Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[CoccoBill]

I think of it this way: regulations were invented to serve a purpose. Most civilizations have thought it prudent to make things like killing and stealing illegal, and I think there's a reason for that. Similarly, before employers were mandated to provide their employees a minimum wage, they were not. Something brought up the need for defining and regulating them.

[Renton]

I think of it this way: regulations were invented to serve a purpose. Most civilizations have thought it prudent to make things like killing and stealing illegal, and I think there's a reason for that. Similarly, before employers were mandated to provide their employees a minimum wage, they were not. Something brought up the need for defining and regulating them.

You're kind of appealing to tradition though. It's certainly a reasonable assumption that things are the way things are because they needed to be that way at one point in time, but it's also quite true that human beings of previous generations did a lot of really dumb things and didn't have as much collective knowledge to act on as we have today.

I'm pretty dismayed that you see an apt comparison between the minimum wage and laws against theft/murder. We can split hairs here all day on what government's role ought to be, but it is clear that protecting people from bodily harm is a much higher priority for the state than meddling labor market. The minimum wage is one of the most easily debunked government policies. Basically any economist who isn't a Marxian or a Keynesian agrees that it is counterproductive.

[wufwugy]

Basically any economist who isn't a Marxian or a Keynesian agrees that it is counterproductive.

I think that's more a subset of neo-Keynesians. A handful of economists did not learn that minimum wage is a good thing in academia. They all learned it increases unemployment and the several reasons why and the unintended consequences, but a handful of the pundit class of Keynesians changed their tune circa 2007.

If I had to guess, I think the reasons behind it are the polarization of politics and the revenue sources of economists who moved towards media. The media adores cherry picked data-mining and consumers of media like pro-labor appearances, so we get a perpetuating cycle where a handful of economists have started saying things like "well, you never know..." Then half the country sees this and thinks minimum wage is probably okay. Bad economists, even when they make up just <5% of all economists, do a ton of damage.

It's like the EU experiment. Lots of economists said it was a bad idea and shouldn't be done, but the political will was huge and a handful of economists within that political agenda did what they could to make it look like it would work. Now the EU is hot garbage for the exact reasons economists who stuck with their education said it would be.