chuckroast
Established
No one is "entitled" to any particular wage, however desirable that may be. Price is a measure of scarcity and markets are efficient in setting prices. This is as true of labor as it is Ferraris. Minimum Wage is a talking point for politicians who want power by appealing to voters who want things they do not deserve and thus demand government force to make so. When they do this, they simply force companies to make other arrangements ... like using computerized robots for self-service or moving production to other nations where the labor prices are more aligned with supply and demand.
As others have pointed out here, no cost inflicted on a business is borne by that business. It's borne by the workers who get less compensation and by customers who endure higher prices.
More importantly, government interdiction distorts markets and masks market signals that would keep companies healthy. This is what happened to the UK and a good part of continental Europe. When the piper came calling, the locals wanted to blame capitalists, wage disparity, and a host of other imaginary causes when, in truth, what caused it was that businesses in these nations were inefficient and hadn't had to adjust to reality because of various government protections. When the invisible hand of Adam Smith inevitably showed up, it was a hard slap, instead of an incremental correction.
wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
The robots have been mooted several times. They fail every time. For health, safety and cost reasons. They can not be retrofitted into old stores and can only be put in new construction. Hence the cost is too much.
wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
Ok. Lost cause. The Austrian fantasies have no bearing on reality.
Mos6502
Well-known
Never claimed such a thing.
Also a popular talking point for people who've never had a real job and probably couldn't make it through a single shift doing anything actually useful. Conservative talk show hosts mostly.
This is a funny one. Companies do this anyway. No gubmint motivation needed. Expenses aren't generated solely at the discretion of governments.
raydm6
Yay! Cameras! 🙈🙉🙊┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ [◉"]
When visiting my fiancee' in Phnom Penh last April, we ate at one of the eateries (Black Canyon) in the AEON Mall and were served by robots (cute little things).
(not my video)
Coldkennels
Barnack-toting Brit.
The problem with all the "no worker deserves anything" ideologies and arguments is that workers having money drives the economy.
I linked to an article last night that deals with this (Economic growth more likely when wealth distributed to poor instead of rich), but I guess no one bothered to read it. So here's the words of Stephen Koukoulas, from a think tank called Per Capita, lifted from that article:
I, too, run a small business. I'm aware of how tough it is with increased costs - from raw materials, transport, and packaging to labour costs.
But I'm also aware of the fact that if my customers don't have money, they can't buy anything.
This is the thing that is seemingly totally ignored by the Chicago School of "free markets": money needs to circulate in order to keep an economy ticking over, and as Mr Koukoulas pointed out, when money is allowed to accumulate at the top of the wealth pyramid, it is invested, and not spent. Every Pound or Dollar or Yen sat in a bank account, converted into stocks, or used for property speculation is a unit of currency that is actively not engaging in the local economy.
People complain about governments and central banks printing money and devaluing a currency, and true - this is problematic. "Quantitative easing" should be a last resort, but those that complain about it rarely seem to address why it is necessary: money is actively being taken out of the economy and needs to be replaced. And, guess what? It's not the people on minimum wage who are the ones squirrelling it away.
In fact - and this is a bit of a different rant, but there we go - a significant amount of economic strain is being caused by housing costs. I'm not sure what the situation is in the US, but here in the UK, the "buy to let" mortgage was widely embraced, and private landlords sprang up everywhere. Couple "traditional" landlords with the AirBnB crowd, and we really start to have a problem. All of this "buy to let" may have given people who already had a certain amount of wealth a more stable future (a lot of people use these setups to replace or supplement pensions, as a lot of private pension pots are basically worthless), but it also heavily increased house prices through that lovely "supply and demand" mechanism that Friedmanites love to harp on about. And, as a result, rent is now taking up a much larger chunk of people's salary - the Office of National Statistics said it was between 25% and 30% in 2022, depending on region, but Savills estimate it's now between 35% and 42.5% - and we don't have the network of "council houses" (state-built and state-managed social housing) that were built after the war to act as a viable alternative and help force the rents in the private sector down any more.
The free market types will proclaim "well, this is the market at work! The market will charge what the market will allow, and if it is too expensive, people will stop paying and the price will have to be lowered!" But that doesn't happen. People need homes - they're forced into paying rent in one form or another (or they end up on the street and become, effectively, criminalised for doing so). As a result, the huge financial burden created by overpriced housing in the private rental sector actively syphons money out of the economy; if the average person is spending over 40% of their salary on housing, they're spending a lot less on "luxuries" in the high street. And, it's those "luxuries" - whether coffee, or wine, or clothing, or avocado on toast, or film - that keep shops open, that pay people's salaries, and yes, enable more people to buy coffee, or wine, or clothing, or avocado on toast... or film.
I linked to an article last night that deals with this (Economic growth more likely when wealth distributed to poor instead of rich), but I guess no one bothered to read it. So here's the words of Stephen Koukoulas, from a think tank called Per Capita, lifted from that article:
I, too, run a small business. I'm aware of how tough it is with increased costs - from raw materials, transport, and packaging to labour costs.
But I'm also aware of the fact that if my customers don't have money, they can't buy anything.
This is the thing that is seemingly totally ignored by the Chicago School of "free markets": money needs to circulate in order to keep an economy ticking over, and as Mr Koukoulas pointed out, when money is allowed to accumulate at the top of the wealth pyramid, it is invested, and not spent. Every Pound or Dollar or Yen sat in a bank account, converted into stocks, or used for property speculation is a unit of currency that is actively not engaging in the local economy.
People complain about governments and central banks printing money and devaluing a currency, and true - this is problematic. "Quantitative easing" should be a last resort, but those that complain about it rarely seem to address why it is necessary: money is actively being taken out of the economy and needs to be replaced. And, guess what? It's not the people on minimum wage who are the ones squirrelling it away.
In fact - and this is a bit of a different rant, but there we go - a significant amount of economic strain is being caused by housing costs. I'm not sure what the situation is in the US, but here in the UK, the "buy to let" mortgage was widely embraced, and private landlords sprang up everywhere. Couple "traditional" landlords with the AirBnB crowd, and we really start to have a problem. All of this "buy to let" may have given people who already had a certain amount of wealth a more stable future (a lot of people use these setups to replace or supplement pensions, as a lot of private pension pots are basically worthless), but it also heavily increased house prices through that lovely "supply and demand" mechanism that Friedmanites love to harp on about. And, as a result, rent is now taking up a much larger chunk of people's salary - the Office of National Statistics said it was between 25% and 30% in 2022, depending on region, but Savills estimate it's now between 35% and 42.5% - and we don't have the network of "council houses" (state-built and state-managed social housing) that were built after the war to act as a viable alternative and help force the rents in the private sector down any more.
The free market types will proclaim "well, this is the market at work! The market will charge what the market will allow, and if it is too expensive, people will stop paying and the price will have to be lowered!" But that doesn't happen. People need homes - they're forced into paying rent in one form or another (or they end up on the street and become, effectively, criminalised for doing so). As a result, the huge financial burden created by overpriced housing in the private rental sector actively syphons money out of the economy; if the average person is spending over 40% of their salary on housing, they're spending a lot less on "luxuries" in the high street. And, it's those "luxuries" - whether coffee, or wine, or clothing, or avocado on toast, or film - that keep shops open, that pay people's salaries, and yes, enable more people to buy coffee, or wine, or clothing, or avocado on toast... or film.
Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
This inflation is result of printing money to have people not working during Covid. It made corporations huge profits and they inflated prices. Also eco nazis in EU, Canada are driving taxes of fuel high with money collected under taxes been stolen. Last time I checked all of the products people consume are distributed by methods needed fuel. Would it be MIC junk or local produce in EU, Canada.
chuckroast
Established
I suppose you don't understand the concept of price fixing.
Egg producers must pay at least $18 million in damages for price gouging in 2000s that involved conspiring to limit U.S. supplies
According to federal antitrust law, the damages are automatically tripled, bringing the total to over $53 million.fortune.com
There is no such thing - at least not predatorially - unless force is involved. Prices can be fixed, but if they are fixed above the market value of the good or services, it opens the door for a competitor to come in and deliver it at market prices below the current "fix".
It is noteworthy that the only sustained price fixing - at least in the West - has been at the hand of the government which historically fixed the prices for utilities, air travel, rail, and so forth.
No force? No price gouging or fixing.
Mos6502
Well-known
You literally cannot grasp the concept of fixing apparently.
wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
I think that before walking away from this thread because nothing more of use can be said, I will simply drop two little items of truth:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers
“Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.”
— John Ralston Saul
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers
“Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.”
— John Ralston Saul
chuckroast
Established
You literally cannot grasp the concept of fixing apparently.
I grasp is just fine. It's sustainable only by force, whether it's union henchmen beating people to prevent them for working at lower than union scale, or government protecting its pet industries. Price fixing always requires force (or fraud) to be sustained.
chuckroast
Established
And just what happens to that invested money? Does the Big Evil Rich Man put it under his pillow? No, it's used to either fund the growth of companies via equities, lend money to the government, especially, in the form of bond purchases, or to create brand new places of employment as the banks lend that money for new business ventures.
The idea that wealth just "accumulates" at the top is held only by people who've never themselves invested and believe in a net-sum-zero economic world. You literally would have no middle class of any size with a very distinct wealth class.
Oh, and most modern wealth on that scale isn't inherited. It comes from the creation of brand new things people value: Microsoft, Apple, Tesla all leap to mind here.
Our very ability to have this debate here is fundamentally fueled by that ability for wealth to be accumulated. Without it, we'd all still be trading chickens.
This is a chimera. I know plenty of millionaires, and even a few billionaires, and I've never met a single one of them that is "squirreling" away their wealth. It's all being put to use somewhere or another. Your premise is faulty at its core, and your conclusions are similarly faulty.
The houses built after the war were tiny by comparison. Mostly did not have anywhere near the same amenities as a home built today - air conditioning, central heat, many advanced appliances, steam showers, bidets ... the list is endless. What people want is the housing they like at a price they feel they want to pay. This is economic fantasy.
But the real reason for all this is the the reason that folks trapped in your ideological cage dont' want to face. The demand for these finer things is happening because - in the West at least - more people are moving out of the lower middle classes into the upper middle classes and even wealthy groups. They can afford this stuff. It's not some mismanagement of the economy that made it possible, it's exactly because free market economies made so many more people prosperous.
Well, they DID, until the We Know What's Good For Everyone societies decided that it wasn't "fair' that people who were not trying as hard were not prospering at the same rate and decided to buy their votes with promises of "free" things. THAT is what inflated the currency and drove prices skyward.
No that's not what we say. What we say is "the market is efficient at pricing things." It is a measure of the relative scarcity of something as compared to the demand and sets the price accordingly. Collectivist/communist/socialist types love to blame markets for things that are actually the bad outcomes of their own monetary fiddling schemes. But the markets are just thermometers and nothing more.
Moreover, people do not "need' homes. They need shelter but this can exist in many forms. The notion that everyone needs a home is pernicious, and its made moreso when people demand private home ownership for everyone, even when everyone has not earned such a home for themselves.
Another repetition of an utterly false premise . The money isn't being "siphoned" anywhere and just disappearing. It's being more efficiently applied where it can do the best work to produce the best returns for the owner of said money. That same owner, in this example, is hiring workmen to build these rental properties, hiring others to maintain them, and still others to deal with the accounting and taxation paperwork of the regulatory state. There are net new jobs thus created.
Capitalism is destructive. It punishes businesses that do not adapt to economic reality. If you're overcharging (against market demand) for wine, the local volume wine merchant will snuff you out of business. That means you lose your business, but it also means that everyone in the community saves money. And it's not like you won't go back to work, You just won't make what you once did.
No one has a reasonable expectation to never be threatened by economic competition with the threat of economic extinction. That's why collectivists use government force to get what they want. They don't want to pay for their own mistakes, but instead use the threat of a violent third party to have someone else pay the bills. Having done so, they try to sell this illusion that they are noble. They are not. They are common thieves.
chuckroast
Established
When there is no rational response possible, when all that is left is emotion, ad hominem is the only remaining tool.
Mos6502
Well-known
LOL you REALLY do not understand this. Maybe there's a language barrier, is English your second language?
Price fixing is literally fraud. And it doesn't involve force at all. Good Lord. Here's a very simple real world explanation. I used to manage a gas station. We were not allowed to give out fuel prices over the phone. Why? Because it could be the gas station down the street seeing what our prices were so they could set their price accordingly. This is price fixing in the very basic sense. It's actually illegal for gas stations to give each other price info. Slightly more complicated, is just two or more "competitors" agreeing to match prices. That's also price fixing. And so on. Force has nothing to do with it. Most price fixing is simply done by agreement. When everybody agrees to hike prices, consumers have no recourse, they can't simply go to the business across the street where it's cheaper. That's the whole point. It's not rocket science.
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chuckroast
Established
"Illegal" means that government FORCE (or the threat thereof) is being employed to maintain the behavior. It is absolutely an act of force.
And if no force - by government, union thugs, or plain criminals - is used, then the only way the prices can all be fixed is if they are rational from a market pricing point of view. If they are not market rational AND no force is employed to enforce the pricing, then other actors can- and will enter that market to offer the service or good at market rational pricing.
This is Econo 101 and hardly remarkable or wildly partisan. You may find "Economics In One Lesson" by Hazlitt helpful because you're fulminating about ... nothing.
Mos6502
Well-known
The regulations exist to prevent price fixing. That is, they exist to maintain a free market. Free markets absolutely cannot be maintained without regulation, because they, when left to their own devices, are liable to self destruction through the formation of monopolies and other anti-competitive behaviors. This has absolutely been demonstrated repeatedly throughout history.
You're obviously here to troll. Most of your posts have nothing to do with photography. Most of your posts display a laughable ignorance of the real world, and most tellingly, you have no apparent desire to get yourself up to speed, not even to the level of using words in the universally accepted way. We all know what price fixing is. You pretend to not know. I don't waste my time on fools. I'm done with this topic, and chuckroast has been added to my ignore list.
BTW, if anybody else is confused, the definition of price fixing is this:
End of discussion.
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chuckroast
Established
No, the regulations exactly fix the acceptable range of price by force. They do not prevent price fixing, the make the government the agent of deciding price irrespective of market realities under threat of force. Again, Econ 101.
Monopolies, in and of themselves are not bad. It's when they use monopoly power to set prices artificially that a problem occurs. But that cannot happen at all unless there is fraud or force in play. When neither exist, a monopoly overpricing things will simply be undercut by another entrant into the marketplace who will undercut them at market pricing. Again, Econ 101.
I've helped build 3 companies, been responsible for millions in payroll, worked on 3 continents, lived in 3 countries, and worked in probably around a dozen total. I am pretty sure I am well acquainted with the "real word".
As always when we find someone who cannot defend their ideology and their ideology is more important that observable fact, they resort to personal attacks.
Mos6502
Well-known
(Technically, not an ad-hominem to note that a participant in a discussion is not correctly using terminology related to the topic of discussion. And while other observations may not be on topic, they are not ad-hominem either, as they are not correlating the validity of the person's argument with who the person is. The argument fails not because of who the person is, but because of the person's incorrect useage of common terms relating to the topic. It's about the idea expressed -or rather the lack of it-, not the person. Cheers!)