If said another way: if a bigger government, or a government with more control, or as a government displaces freedom (all the same thing) made peoples' lives better then I'd be all for it.
I'm not sure how you can generalize that well.
But in every case, and by general theory, and in this particular case, that's not true.
Yes, that good old "general theory". I recall it well from the "general theory class" in "general studies".
If you believe government is bad in every case, I assume you are then an anarchist?
We know that they are, in general, worse off in this case because you are asking the government to increase it's control over possible free contracts more than it already is.
Yes, it's a terrible imposition on personal freedom. The government says that you cannot enter into an employment contract that pays less than minimum wage. And it also says that you can't sell yourself into slavery. Or your children. Your own children, can you imagine!
If your claim worked, then as the government increased it's control over private contracts peoples' lives would get better and better. But as you admit, and the reason for further loss of freedom, is because you perceive things are getting worse.
Right, because government is some sort of quantity that can be examined as if it were a commodity. How many government interferences are healthy in a day?
It's only true if my morals are correct. If you want to see between us who's morals are correct, you tell us your objective standard for your morals and we'll compare them to mine.
But, yeah, if it turns out my morals are correct then I'll always be right and you'll always be wrong.
I really don't see what this has to do with morality in the first place. Seems like an economic question, and only an indirectly moral question.
In the end what we find is that not having an objective standard for morals means you can never be sure if any policy you support is right or wrong.
Sometimes being sure is the enemy of knowledge.
Really. Objectively mistaken? By math?
Yes. Objectively mistaken, by the math.
Does increasing costs make a product more expensive or cheaper?
It can make a product more expensive. It doesn't always.
Then you've just given away the farm. If marginal costs increase, then they will have to respond somehow. In a highly competitive market, that doesn't include reduced profits enough to ignore the increase in costs.
Well, you'd be taking a hit to your profit margin. But you have to, because raising prices often causes you to make less money, which is even worse. You will note that the marginal costs don't appear on a demand curve at all, and that is because they do not directly impact the quantity that will be demanded at a given price. It's true that you may be forced to raise prices if your marginal costs rise, but if your business is making money, you have room to avoid that. And when you look at a business like fast food, which is one of the main offenders for paying low wages, you see very profitable businesses that do enough volume that any price increase would be pretty slow.
No, I'm stating business reality. In a highly competitive market, the only advantage one has over their competition is to control costs.
Yeah, they never bother with branding. Or product differentiation. Or advertising. Or anything else. Just squeezing the margins.
I wasn't clear. I meant all business would have their costs go up across the industry.
But that isn't necessarily true. I'll give you a practical example. McDonald's pays a fair percentage of their workers minimum wage. In-n-Out Burger pays a company-imposed minimum of $11/hour. If the government forces a minimum wage hike, McDonald's will have to raise many of their worker's wages, which will cut a lot deeper into their profits than In-n-Out, which may see some increase in costs from suppliers, but won't necessarily have to raise anyone's wages.
So the impact to McDonald's would be very different from the impact to In-n-Out. And businesses that are even further from paying minimum wage would be impacted even less. So your assumption that this impacts everything evenly across the economy is just plain wrong.
And don't forget, all monopolies exist by government protection. So don't be too quick to desire that businesses have low or no competition just so they can have profits to spread around sans a change in the way they do business.
All companies exist by government protection. The government doesn't tend to create the monopolies though.
Superfluous profit is profit made that can be spent on higher costs without changing the way one does business.
What profit isn't superfluous by that definition?
You failed the math portion of this conversation. The problem of employing people that cost more without a corresponding increase in productivity will have to be mitigated.
But that's exactly what you're missing. Not everyone costs more to employ. Only some people do, a fairly small percentage of the overall economy.
And when we look at the employment numbers, we see it means entry level workers get less work. Just as it always has.
Prove it. Show me the number on that, without cherry picking. I'll tell you that I've been through the unemployment figures, the GDP figures, and compared those to the points where we hiked the minimum wage, and as often as not, the unemployment curve bends down after a hike. So I would like you to show me the math, with actual numbers and graphs if possible, that supports your claim.
It's the general case. If you are this far out of touch with reality then you have no business addressing this subject.
It's pretty simple. McDonald's has a 19% (wow!) profit margin.
http://ycharts.com/companies/MCD/profit_margin
Do they have competitors?
Could they use some of that profit margin to cut their prices, and thus attack their competitors?
You think McDonald's and Burger King don't compete? What do you think it means to compete?
Of course they compete. They also cooperate, when it suits them. They just aren't trying terribly hard to eliminate each other. It wouldn't be in either of their best interests, because they would have to cut into their profits, and it isn't clear that either one could finally triumph and put the other out of business.
By the way, Burger King's profit margin is 28%.
http://ycharts.com/companies/BKW/profit_margin
And don't forget what companies have to do to be successful. They have to worry less about the competition and more about customers. But customers will choose the competition if costs are not controlled because that imbalance in costs will be shown in the value of the product. Whether costs are controlled to attract enough customers to put the competition out of business, or controlled enough to get more customers in general is irrelevant.
I'm not sure how you can be trying to drive someone from the market, and also be ignoring them.
Because, as mentioned, it would cost both of them their profits, and it isn't clear that there would be a clear winner even if they wiped out their entire profit margins.
Of course. Which is why mitigating a forced increase in cost will be responded to with any tool available. One of those tools, as math shows, will be higher unemployment for entry level workers.
Once again, prove it. The historical record is that higher unemployment is not reliably an outcome of raising the wage.
Then your previous claim is wrong.
No. You interpreted it incorrectly. You assumed that either they are trying to eliminate each other entirely, or not competing at all. That wasn't my claim. They compete in a way that no rational person would believe would eventually lead to the downfall of one or the other in the foreseeable future.
The way I suggest business act toward competition is the only way a business can stay in business.
No, it isn't.
