15/10/2004 9:47:06 am
Reducing Poverty by Reducing Government. Many people are rightfully engaged in a discussion aboout poverty and how to reduce it. Unfortunately, most of these describe the causes of poverty totally wrong, which makes the propsed solutions counterproductive. The blame is often put on the free society, capitalism, and the solutions are often different kinds of more government interference. For example, the Kerry-Edwards economic program contains quite a few such proposals, such as raising the minimum wage. In this article, George Reisman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, argues the opposite. He shows convincingly that big government is the cause, not the solution, to poverty. The minimum wage creates unemployment and higher consumer prices. He also shows how licensing and prounion legislation hampers productivity growth - the real source of wage increases - and forces people into jobs they did not choose and into government programs. This is one of the daily articles from the Mises Institute, which in my view is one of the very best daily e-mail newsletters one can subscribe to.
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