One effect of minimum wages is that of discrimination against the employment of less-preferred workers. A worker might be less-preferred in the eyes of a particular employer in a number of ways. He might be low-skilled, less intelligent, or a different nationality or race. Put yourself in the place of an employer, and ask: If the law requires me to pay, say, $9 an hour, no matter whom I hire, does it pay me to hire someone who has skills enabling him to produce only $5 worth of value per hour? Most people would view hiring such a worker as a losing economic proposition.

A more insidious effect of minimum wages, as racists everywhere know, is that it lowers discrimination costs. Say a white and a black were equally productive and an employer prefers white workers to black workers. Since he has to pay $9 an hour no matter whom he hires, the cost of discriminating against the black worker is zero. But if it were legal for the black worker to offer a lower price, there'd be a cost to discrimination.

History has seen many calls for minimum wages for the same reason --

to eliminate competition with workers who'd work for less. During South Africa's apartheid era, white unionists argued "in absence of statutory minimum wages, employers found it profitable to supplant highly trained (and usually highly paid) Europeans by less efficient but cheaper non-whites."

The South African Nursing Association condemned low wages received by black nurses as unfair. Some nurses said they wouldn't accept wage increases until the wages of black nurses were raised. These are but several of numerous examples of calls for minimum wages cited in my 1989 book, "South Africa's War Against Capitalism." You can bet the farm that these calls for minimum wages for blacks didn't represent white compassion for the welfare of blacks. Minimum wages are simply one of the most effective tools in the arsenals of racists everywhere.

Minimum wage proponents are to be commended for revealing the underlying motive for behind their plight: making sure that one class of workers doesn't have to compete with another.