Is anyone surprised that paying people not to work, encourages more people to not work? Well, as soon as a conservative suggested it in 2020 (not to raise unemployment too much), far left News organizations all pearl clutched over the offensive premise of cause and effect. After Democrats paid people more to not work than they made when working, the unemployment numbers shot up more than expected: and that didn't convince leftist sources of anything. Now WSJ published a report that the 22 states (including Missouri) that opted out of the higher unemployment benefits are seeing their employment rates improve faster than states that are still paying people more to not work.
FakeNews
Of course some Fake News outlets like NYT are still publishing unsupported disinformation to muddy the waters. Like the claim that job fairs in Missouri as still not seeing as many workers as they have jobs. [1] While that's true, it's anecdotal and unsupported and proves nothing other than after a government forced economic downturn, when government removes the shackles on private enterprise, we can have a surge in demand that exceeds the supply.
Economics
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- Broken Window Fallacy : The Broken Window Fallacy is a fundamental concept of economics (and logic) about seen advantages versus unseen costs. Henry Hazlitt summed up the art of economics as not merely looking at the immediate consequences but the longer effects of any act or policy, and tracing those consequences not merely for one group but for all groups
- Milton Friedman goes to China : There’s a famous economics fable of Milton Friedman going to China or India, and what happens is another way to explain The Broken Window Fallacy, in a more Socratic way. Some refer to this as Shovels vs. Spoons. The story predates Milton, but he did tell variants of it and popularized it.
- Minimum Wage : Minimum wage is the delusion that bureaucrats and politicos know more about what's fair than the laborer and the employer, and that there's a magic round number that fair for everyone, everywhere, at the same time. We know that it hurts employment, increases automation and offshoring, and hurts the people it's supposed to help. Either these consequences are unintentional, or the politicians want to make the problem worse while pretending to help, so they have something to campaign on.
- Goldilocks and the 3 wages : Minimum wage is like Goldilocks, there are three ways you can set minimum wage: too low, too high, and just right. Too low, means it's doing nothing of value. Too high means it's hurting employment and growth. And since just right can never apply to two different people, places or moments in time, there's really only one way to set minimum wage: and that's at the wrong level.
- Minimum Wage as Price/Wage controls : Minimum wage is the delusion that bureaucrats and politicos know more about what's fair than the laborer and the employer, and that there's a magic round number that fair for everyone, everywhere, at the same time. We know that it hurts employment, increases automation and offshoring, and hurts the people it's supposed to help. Either these consequences are unintentional, or the politicians want to make the problem worse while pretending to help, so they have something to campaign on.
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