Coyote Blog

Chicago has become the latest city to try to impose special wage requirements solely on one sector of one industry, ie on big-box retailers like Wal-mart.  One wonders how anyone can bend the notion of "equal protection" to support this kind of hash, but rather than again refuting this silliness for about the 89th time on this blog, I will leave it to Cafe Hayek and Russel Roberts.  I particularly liked the way he rewrote the story for the Chicago papers:

Imagine a different world. A world where the City Council was blamed for the
failure of Wal-Mart and Target to pay a decent wage. Here's how the story might
read:

After years of disastrous decisions in running the public
schools, it has become clear that Chicago's City Council has failed the children
of the Chicago area. After attending these mediocre schools, many children of
the city have inadequate skills to be successful in the labor
market.

"Something must be done," declared Ald. Johnson. "If we had
decent schools, we wouldn't have this problem and people could live on the money
they made."

Johnson has proposed a bill that would require all Chicago
City Council members and teachers and administrators in the Chicago school
system to pay a special tax. The proceeds of the tax would help provide workers
in the member's district with a living wage.