Capital Can Substitute for Labor
8 December 2007
Editor, The Baltimore Sun
To the Editor:
Labor-union official Valerie Long asserts that office-cleaning jobs "have to be filled by someone" (Letters, December 8). This mistaken belief misleads many persons, including Ms. Long, to suppose that employers have no choice but to pay statutorily imposed higher wages.
In fact, no job must be filled. Each worker is hired only when an employer gains more from hiring that worker than it costs that employer to make the hire. Even for high-priority tasks, such as keeping office buildings clean and smoothly operating, employers can substitute machines and other technologies for workers. For historical evidence, Ms. Long might explore how a hike in the minimum-wage prompted building owners in the 1960s to speed up their substitution of automatic elevators for manual ones operated by low-skilled workers.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The Baltimore Sun
To the Editor:
Labor-union official Valerie Long asserts that office-cleaning jobs "have to be filled by someone" (Letters, December 8). This mistaken belief misleads many persons, including Ms. Long, to suppose that employers have no choice but to pay statutorily imposed higher wages.
In fact, no job must be filled. Each worker is hired only when an employer gains more from hiring that worker than it costs that employer to make the hire. Even for high-priority tasks, such as keeping office buildings clean and smoothly operating, employers can substitute machines and other technologies for workers. For historical evidence, Ms. Long might explore how a hike in the minimum-wage prompted building owners in the 1960s to speed up their substitution of automatic elevators for manual ones operated by low-skilled workers.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Friday May 16, 2008 at 10:16am