You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.

We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.

The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are mode.

In order that one industry might grow or come into existence, a hundred other industries would have to shrink.

A Day never passes without some ardent reformer or group of reformers suggesting some new government intervention, some new statist scheme to fill some alleged 'need' or relieve some alleged distress.

The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from someone else.