Objective value: The worker's choice, examined from an ethical rather than a praxeological viewpoint, may be entirely rational for a young worker, or one seeking to acquire a first job experience and to "get a foot into the market," or one who would prefer to earn a meager living rather than becoming dependent on welfare or entering the black market (perhaps as a drug dealer)—or for a host of other reasons unknown to us, which the worker is in a better position to judge than we.

Those who ignore the plight of victims of this and similar regulations exhibit what we can call "Marie-Antoinette syndrome." Upon hearing that the peasants had no bread, according to legend, Marie Antoinette declared: "Then let them eat cake!" Louis XVI's pampered queen was not being sarcastic and insensitive, as is commonly imagined, but sincerely believed that she was suggesting a practical alternative. Those afflicted with Marie-Antoinette syndrome believe that the poor have the same range of available options as the more affluent; consequently, they assume, we can prohibit them from making choices in the free market without inflicting great harm.

There is one germ of truth in the assertion that "no job at all would be better than working for X dollars an hour": a job has little or no value in itself. What is primarily valuable to most workers is not jobs, but earnings and what can be purchased with earnings (p. 4.4:23). Accordingly, we turn to the much-noticed and little-understood phenomenon of inflation.

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