Originally Posted by
ProIndividual
I think maximum...as minimum wage, no matter how high, will eventually cause a shift economically to compensate. For example, if min wage was $1,000 an hour, it would take a while, but eventually everything, including wages, would just cost more, leading us back to a kind of equilibrium where relative cost of living and standard of living normalize (albeit highly distorted). This is why we "need" to keep raising min wage now. Even with no inflation from usual sources, min wage inflates everything until "water seeks its own level". Min wage, if not continuously raised and with inflation controlled for, eventually becomes a non-factor in its original intent...prices all normalize around the $1,000 and hour wages, and things go back to about how they were before the min wage. Hence, they need to try to keep raising it all the time. This is also why the unemployment problem of min wage basically disappears if we never raise it again. That's why its advocates need to keep raising it all the time...even if inflation didn't exist, the economy's prices adjust in time, and the min wage becomes a non-factor. If all prices rise eventually to compensate, eventually the price of labor also rises until min wage is overtaken and becomes irrelevant. Imagine if the min wage was still 50 cents an hour, for example.
Max wage, OTOH, would not do this. Once set, it would, even the absence of inflation, have no way to cause this ripple effect in the economy's prices, and therefore lead to a distortion (a disincentive) that can't be resolved on its own over time. What creates wealth for a population is mostly technological advance that makes production cheaper, keeps prices falling accounted for inflation, and therefore causing standards of living to rise by reducing costs of living. If max wage were incepted, capital can't be accumulated in the few hands of those who most efficiently accumulate and allocate it, creating immense permanent inefficiency, and thereby less technological advance (or distorted and perverted tech advances)...and that $#@!s the poor and low skilled workers worse than min wage unemployment increases. What's worse, if inflation occurs it would mean the max wage, if not raised along with inflation, would continue to expand its distortions...whereas min wage distortions actually lessen with inflation (as the wage of 50 cents an hour would now be irrelevant, for example).
But both are horrible. The fact the real-world max wage effects less people doesn't, to me, mean it is the lesser of the two evils. That's because it only DIRECTLY effects less people...but in the long run, a max wage actually effects MORE people due to its widespread cause of inefficiency. So, whether they both effected the same amount of people directly or indirectly, the max wage, in totality, effects more people negatively. Also, who is effected indirectly matters, as the poor and unskilled are harmed by the max wage as much or more than by the min wage.
So, real-world or according to your hypothetical, I'd still answer max wage. And the proponents of max wage can't even say "but all the revenue brought in by max wage to the state would help the poor through wealth redistribution"...because there are no additional tax receipts under max wage. Under max wage, it is ILLEGAL to pay over a certain amount for any job, so no additional revenue is present. It just distorts, with not even a statist authoritarian way to try and make the harm "more equitable".
Both blow big donkey c--k.
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