Casey Lartigue quoted in today's Korea Herald by John Power in weekly Voice. He argues that the minimum wage law harms low-skilled workers and adds yet another unfunded mandate on business.
Some free market advocates take this argument further still ― they say the minimum wage shouldn’t be frozen or lowered, but abolished altogether. “It prices low-skilled workers out of the market with a forced arbitrary wage set by third-party people who don’t pay those wages, while it also adds yet another government-imposed cost on small companies already struggling to survive,” said Casey Lartigue, a former scholar of the U.S.-based Cato Institute and Seoul-based Center for Free Enterprise, and current international adviser to Freedom Factory Co. Lartigue said the government should do less, not more, to help job seekers and the lowest-paid workers get a leg up. “According to some estimates, 75,000 to 100,000 jobs could be created if the Korean government reduced regulations on business and barriers to entry,” he said. “A new report by the World Economic Forum says that Korea’s competitiveness has fallen. The government creating a hospitable environment for business would do more for the poor ― and society in general ― than the constant unfunded mandates on business.”See the Korea Herald for the full article.
 |
| Members of a labor union for part-time workers protest for a higher minimum wage in Seoul last month. (Yonhap News) |