minimum wage goes up - a prediction


jts

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It often helps to understand our capitalist economy by contrasting it with the subsistence economies of the feudal era.

You mean where the government kept its boot (or whatever footwear was used back then) on the necks of everybody and bashed their heads in if they complained too much? And sometimes just bashed their heads for the hell of it?

That kind of supply and demand capitalism?

:smile:

Michael

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I said that:

If the economy is in a situation where everybody needs to be employed, then as things get done, less and less people need to be employed. The people whose jobs are necessary for the whole year get to keep their jobs, and the people whose jobs need doing only once, don't.

Expanding on this, if we did have a free market without a minimum wage, we would still have unemployment, and a lot of it. In any economy, unemployment will increase so long as jobs are being completed or destroyed faster than new ones are created. An economy which creates new jobs as quickly as it gets rid of old ones, will necessarily have a fixed rate of unemployment, and it will not be able to eliminate it entirely.

Another cause of unemployment besides a minimum wage law is government interference with creation of jobs. John Stossel did a whole show on that.

Another cause of unemployment is government controlled education which does not teach skills for employment or job creation. Stossel did a show on that too.

Homework assignment:

Listen to some John Stossel shows.

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I'm reading the Game of Thrones series of books right now. That's a feudal society, yes? Kings and queens, lords and ladies, peasants and beggars, and all that. Those poor folks are working really hard to die of starvation while the ruling class puts on weddings with 77 course dinners. But yeah, supply and demand is perfectly balanced!

And yes my interjection of a fictional fantastical world where dragons exist is just as bad as bringing up feudalism in the first place. :smile:

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Those poor folks are working really hard to die of starvation while the ruling class puts on weddings with 77 course dinners. But yeah, supply and demand is perfectly balanced!

The balance of supply and demand is just fine (and I never said that feudalism was capitalism, just that supply and demand are balanced in both), but the distribution of wealth and income in feudalism is really messed up.

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