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In an ideal world the price of labor falls too. You may not be willing or able to hire extra workers at $10 an hour. But how about at $5?
Trouble is, the feds interfere with these self-healing trends. Minimum wage laws prevent employers from taking advantage of low-quality labor at low prices. Unemployment compensation keeps workers from discounting their own labor.
Now let's follow through and extend this reasoning:
Housing and building codes prevent $5 workers from taking advantage of low-quality housing at low prices. But conservatives never follow through to this logical conclusion, or if they do, they never articulate it.
Are they obtuse, or does this conclusion not fit in with some other aspect of their agenda, or ???
"Discounting their labor"? I don't blame anyone for collecting unemployment if they can't find a job that pays more than unemployment. Last time I checked, landlords and utility companies don't discount bills because a person's income went down.
Maybe prices of everything would eventually fall, but in the meantime, a person has to have a roof over his or her head, electricity, and food to eat. Of course, there are those folks who think other folks don't deserve any better than to be living under the over-pass in their car, cooking beans on a camp stove, showering at YMCA, if that's all their low paying job can buy them...they just better get off unemployment compensation and/or welfare.
In an ideal world the price of labor falls too. You may not be willing or able to hire extra workers at $10 an hour. But how about at $5?
Trouble is, the feds interfere with these self-healing trends. Minimum wage laws prevent employers from taking advantage of low-quality labor at low prices. Unemployment compensation keeps workers from discounting their own labor.
What are they - or am I - missing?
From purely Micro Econ 100 point of view your aren't missing a thing. There is no question that minimum wage laws distort market prices and unemployment benefits act as a disincentive to lowering wage expectations.
However the flipside of that argument is that as a result of distortions in the purchasing power of employers that there needs to be a thumb on the scale to balance out those market forces. It is a trade off that this society, like many others, has chosen to take considering the costs of income inequality to social stability (see the history of labor radicalism and the fight for the 8hour day and the minimum wage).
From purely Micro Econ 100 point of view your aren't missing a thing. There is no question that minimum wage laws distort market prices and unemployment benefits act as a disincentive to lowering wage expectations.
However the flipside of that argument is that as a result of distortions in the purchasing power of employers that there needs to be a thumb on the scale to balance out those market forces. It is a trade off that this society, like many others, has chosen to take considering the costs of income inequality to social stability (see the history of labor radicalism and the fight for the 8hour day and the minimum wage).
What I'm completely missing is why conservatives do not apply the minimum wage reasoning to housing, and allowing those $5 workers to be affordably housed.
What I'm completely missing is why conservatives do not apply the minimum wage reasoning to housing, and allowing those $5 workers to be affordably housed.
And I am completely missing the point that you are looking to make or where you stand on the issue in the first place.
What does minimum wage housing have to do with the market forces of labor in particular or markets in general?
In an ideal world the price of labor falls too. You may not be willing or able to hire extra workers at $10 an hour. But how about at $5?
Trouble is, the feds interfere with these self-healing trends. Minimum wage laws prevent employers from taking advantage of low-quality labor at low prices. Unemployment compensation keeps workers from discounting their own labor.
Now let's follow through and extend this reasoning:
Housing and building codes prevent $5 workers from taking advantage of low-quality housing at low prices. But conservatives never follow through to this logical conclusion, or if they do, they never articulate it.
Are they obtuse, or does this conclusion not fit in with some other aspect of their agenda, or ???
What are they - or am I - missing?
You're missing the fact that it's actually liberals that want to end all immigration laws, give work visas to illegals and are promising them quick amnesty --- and why do you suppose that is?
In a normal situation, you would not need minimum wage laws. Supply and demand would put wages where they would naturally land. If there is a worker shortage in some field, employers would have to offer better wages and/or better benefits to attract workers.
However -- currently the supply and demand has been severely disrupted by making the supply of labor unlimited. With ever increasing supplies of cheap labor, wages head downward. In order for Americans to compete with all that 3rd world labor, Americans will need to learn to live on less.
And yes, logically that means building and housing codes have to go too. You actually will see just that taking place in areas of high 3rd world immigration. It's common now to see four or five families living in a home zoned as a one family dwelling. You see lack of enforcement on health and safety codes -- leaking sewage, lack of sewers, because in order to bring in all the ultra cheap labor, the slumlords are also making out like bandits. You know -- all those broken down trailers and slum apartments that no American wants to live in -- well the cheap labor coming over the border wil grab it.
And I am completely missing the point that you are looking to make or where you stand on the issue in the first place.
What does minimum wage housing have to do with the market forces of labor in particular or markets in general?
Where are $5 workers supposed to live? Where can they afford to live? A lower (or no) minimum wage will be a good thing for people who don't need to earn enough money to keep a roof over their head (e.g. teens and Slacker Joe who lives in his parents' basement), but it will be a bad thing for adults who are paying market rents.
If wages should be allowed to fall, so should rents but conservatives somehow have a disconnect there.
In a normal situation, you would not need minimum wage laws. Supply and demand would put wages where they would naturally land. If there is a worker shortage in some field, employers would have to offer better wages and/or better benefits to attract workers.
This was an argument that one of my labor econ professors trumped out the day after discussing the power of monopsony employers. A fellow student and I presented a case scenario that sent our distinguished professor scurrying for an answer that he could not find an answer to.
There are situations where the buying power of employers is so distorted that in order to attract more workers all they have to do is announce that they are hiring. Another ***** in the argument is that there can exist quite a bit of disparity between the higher wages and benefits and their true value, what a firm is actually willing to pay and what they pay in reality because of the imbalance between the knowledge of employers vs potential employees. Classical and neo classical economics assume perfect information on the part of both sides of the market, consumers and suppliers. This is rarely the case.
You're missing the fact that it's actually liberals that want to end all immigration laws, give work visas to illegals and are promising them quick amnesty --- and why do you suppose that is?
In a normal situation, you would not need minimum wage laws. Supply and demand would put wages where they would naturally land. If there is a worker shortage in some field, employers would have to offer better wages and/or better benefits to attract workers.
However -- currently the supply and demand has been severely disrupted by making the supply of labor unlimited. With ever increasing supplies of cheap labor, wages head downward. In order for Americans to compete with all that 3rd world labor, Americans will need to learn to live on less.
And yes, logically that means building and housing codes have to go too. You actually will see just that taking place in areas of high 3rd world immigration. It's common now to see four or five families living in a home zoned as a one family dwelling. You see lack of enforcement on health and safety codes -- leaking sewage, lack of sewers, because in order to bring in all the ultra cheap labor, the slumlords are also making out like bandits. You know -- all those broken down trailers and slum apartments that no American wants to live in -- well the cheap labor coming over the border wil grab it.
Yes, liberals have sold out the bottom half of the working class for political expediency. But if broken down trailers and slum apartments are being allowed to creep in, why not tiny houses on tiny lots that a burger flipper might be able to buy? I can't imagine how any sane person can reject smaller houses while allowing larger, overcrowded, dilapidated dwellings to proliferate.
So slumlords have that much political power?
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