that a company such as “our local Bloomington/normal cable company” might take advantage of, but that’s where the government comes in. The government can step in to say, hey, even though there is no minimum wage, but workers must be paid at lets say no less than 10 percent of the cost of living in any politically represented district and raises each year should not be less than that state rate of inflation.

If those measures were put in place, I guarantee you, things for the majority of the population would be 100 times better than it is right now.

In regards to the illegal drug laws, I think it is a very counter productive policy. We send sick people to jail to learn how to be criminals; we put poor kids in jail giving then a felony record, excluding them from any and all meaningful jobs that are available. In my opinion I say decriminalize drug use for user, lower the prison sentence for sellers and also make it mandatory for the sellers to be in vocational programs and increase the sentence for exporters. Lets face it, our war on drugs is not working, with these measures put in place, we could try and rehabilitate the young generation, and truly punish those that deserves punishment.

Everyone hates taxes, I especially hate that guy we call FICA, but they are an essential part of our society as it provides us with a social net. Now, show hands as to who knows what percent they pay if they make X amount of money? If you are like me they you have no idea, you might know your tax bracket, but do you know how to avoid the pitfalls of paying more out of that tax bracket? Did you know that most millionaires pay fewer taxes than a guy who earns < style=""> The government should also be helpful to businesses by allowing them to reinvest any part of there profits back into the country of their origin TAX FREE. My view of government in the economy is that they have only one true purpose, to regulate and NEVER administrate.

Now these aren’t radical or new thinking, these ideas has being around from the reign of the Greek empire, its just that no one has being in a position to implement these ideas, because “the people must be full” not fed.