Maximum Wage Talk Begins

Image: Rob Chandanais
Image: Rob Chandanais

As I wrote recently for the Objective Standard, if government imposes “a minimum on what employers may pay so as to establish a ‘living wage,’ logically, there is nothing stopping government from also imposing a maximum wage.” Now, just a few days later, Vox has come out with an article, “The Case for a Maximum Wage.” The author, Matthew Yglesias, maintains a fantasy that a “super-tax” (or something like it) might “avoid seriously reducing the number of hours people work.” But obviously a maximum wage—either absolute or de facto via the tax code—would discourage some of the most productive people from producing (or would encourage them to move). I’m reminded of a 2011 union rally in Denver in which some people chanted, “Eat the rich!” Morally, a maximum wage is an outrage that violates people’s moral rights to associate voluntarily and to operate their businesses and run their lives as they see fit.