Henry Ford on the minimum wage

Good stuff from a friend

I'm in the midst of an email exchange with some people about minimum wage and justice. I brought up the issue of a 'living wage' as opposed to a minimum wage, which is discussed in this essay by Allan Carlson. It is a good essay, and I think many of the themes will resonate with you. Here is a glimpse of how even the old capitalists believed, at least to a certain extent, that justice must reign in an economy:

In the United States, Henry Ford startled observers in 1914 by doubling the wages paid to married workers, arguing that the worker "is not just an individual....He is a householder....The man does the work in the shop, but his wife does the work in the home. The shop must pay them both." The alternative, Ford emphasized, was "the hideous prospect of little children and their mothers being forced out to work."

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