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How about increasing wages to promote more consumer spending? Henry Ford-- a literal Nazi-- of all people, knew this!
Henry Ford paid those high wages to his own staff. He did not prevent any other local companies from also paying low wages.
So Ford’s strategy had a significant advantage over minimum wage laws, in that his strategy didn’t destroy any jobs.
When you increase minimum wage, there is a sliver of the market that gets shut down: the set of jobs that made sense between the old minimum and the new minimum. Those are jobs that people were happy to work, but which they aren’t allowed to any longer. Those people are now out of a job.
When Henry Ford decided to pay his own workers well, he did so with his own money, and in a way that didn’t break anyone else’s existing economic arrangements.
In other words, he didn’t violate anyone’s consent in order to enact his version of economic activism. This matter of consent is the key difference between the actions of a private entity, and the actions of a government.
Those are jobs that people were happy to work, but which they aren’t allowed to any longer. Those people are now out of a job.
Happy to work starvation wages? Are you high? Desperate, the word you are looking for is desperate enough to work for starvation wages.
I swear this supply side fanfic is so out of touch with reality it would be laughable if I didn't realize people actually try to set policy based on it.
That's complete and utter BS. Spain has risen the minimum wage from 735€ (2018) to 1080€ (2023) and unemployment has gone down. And if the raise in minimum wage is the reason you have to close your business you weren't having a benefit on your customers but on your workers. And that has another very different name.
unemployment has gone down. And if the raise in minimum wage is the reason you have to close your business
... Or the complete opposite. Now that there's increased costs to paying workers, you raise prices to cover that. And because you've raised prices people who were okay living before "jobless" could no longer live comfortably and now have to return to the workplace to make money to make up the difference in costs.
if the raise in minimum wage is the reason you have to close your business you weren't having a benefit on your customers but on your workers
I'd say if the customers were buying what you were selling, then it was of benefit to them too
That would be a benefit FOR your customers. A business has to benefit FROM the customers, not from the workers.
There was no set minimum wage and companies at the time were against increasing it, until Ford set the precedence and the rest followed suit. He was the trend setter.
When you increase minimum wage, there is a sliver of the market that gets shut down: the set of jobs that made sense between the old minimum and the new minimum
Makes sense but...
Those are jobs that people were happy to work, but which they aren’t allowed to any longer. Those people are now out of a job.
Yes, I'm sure people were sad to see their old workplaces shut down who provide poor pay and toxic work environment, instead of moving to better alternatives!
If there were better alternatives they would have already moved to it. Being forced to move to something better is only better in the eyes of the person doing the forcing.
Consent is important.