The Theory of Money and Credit - Ludwig von Mises [200]
Wage rates are a market phenomenon, are the prices paid for a definite quantity of labor of a definite quality. If a man cannot sell his labor at the price he would like to get for it, he must lower the price he is asking for it or else he remains unemployed. If the government or labor unions fix wage rates at a higher point than the potential rate of the unhampered labor market and if they enforce their minimum-price decree by compulsion and coercion, a part of those who want to find jobs remain unemployed. Such institutional unemployment is the inevitable result of the methods applied by present-day self-styled progressive governments. It is the real outcome of measures falsely labeled prolabor. There is only one efficacious way toward a rise in real wage rates and an improvement of the standard of living of the wage earners: to increase the per-head quota of capital invested. This is what laissez-faire capitalism brings about to the extent that its operation is not sabotaged by government and labor unions.
We do not need to investigate whether the politicians of our age are aware of these facts. In most universities it is not good form to mention them to the students. Books that are skeptical with regard to the official doctrines are not widely bought by the libraries or used in courses, and consequently publishers are afraid to publish them. Newspapers seldom criticize the popular creed because they fear a boycott on the part of the unions. Thus politicians may be utterly sincere in believing that they have won "social gains" for the "people" and that the spread of unemployment is one of the evils inherent in capitalism and is in no way caused by the policies of which they are boasting. However this may be, it is obvious that the reputation and the prestige of the men who are now ruling the countries outside the Soviet bloc and of their professorial and journalistic allies are so inseparably tied up with the "progressive" doctrine that they must cling to it. If they do not want to forsake their political ambitions, they must stubbornly deny that their own policy tends to make mass unemployment a permanent phenomenon and must try to put on capitalism the blame for the undesired effects of their procedures.
The most characteristic feature of the full-employment doctrine is that it does not provide information about the way in which wage rates are determined on the market. To discuss the height of wage rates is taboo for the "progressives." When they deal with unemployment, they do not refer to wage rates. As they see it, the height of wage rates has nothing to do with unemployment and must never be mentioned in connection with it.
If there are unemployed, says the progressive doctrine, the government must increase the amount of money in circulation until full employment is reached. It is, they say, a serious mistake to call inflation an increase in the quantity of money in circulation effected under these conditions. It is just "full-employment policy."
We may refrain from frowning upon this terminological oddity of the doctrine. The main point is that every increase in the quantity of money in circulation brings about a tendency of prices and wages to rise. If, in spite of the rise of commodity prices, wage rates do not rise at all or if their rise lags sufficiently behind the rise in commodity prices, the number of people unemployed on account of the height of wage rates will drop. But it will drop merely because such a configuration of commodity prices and wage rates means a drop in real