Morning Must-Read: Erik Loomis: Histories of the Gilded Age, Written by Hacks of the New Gilded Age

Erik Loomis: Histories of the Gilded Age, Written by Hacks of the New Gilded Age: “National Review troll Amity Shlaes…

…in lamely attempting to write the “humanitarian case” for repealing the minimum wage, writes her own history of the Gilded Age…. ‘Employers and employees believed that their relationship, the two-party one, was key. Outsiders… were intruders…. The two-party dynamic often succeeded. Because the employee-employer pair set their terms together, they trusted each other…. Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick… shot at the workers…. What is mostly forgotten is that the workers also shot at the detectives. What is entirely forgotten is that Carnegie and Frick did much for workers, precisely because they felt responsible…. In 1905, the Supreme Court supported this old view when it held that New York State might not regulate the hours worked at a bakery because doing so interfered with the sanctity of the contract between worker and employer.’… Equality of contract between the billionaire employer and unemployed worker, now that’s bringing the first Gilded Age into the second Gilded Age! It’s also amazing how workers’ desires for a minimum wage are never taken into consideration…