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Canada is in the middle of a hot debate on minimum wages. Based on polls, a minimum wage hike is favoured by about two-to-one. Most say it’ll benefit the economy.

But business lobby groups are vociferously opposed. They describe a no-growth economy where a dollar in higher wages requires a dollar cut from working hours. In that vindictive world workers can’t win. So don’t try.

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Instead, business groups say tax cuts will cause them to hire workers. It’s never really explained how a fatter bank account causes a business owner to hire. Why not spend the tax cut on a Caribbean vacation or a new BMW? We don’t know.

One thing is certain. A business will hire more workers when making more money requires more workers. That usually has something to do with customers.

Economists have been saying this for centuries. Over 250 years ago in The Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith observed that “consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.” Amid the 1930s Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote that “consumption—to repeat the obvious—is the sole end and object of all economic activity.”