Take, for instance, the minimum wage. The founding fathers of progressivism at the University of Wisconsin, but also such figures as Sidney Webb, saw the discriminatory aspects of the minimum wage as among its chief selling points.\u00a0\u201cOf all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites,\u201d Webb said of the \u201cunemployables,\u201d \u201cthe most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners.\u201d E. A. Ross, the extremely influential progressive intellectual and author of the \u201crace suicide\u201d thesis (who was particularly bigoted against Chinese labor), explained the benefits of a minimum wage pithily:\u00a0\u201cThe Coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him.\u201d In other words, if you force employers to only pay a white man\u2019s wages, he will only employ white men.\u00a0Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist and adviser to Woodrow Wilson, explained: \u201cBetter that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coates doesn\u2019t mention the words \u201cliberal\u201d or \u201cprogressive\u201d or \u201cconservative. His indictment is aimed squarely at \u201cAmerica.\u201d And as a collective matter, America surely deserves blame for the mistreatment of African Americans in the past. But it\u2019s also worth noting that the more immediate authors of the \u201chalf-assed social contract\u201d Coates rightly denounces are today counted as champions of the progressive movement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As in all other things progressive – it’s better to appear to be doing good than to actually do good.<\/p>\n