The communist leaders of the thankfully extinct Soviet Empire loved May Day. The first day of the fifth month featured boisterous proclamations about “worker solidarity” and huge parades of military hardware in their capital cities. We were all supposed to be impressed or fearful, or both, I guess. I was neither because I assumed that their toys and their workers worked no better than their barren, low-wage, socialized economies.
Article by Lawrence W. Reed from FEE.
May Day is not to be confused with the well-known distress call, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! That was invented a hundred years ago by Stanley Mockford, a radio operator at a London airport. He was assigned to come up with a word that would be clearly and widely understood in the event of an emergency. It worked.
May 1 is a national holiday in many countries, where it is often known as International Laborers Day. In 1889, the Marxist Socialist International Congress chose this date to annually express its “solidarity” with workers (which is just about everybody, though that’s not what they meant).
So it is that May Day is associated with people who work—particularly those who work for wages. That makes today a good day for a refresher on wages and what makes them rise or fall. Few publications in FEE’s history more plainly fulfilled that charge than a 1957 essay by F. A. (“Baldy”) Harper titled “Why Wages Rise.” (Harper served on the FEE staff in the 1950s before founding the venerable Institute for Humane Studies.)
While I strongly recommend you read Harper’s classic (you can do so in an evening), I understand that some might prefer a condensed version. Toward that end, I offer the following summary, salted with Harper’s words as well as my own observations:
Wages can only be paid out of production
No production, no sales, no income, no wages. This puts both a ceiling and a floor under wages in a free and competitive labor market. Employers cannot pay workers more than the value of what they produce as evidenced by consumer purchases, and no employer will retain his workers if he pays less than what others find it profitable to offer them. Harper’s essay includes (on p. 18) a famous chart that illustrates how rising wages paralleled rising productivity over a fifty-year period in the last century.
Anything that hinders production will ultimately translate into lower wages
How can it be otherwise? The primary reason wages are low in underdeveloped countries is productivity. The average worker in Bangladesh labors hard and for long hours yet earns much less than his counterpart in Canada or in the United States or in Great Britain. The poorest Bangladeshi digs a foundation for a house with a mere shovel; a Canadian middle-class worker does it with heavy machinery in a fraction of the time.
Capital investment per worker is the most powerful driver of wages in the long run
Think of capital as the backhoe that enables that Canadian worker to dig foundations so quickly and efficiently. The financing of such capital investments is made possible by people who save (and whose savings are then loaned to private enterprises). The richest, best-paying economies of the world are, not surprisingly, the ones where capital—its accumulation and deployment—is safe from confiscation through high taxation, over-regulation or nationalization.
Wages are the price of labor
As such, they are subject to what economists call the Law of Demand: At higher prices, less will be demanded while at lower prices, more will be demanded. If, for example, wages are mandated to rise by political edict, workers at the lower end of wage scales get hurt the most. You cannot make anyone worth a certain amount by making it illegal to pay him any less—a truth that minimum wage advocates choose to ignore.
Unions are not the reason for higher wages
It is true that unions can force wages up for some, but without increases in productivity and production, those higher wages for some produce lower wages (and fewer job opportunities) for others. Harper looked at the American economy in the 19th Century’s second half and concluded, “If unions were presumed to be the cause of rising wages, one would expect wages to have been at their lowest point—and to have remained at about the same low point—from 1855 to about 1900, when union membership was negligible. Fact: Wages rose appreciably over the period. They doubled within a man’s working lifetime.” Wage rates in general “show no clear response whatever” to changes in labor union membership. Indeed, about 94 percent of today’s private sector workers belong to no union at all yet they are among the best-paid workers in the world.
In Why Wages Rise, Harper includes a discussion of inflation. That may sound dated to readers now, but the Federal Reserve’s massive boost in America’s money and credit supply since January 2020 (nearly 30%) may soon make soaring prices a reality again. Harper offers insights about the effects of “the inflation tax” on wages that I hope the reader will want to explore for himself.
There, in a nutshell, are some of the important points of F. A. Harper’s famous essay. You owe it to yourself on May Day, and every day, to know what makes the difference between wealth and poverty for the workers of the world.
For additional information, see:
- Happy Capital Day! by Lawrence W. Reed
- Comedy at the Bargaining Table by Sven Rydenfelt
- Why Wages Used to be So Low by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
- Henry Hazlitt on Unions by Charles W. Baird
- Why Wages Rise by F. A. Harper
Big Pharma’s Five Major Minions that Everyone, Vaxxed or Unvaxxed, Must Oppose
This is not an “anti-vaxxer” article, per se. It’s a call for everyone to wake up to the nefarious motives behind vaccine mandates, booster shots, and condemnation of freedom.
The worst kept secret in world history SHOULD be that the unquenchable push for universal vaccinations against Covid-19 has little if anything to do with healthcare and everything to do with Big Pharma’s influence over the narrative. Unfortunately, that secret has stayed firmly hidden from the vast majority of people because of the five major minions working on behalf of Big Pharma.
What’s even worse is the fact that Big Pharma’s greed is merely a smokescreen to hide an even darker secret. We’ll tackle that later. First, let’s look at the public-facing ringleaders behind the vaccine push, namely Big Pharma. But before we get into their five major minions, it’s important to understand one thing. This is NOT just an article that speaks to the unvaccinated. Even those who believe in the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines must be made aware of agenda that’s at play.
Let’s start with some facts. The unvaccinated do NOT spread Covid-19 more rampantly than the vaccinated. Even Anthony Fauci acknowledged the viral load present in vaccinated people is just as high as in the unvaccinated. This fact alone should demolish the vaccine mandates as it demonstrates they have absolutely no effect on the spread of the disease. But wait! There’s definitely more.
This unhinged push to vaccinate everyone defies science. Those with natural immunity may actually have their stronger defenses against Covid-19 hampered by the introduction of the injections which fool the body into creating less-effective antibodies. Moreover, the push to vaccinate young people is completely bonkers. The recovery rate for those under the age of 20 is astronomical. Children neither contract, spread, nor succumb to Covid-19 in a statistically meaningful way. What they DO succumb to more often than Covid-19 are the adverse reactions to the vaccines, particularly boys.
All of this is known and accepted by the medical community, yet most Americans are still following the vaccinate-everybody script. It requires pure cognitive dissonance and an overabundant need for confirmation bias to make doctors and scientists willingly go along with the program. Yet, here we are and that should tell you something.
Before I get to the five major minions of of Big Pharma, I must make the plea for help. Between cancel culture, lockdowns, and diminishing ad revenue, we need financial assistance in order to continue to spread the truth. We ask all who have the means, please donate through our GivingFuel page or via PayPal. Your generosity is what keeps these sites running and allows us to expand our reach so the truth can get to the masses. We’ve had great success in growing but we know we can do more with your assistance.
Who does Big Pharma control? It starts with the obvious people, the ones who most Americans believe are actually behind this push. Our governments at all levels as well as governments around the world are not working with Big Pharma. They are working for Big Pharma. Some are proactive as direct recipients of cash. Others may oppose Big Pharma in spirit but would never speak out because they know anyone who does has no future in DC.
This may come as a shock to some, but it’s Big Pharma that drives the narrative and sets the agenda for the “experts” at the CDC, FDA, WHO, NIH, NIAID, and even non-medical government organizations.
Most believe it’s the other way around. They think that Big Pharma is beholden to the FDA for approval, but that’s not exactly the case. They need approval for a majority of their projects, but when it comes to the important ones such as the Covid injections, Big Pharma is calling the shots. They have the right people in the right places to push their machinations forward.
That’s not to say that everyone at the FDA is in on it. Big Pharma only needs a handful of friendlies planted in leadership in order to have their big wishes met. We have seen people quitting the FDA in recent weeks for this very reason. The same can be said about the other three- and five-letter agencies. Too many people in leadership have been bribed, bullied, or blackmailed into becoming occasional shills for the various Big Pharma corporations. Some have even been directly planted by Big Pharma. That’s the politics of healthcare and science that drives such things as Covid-19 “vaccines.”
Read the rest of this story, but please be sure to donate first if you can.
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