Via Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek:
Ever wonder why “the government” is so incompetent?
One reason is that morons like this are in charge.
Congressman Faleomavaega announced today that he is calling upon Walter Williams, a nationally syndicated columnist, to apologize for his ‘breathtakingly stupid’ comments about the productivity of Samoan cannery workers.
The comments in question are from this article by Walter Williams about the failure of minimum wage increases in American Samoa.
Unfortunately for (non-voting)Congressman Faleomavaega, stupidity and wishful thinking will not change reality. Unproductive people will still be poor despite his press releases. Minimum wage laws will always increase unemployment despite his wishes. Nothing he can say or do will make a business operate at a loss.
(I notice that Faleomavaega also opposes free trade and consistently lobbies for more handouts for American Samoa. Figures… he is a Socialist Democrat, after all.)
One of the reasons the US (and the world in general) is having an economic crises now is that for too long stupidity and wishful thinking have been the basis for decision making among the political class. Fortunately, those ideas are not sustainable in the long run. Unfortunately strife and bloodshed usually accompany their inevitable downfall.
Let’s hope the overthrow of socialism in the US is as bloodless as it was in the former USSR.
