The Minimum Wage - And Other Examples of Government Breaking the Laws of Economics

by Seton Motley: Government officials (mostly Democrat) spend a lot of time breaking the laws they impose upon We the Rubes. That is, when they are not outright exempting themselves from the laws they impose upon We the Rubes. Hey, at least their self-exemptions are brazenly honest.

Then there are the laws that exist with or without government. Like the laws of nature. Like Sir Isaac Newton’s law of gravity – and his three laws of motion.

Then there are the ten natural laws of economics:“1. Production precedes consumption.

“2. Consumption is the final goal of production.

“3. Production has costs.

“4. Value is subjective.

“5. Productivity determines the wage rate.

“6. Expenditure is income and costs.

“7. Money is not wealth.

“8. Labor does not create value.”

“9. Profit is the entrepreneurial bonus.

“10. All genuine laws of economics are logical laws.”And the attending economic law of supply-and-demand: “(T)he interaction between the sellers of a resource and the buyers for that resource. The theory defines the relationship between the price of a given good or product and the willingness of people to either buy or sell it. Generally, as price increases people are willing to supply more and demand less and vice versa when the price falls.”Government officials break the laws of economics – ALL the time. And then they stare blankly when our national economy perpetually stinks on ice – and our nation teeters on the brink of economic oblivion.“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”

— Ayn Rand

“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”

— Robert Louis StevensonLet’s eat: Our federal government is $28 trillion in debt – and that tally is skyrocketing rapidly. Our federal government is $100+ trillion short on anti-laws-of-economics Social Security and Medicare – and that tally too is skyrocketing. And….

Do our government officials learn anything from their many, MANY mistakes? Heavens no.

Democrats Reintroduce $15 Minimum Wage Bill with Unified Control of Congress, White House

The minimum wage breaks several laws of economics. Let’s examine just one.“5. Productivity determines the wage rate.”You can not make someone worth $15-per-hour – by making it illegal to pay them less than $15-per-hour. If their productivity is only worth $10-per-hour – the economic-law-breaking $5 difference will have to be made up elsewhere.

There are two main ways to rectify government’s minimum wage economic-law-breaking: Fire people – and/or have people work less.Joe Biden’s $15 Minimum Wage Hike Would Kill Two Million Jobs

Bernie Sanders Campaign Announces It Will Cut Hours to Pay Staffers $15 Minimum WageOh – and we have already subjected a metropolitan lab rat to $15-per-hour. How’d that go?Report: $15 Minimum Wage in Seattle Killed Jobs

Seattle Employers Cut Hours After Latest Minimum Wage Rise, Study FindsSo government officials are learners of nothing – if not nothing.

Oh – and when you combine a minimum wage hike with open borders? The law of supply-and-demand gets CRUSHED.

A wage – is the price employers are willing to pay to purchase labor. If you flood the market with additional open-borders-labor – it becomes a labor-buyer’s market. Which under the law of supply and demand – means wages will massively decrease.

A $15 minimum wage killing two million jobs – combined with millions of additional minimum wage workers flooding the market? Congratulations – you have instantaneously added an additional tens of millions of people to your unemployable underclass.

As we said, government officials break the laws of economics – ALL the time.Lawmakers Push to Ban Internet Data Caps:

“Democratic lawmakers want to prohibit internet service providers from capping customers’ data use as part of a proposal giving the state authority to regulate the industry.”Ummmm… “3. Production has costs.” It costs money to produce the bandwidth that makes data use possible. If you mandate unlimited data – the cost of your connection will have to increase. Because economics.

But wait: The vast majority of us never get anywhere close to any existing data caps. What government will actually be doing my outlawing caps – is forcing all of us to pay more for our connections to subsidize the Data Hogs.

And who are the biggest Data Hogs of all?Why Google, Facebook, The Internet Giants, Are Arguing For Net Neutrality:

“Boiling ‘net neutrality’ down to its essence the argument is about whether the people who own the connections to the customer, the broadband and mobile airtime providers, can treat different internet traffic differently.

“Should we force them to be neutral (thus the ‘neutrality’ part) and treat all traffic exactly the same? Or should they be allowed to speed up some traffic, slow down other, in order to prioritize certain services over others?…

“(C)ertain services require very much more of that bandwidth than others, further, require a much higher level of service, and it would be economically efficient to charge for that greater volume and quality….

“(W)hy are the content giants all arguing for net neutrality? What’s their reasoning? Here we need a modicum of economics: profits flow to whoever controls the scarce resource. As long, that is, as those who control that scarce resource are able to vary their prices so as to monetize that scarce resource….

“Move forward to the time when bandwidth providers are able to discriminate between different traffic and its providers. If bandwidth were unlimited then, it being not a scarce resource, net neutrality would be the normal order of things. If we all had 100 gigabit cables into our homes then there would be no possible argument about whether that Netflix movie should arrive faster, or less interrupted, than the email. However, that’s not the world we are in, bandwidth is, to some extent at least, a scarce resource.

“Thus, if those who own that bandwidth were able to price discriminate then they would: and this would mean some portion of the revenues of those services would move over from the content providers to the bandwidth providers.”

And here it comes…:

“Some part of your Hulu or Netflix subscription would be paid to the internet providers, some part of Google’s YouTube advertising revenue would move from Google’s coffers to, say, Comcast’s . And quite clearly this is something that those content providers would prefer did not happen: thus the arguments in favor of net neutrality.”Net Neutrality is government mandating We the Rubes mass-subsidize – via higher Internet costs – the trillion-dollar-market-cap Big Tech Data Hogs.

Because Net Neutrality is government mandating the trillion-dollar-market-cap Big Tech Data Hogs – be charged NOTHING for ALL the bandwidth they use.

Which breaks several laws of economics.

And many levels of sanity.
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Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he to ARRA News Service.

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