[ad_1]
Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, is not one to mince words when it comes to corporate greed. On Wednesday, the presidential candidate attended a Walmart shareholders' meeting and criticized the company's executives for allegedly paying "starvation wages", as well as for his "grotesque" greed.
As my colleague Tom Rogan has already noted, Sanders' attacks on Walmart are exaggerated and largely unfounded. The company employs millions of people at a wage well above the minimum wage and provides a public service by making so much affordable. However, the biggest problem of Sanders' war against Walmart is not that his critics are disappointed; it is that the socialist solutions of the senator are much worse. As history should have taught us at that time, they would destroy the blue-collar workers for whom he claims to fight.
Take, for example, Sanders' fight for a mandatory federal minimum wage of $ 15, the policy he used for most of his speaking time at the Wednesday meeting to promote. At first glance, this seems to benefit the workers. But think about it. Walmart currently offers a wide variety of low-skilled jobs: office workers, cashiers, managers and workers. Many of these jobs are already on the road to automation and nothing will get them there faster than a sudden 50% or 75% increase in the cost of labor for all. low-skilled workers.
Consider McDonalds. This company, which is behind the fast food sector, revolutionized it once again by introducing automated control kiosks in a third of its sites, replacing many cashier jobs. There is little doubt that if the dream of a minimum wage of $ 15 per Sanders becomes a reality, doubling the current rate, employers would speed up this process. Computers do not call ill or miss their shifts. They do not require health insurance or retirement. And not only do they require more modest long-term investments, but the money you invest in it does not end up being leaked into the coffers of the IRS and the social security program.
Empirical evidence confirms this intuition: for example, a study conducted in 2017 found that a minimum wage of US $ 15 "increases the likelihood that low-skilled workers in automatable jobs will become unemployed jobs or be used in less efficient jobs ". Walmart workers. They will just hasten the moment when their current job no longer exists.
Sanders's betrayal of his working-class supporters does not stop there. The senator has long advocated "a free college for all" – a plan to make public colleges free and not to pay tuition. Yet, with the exception of a few workers who have the financial leeway to go back to school, it will not make it easier to work- Instead, they should raise their taxes so that the rich can go to college.
The Brookings Institution has found that a free college would greatly benefit the wealthiest in society, who are more likely to go to university and more into debt. Unsurprisingly, students from high-income families would receive "24% more tuition fee elimination than students in the bottom half of the income distribution." It does not help Walmart workers or their families. In fact, it leaves them relatively less well off.
Faced with a housing crisis, Sanders is adopting backward rent control policies that have made urban housing so expensive. Almost all economists agree that arbitrary price controls only make housing affordable for a few privileged and, in the long run, limit the supply of new housing by discouraging construction, ultimately resulting in soaring rents (with the exception of those fortunate leases) and aggravate the crisis. And this has been the experience of cities like New York and San Francisco, and everywhere else we have tried to control rents. If Sanders really cares about the Walmart workers, he should stop trying to increase his rents.
It's the same with Sanders' protectionist trade policies. He describes his approach as a "struggle for the workers", but tariffs and other barriers to trade almost always destroy more jobs than they create, and usually drive up price for consumers. At the present time, even many American workers – like Walmart employees – are able to offer an increasingly important quality of life, largely thanks to relatively low and falling prices. constant products like dishwashers, grills and microwaves. as well as smartphones and other electronic devices. The backward approach to Sanders' trade, sadly shared by President Trump, tends to drive up prices and hurt ordinary workers and consumers.
This does not mean that Sanders' concern is not sincere. But he seems helpless to learn from the terrible socialist record demonstrated by all the policies he advocates.
[ad_2]
Source link