One of the lines from the song “Delta Dawn” went like this:

“Then a man of low degree stood by her side

And he promised her he’d take her for his bride”

This song came into my head again, and it made me think about minimum wages, which rob the unskilled and the young, trying to get onto the first rung of the social mobility ladder and having higher minimum wages stopping them by having them priced out of the market.

I agree with what Thomas Sowell and others have said about the minimum wage, and it begs the question “Why are teenagers unskilled?”

The answer is not so much skills as it is stunted character development. Would you as an employer pay a high minimum wage for someone of low degree to work for you? Delta Dawn did, and she ended up losing her mind and not getting the love she was promised.

This whole hand-wringing about “minimum wages”, “living wages”, “universal basic income” and similar tripe will continue ad nauseum because this is the nature of fig-leaf Man. If you want things to change in your society or your company, hire for character. It’s easier to train for skills which then produce the results you want. It isn’t “character OR competence”, it’s “character GETS competence”. Get it right!

You’re Welcome!