Minimum Minority Hiring Laws

I commented earlier in the week on a recent Thomas Sowell column that argued against the minimum wage. It turns out that Sowell has written a second column in the same vein, only this time from a more historical and political perspective. It was interesting to learn that, only a few decades ago, the effects of artificially high labor prices on the labor market were better understood by non-economists than they apparently are now.

The below culminates a short list of examples of minimum wage laws designed to keep ethnic minorities out of labor markets:

Some supporters of the first federal minimum wage law in the United States -- the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 -- used exactly the same rationale, citing the fact that Southern construction companies, using non-union black workers, were able to come north and under-bid construction companies using unionized white labor.

These supporters of minimum wage laws understood long ago something that today's supporters of such laws seem not to have bothered to think through. People whose wages are raised by law do not necessarily benefit, because they are often less likely to be hired at the imposed minimum wage rate. [bold added]

Sowell is agruably being charitable in calling the above consequence "unintended", but give him credit for bringing the issue to the attention of at least one black politician, a member of the Black Congressional Caucus. (His conversation ended soon after the questions became a bit too pointed.)

-- CAV