Here’s Why Progressives’ Wage Pandering Is a Load of B.S.

Fear of low wages seems to be a driving force behind many a government intervention in the market these days. All three major presidential candidates want to isolate the United States from international trade to allegedly protect American jobs and high wages. President Obama is extending overtime pay eligibility to millions of workers. The Left’s support for coercing workers into joining labor unions is supposedly about maintaining high wages. Minimum wage hikes are popping up all over the country. And the mythical gender wage gap remains a hot topic for misguided faux-feminists everywhere.

But if these Democratic politicians and pundits are really so concerned about wages, why do they do everything in their power to stifle the one factor that we know is tied directly to higher wages? Productivity.

When you get paid a wage, it’s because you’re able to produce something that others value. The more other people value it, or the more quickly you are able to produce it, the higher your wage can be. Professional actors don’t earn millions of dollars because what they do is particularly difficult or labor intensive, it’s because they are providing a service to a large number of viewers simultaneously, and those viewers are willing to pay to see them. Film actors make more than stage actors, simply because their audience is bigger. Their labor is more productive, meaning it provides more value to a greater number of people.

Because business owners don’t like to lose money, no one is going to voluntarily pay you more than the value of what you can produce. Otherwise, they could simply save money by firing you, and that’s what they would do.

This simple truth seems to have eluded many on the political Left who believe you can mandate wages irrespective of productivity. Instead of passing new laws and regulations on employers, anyone truly interested in promoting higher wages should be focused on making people more productive, so that they can earn more for doing the same amount of work.

How can we do that? There are a couple of ways. First, we can allow people to become more productive by increasing their skills and education. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has crushed the life out of primary and secondary education through policies like Common Core and an opposition to meaningful school choice.

And while the president would no doubt tout his support of “higher education for all” as a step towards increasing productivity, what he has in fact done is steered students away from technical and vocational schools, despite a widespread demand for jobs like welders, plumbers, and electricians. Due to the increasing scarcity of these skills, it is possible to make six figures with a two-year degree, but you’d never know it from listening to the elites trying to funnel more and more students into liberal arts colleges, where they will have to take out expensive student loans to earn a degree few employers value all that much.

Another way to improve productivity is to embrace technological advances. Yet, like Luddites terrified of change and advancement, we have seen progressives systematically try to destroy not only the opportunities for innovation, but even the new technologies that already exist. From the Internet sales tax, to the FDA dragging its feet on approving new medical devices, to increased regulations on Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and other disruptive technologies, the government does everything it can to prevent improvements in the way of doing business.

This is bad for productivity. These innovations allow workers to produce more value with less effort, in less time, which in turn will allow them to earn more money. Instead of cracking down on these new technologies, we should get government out of the way and allow human invention to flourish.

So the next time a progressive tells you they’re concerned about low wages, don’t believe them. What they’re really concerned about is protecting the interests of certain groups — labor unions, green energy companies, well-connected incumbents — at the expense of everyone else. (For more from the author of “Here’s Why Progressives’ Wage Pandering Is a Load of B.S.” please click HERE)

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