Tea at Trianon: The Unheavenly City at Fifty

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, November 2, 2020

The Unheavenly City at Fifty

From Thomas Sowell at Claremont Review of Books:

Even those who disagree with Banfield’s prescriptions—on this or other issues—can nevertheless understand the importance of his highlighting inconvenient facts that so many others avoid. Another issue on which many of today’s intelligentsia have not yet caught up to what Banfield said half a century ago is the effect of minimum wage laws on the employment of young people—and especially non-white young people.

Over the years, vast amounts of ingenuity have been deployed by some economists to avoid the obvious fact that minimum wage laws can make unskilled labor too expensive for most employers to hire many inexperienced workers. The result has been disastrously high levels of unemployment for black teenagers, as politicians pass “living wage” laws that make it difficult for young blacks to get any wage at all.

The Unheavenly City produces both data and a devastating graph, showing that, when the federal minimum wage law—the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—was rendered ineffective by runaway inflation during the 1940s, teenage unemployment in 1948 was a fraction of what it later became, after a series of minimum wage increases began in 1950, in order to catch up with the effects of inflation.

Perhaps most telling, there was virtually no difference in the unemployment rate between white and non-white teenagers in 1948. But a huge racial gap in teenage unemployment rates opened up as the minimum wage rate increased. For some people, racial gaps are automatically taken as proof of racism. But was there no racism in 1948? That would come as quite a surprise to those of us who actually lived through that era.

Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free racism in a market where supply and demand set prices, including the price of labor. By definition, racists prefer one race to another. But, like other people, racists tend to prefer themselves most of all. There is a limit to how much money most racists are prepared to lose by discrimination.

Even in South Africa during the era of apartheid, there were some occupations in competitive industries where black workers outnumbered white workers—in occupations where it was illegal to hire any black workers. White employers responsible for this situation might well have voted for the white supremacy laws they were violating. But it cost nothing to vote for white supremacy, while it could cost plenty to pass up opportunities to make profits by hiring black workers. (Read more.)