Joe Rogan 0:00
Hello, freak bitches. So you don’t think there should be any minimum wage at all? No, no, no, none. But so someone working for $1 an hour doesn’t bother you?
Peter Schiff 0:10
Well, I mean, it’s better than working for zero. I mean, people think that, you know, they want to impose their morals and say, well, it’s not right for somebody to work for $1 an hour? Well, you know, people make rational decisions, right? And so if somebody is accepting $1 an hour, and that must mean that nobody offered them $1 50. Nobody offered them $2.
I mean, this is a competitive market. I mean, I know you have an employee over here. I mean, could you pay this guy $1 an hour? Would he work for you? I don’t think so. Yeah, I guess yeah. Because he could get more.
Joe Rogan 0:42
But he’s, he’s educated and skilled. And he’s an engineer, and of course, right. But it’s very difficult for people to get that sort of an education, particularly in his Puerto Rico thought it was a third world environment. Sorry,
Peter Schiff 0:54
it’s not third world. But let’s say some kid came in here that had no experience whatsoever, but he wanted to learn, he wanted to just get you coffee, and just sit around and be around you. He’s not that productive.
Joe Rogan 1:05
Yeah, they use interns, right, a lot of radio stations do that, and they don’t pay them anything. I know, that’s zero dollars. And I can’t do that,
Peter Schiff 1:11
well, then, you know, but maybe you pay him $5. Now, whatever it is, but people people are going to accept a job, that’s the best one they can get. And so if somebody is working for $1 an hour or $2 an hour, by default, I know that they couldn’t find a higher job than that. And the reason is, because they don’t have a lot of skills. But if you don’t have a lot of skills, the best thing you can do is get a job. So you can get some skills.
That’s where you learn skills, you get more skills, you know, there are people that pay to get skills, right, if you go to school, you actually have to pay tuition. If I’m getting paid $1 an hour while I learned something that has value, that’s better, you have people now borrowing money to learn a skill people graduate college and they’re in debt.
Joe Rogan 1:51
That’s a weird argument, right? Because you’re assuming that they’re going to get a skill, I mean, they might just be handling packages and picking them up and moving to another location, even as a whole are well even, that’s like, show up on time, be responsible. So discipline, a lot of work.
Peter Schiff 2:05
There’s a lot of stuff that you learn when you have a job. But the problem with the minimum wage is that the minimum wage basically hurts the very people that it’s intended to help because the minimum wage basically says, if you are a worker, if you cannot convince an employer to pay you 725 or $10 an hour, whatever the minimum wage is, then you cannot accept that job.
See, it doesn’t hurt the employer, it hurts the employee, because it limits his options, it limits his ability to sell his labor, for the highest price that he can get. And it limits his access to the job market, it’s a you know, you can’t get on that ladder, you know, you remove the lower rungs.
And so I can’t climb up because of this arbitrary minimum wage. Because when you pass them in a wage, you’re not going to force an employer, right? If I’m an employer, and there’s a minimum wage of $10 an hour and somebody comes to me, and they can deliver $5 an hour worth of productivity, meaning if I hire that person, that will benefit me by $5 an hour.
I’m not going to pay them $10 an hour, because then I lose $5 an hour, the only way I’m going to hire somebody who’s going to give me $5 an hour worth of productivity is if I can buy them if I can, you know, hire him for less than $5 an hour. So I can make a profit.
So it just it sits on your floor. It’s like if you cannot deliver enough productivity of whatever that minimum wages, then you can’t get a job. And so it’s basically making it illegal for people to work. It is the stupidest law that anybody has ever conceived.
It shouldn’t be obliterated. I mean, there are some countries like Singapore does not have a minimum wage. And you know, the average income in Singapore is higher than it is here. per capita. There’s a lot more millionaires there. I mean, people have no problem. We didn’t always have a minimum wage in the United States.
I mean, this is a creation of government. And you know, but the initial minimum wage, if you want to actually go to the origins of minimum wage in the United States, it was about trying to prevent employers from hiring the Chinese or hiring blacks. They were trying to force the minimum wage as a way to create unemployment.
It wasn’t there wasn’t a a good motivation. But yes, when they try to sell it to the voters, oh, it is all about we don’t want people to be exploited. But you know, it’s not exploitation if people voluntarily accept a job, because it’s the best job they can find. The person who’s offering the best job is not exploiting them, they’re giving them an opportunity.
And if you’re denied an opportunity, I mean, there are a lot of people Oh, great, you know, they’re gonna get the minimum wage up to $15 an hour. Well, what good is it being unemployed at $15 an hour, it’s better to be employed at $5 an hour than unemployed at 15. Because being unemployed means you make nothing,
Joe Rogan 4:44
right. We’re a devil’s advocate would be that if you can’t afford to pay someone $15 an hour, then you probably shouldn’t have employees in the first place. Your business doesn’t function that well.
Peter Schiff 4:52
No, there are plenty sense No, because there are plenty of jobs where you have entry level positions. I mean, if you think that there should be No entry level jobs. I mean, you go back to the days of full service gas stations right back in the day when, you know, you didn’t have to pump your own gas to the case in New Jersey and a few other states.
Yeah, New Jersey, you know, they mandate it, but you still don’t get the level of service. I mean, if you’ve never been to a gas station 40 years ago, not only did they pump your gas, but they checked under your hood, they do tires, your, your, you know, they, they watched your windows, you know, they did all sorts of things.
You know, with your car, they didn’t make very much money, they lived off of tips, by and large, it was the minimum wage that eliminated almost all those jobs, it’s the minimum wage, that is the reason that we have, you know, people self so much self serve. But what happened, a lot of these people, these kids that worked in filling stations became mechanics, because all these filling stations had a mechanic there.
And they learned auto mechanics, and a lot of them went on to own their own gas stations. But of course, a lot of them just this was their work experience that formed the basis for the rest of their life. A lot of young kids had these jobs, summer jobs.
And so there’s nothing wrong. With entry level employment, there’s nothing wrong with people learning the responsibility of having a job of showing up of customer service of salesmen. My first jobs, were all sales, I was selling subscriptions door to door, I was telephone sales of this z channel in California. I sold I was knocking on doors selling cable television, I worked in a shoe store selling shoes. I mean, but hustler.
Joe Rogan 6:30
Yep. But you were talking about you as a young man, right? We think of the minimum wage as applied to adults, adults that have to take care of children that have to well, a roof over their head and food on the table. And you’re saying that that they shouldn’t be having those jobs?
Peter Schiff 6:44
Well, by the time you are an adult with kids, you should have accumulated the skills to earn a lot more than a minimum wage. See, that’s the argument when people say, hey, you can’t afford a family, you can’t support a family on the minimum wage.
Of course, you shouldn’t even be trying to support a family. If you can only earn the minimum wage, you shouldn’t have a family, you you should realize, Hey, I can’t afford a family yet. Let me acquire the skills before I start fathering children, right and getting married. Let me make sure I can support myself.
I mean, a lot of people who are having the minimum wage, they’re living at home, they’re there, you know, they don’t need to pay the rent, they’re living rent free, what they need is a job they need, maybe gas money, get some money, so I can take a girl out on a date.
But I gotta I gotta get some work experience, I got to get out there, I got to know what it’s like to work, I got to see, you know, I got to live in the real world. And that’s what used to happen.
I mean, you don’t have all these summer jobs anymore. Kids don’t have the opportunity. Because the minimum wage has already priced them out a lot of older people, now we’re taking those, those jobs. And so the employment opportunities aren’t there.
But when you just raise them in wage, all you’re doing is raising the bar where you can get your job, you’re not helping people now, there’s always going to be some people that Yeah, there’s going to be somebody who will make a little bit more because of the minimum wage, there’s gonna be those people, there’s gonna be some winners, but you’re gonna have lots of people that make nothing because the minimum wage, and then of course, because you’re driving up, the cost of labor prices are going up.
And so who is affected the most by higher prices, poor people, people who are working on minimum wage, and not only that, you end up with less quality. I mean, you know, I hate it when, you know, I call up a company and I’m just in voicemail, hell, and I’m going from when I would like a real person to deal with but you know, with a minimum wage, those jobs don’t exist.
There’s so many jobs that have been automated out of existence, or not automated shipped overseas, where there isn’t any minimum wage. I mean, that too. Yeah, you end up if you actually get a real person, they’re in India, right? Right.
But we have all these people in America who aren’t working, why can’t they do those jobs? Yes, you’re not gonna be able to support a family on those jobs. But before you even get a family, you can have that job. And then maybe, you know, five or 10 years later, you’ll work your way up the ladder, you’ll get a skill, and then you can support a family.
But nobody is supposed to be able to support a family. And if you try to tell an employer, Hey, you got to you got to pay your fry, cook enough money to support a family, you can’t do that. There’s not enough productivity, cooking french fries, you can’t support a family, family. If all you can do is cook a french fry. You need to learn how to do something else before you can support a family and you can’t you can’t put that on the employer.
Joe Rogan 9:17
Now when you say that Singapore has a higher average income. Yes. Is that because no minimum wage is that because there’s a shitload of billionaires that have moved to Singapore because they don’t have a minimum wage because they’re getting support. Now, lower class people or people that don’t make much money.
Peter Schiff 9:34
The millionaires and billionaires don’t even are really not even affected by the minimum wage. What you’d have to look at is the rate of unemployment
Joe Rogan 9:42
rates in Singapore daily, yes, they have sentence for very rich people to move there. And doesn’t that jack up the minimum wage or not the minimum wage rather the average income?
Peter Schiff 9:50
Yeah. Well, the fact that you have entrepreneurs that are succeeding in Singapore, because they have small government and low taxes means that there’s a lot of competition for workers. And so that’s What bids up wages, right competition.
I mean, I’ve got no problem with a vibrant market bidding up wages. You just don’t want the government to try to artificially force wages above their productivity, right? Because it’s ultimately your productivity that determines your wages.
