I have been working on my sister-in-law’s 1933 Ford Flathead Coupe with my brother Dan. It sat in a barn for about 20 years and had a stuck motor. It now runs. The Flathead lives again! It only took us about two weeks of greasy work.

Most of that time I spent looking for the wrench I had just laid down somewhere. I will finish writing this piece when I find my coffee cup.

I have reached the point where I forget most of what I know. This is a little reminder for those of you like me that forget everything. This is a reminder about the old demand and supply curve.

For any given supply on the market there is a price that will clear that supply. Which is to say that if you have a country with unskilled labor, some higher price per hour of pay will put them all to work. (Unless you have a government handing out free money for just breathing but no government would be that stupid would they.)  

So if you want all unskilled people to earn enough money to have a decent life all you have to do it restrict their numbers and after a time their wages will go up to do that. And the really neat thing is that after a time many of those people will naturally acquire higher levels of skills and go on to better and better economic achievement. Pay would shift from the top levels to more of the bottom levels, which is what everyone seems to want because the super wealthy seem to have a pretty good share of the wealth.

If you want poor people to have an opportunity for a better life for them and their children all you have to do is restrict the supply on the market. If we close our borders for a few years to unskilled labor, wages for unskilled workers will go up.

So why is it that our political leaders do not do this. It must be because they are really, really stupid or some people want really cheap unskilled labor. It confounds me that this restriction at our borders cannot be done.

It must be that most of the Democrats and most of the Republicans simply do not want this restriction done. So all this flap in the news about higher minimum wages is just smoke: It is both willfully and intentionally stupid, or our leaders are convinced that voters are so forgetful, they can feed us this line of nonsense.

I have lost my coffee cup again under all my reminder notes so I will stop writing now and go look for it.

Gary Pichon

Marble Hill