RE: The Dark Truth About the Minimum Wage
This is rather sad because it seems ALL views are lacking in any comprehension of how the economy works. Whether one realizes it or not, ALL discussions regarding this are discussions about wealth distribution. Let's start there. Question: what do the following have in common? 1) Interest on investments. 2) Inflation of a nation's currency? Answer: BOTH are the result of man-made formulas IMPOSED INTO financial "systems" artificially by humans and do not occur on their own either through laws of nature or physics. Answer part 2, yet everyone simply BELIEVES they are an intrinsic part of "the economy."
Utter Bullshit.
Let's just have a make-believe community that uses printed currency despite having only 4,000 working adults and no contact with the outside world. They produce everything they need. They earn the equivalent of USD $75,000 a year, so 300 million needs to be printed at most (less if you use fractional reserve banking). Now, if they spread out too far and built more houses than needed, would the entire value of that currency drop (deflate)? No. Vice versa, would it inflate? No.
The reason is clear when seen on such a reduced scale, because the printed currency IS the scale by which we measure the value of ALL goods and services in an economy! And this DOESN'T CHANGE when you either have a larger population, nor open up to outside trade! In this latter case, your local currency can lose value overseas, but not locally! The foreigners can flood the market with your unwanted currency all they want, but a $1.00 cup of coffee will not become $10.00 locally because one doesn't adjust the scale every time gold rises or drops in price. This is because 1) the scale weighs EVERYTHING in weight, not just gold, and the currency measures the monetary value of EVERYTHING, not just houses.
Ever single thing that can be measured in currency is in constant flux! Because we have been taught that "too much currency in circulation causes scenario A, and too little causes scenario B" we not only believe it, we work HARD to protect this belief. But let's look at the one case that makes this an obvious fallacy, the Great Depression! We now know the money supply was purposely shrunk, yet the currency's value didn't increase proportionately! There wasn't a lack of labor, just a lack of currency to PAY for it! If scenario B was true, this would HAVE to have happened, and no, doing as the Von Mises Institute does and saying all the debts were called in doesn't explain this because the argument is that a lack of currency makes its value rise REGARDLESS OF ALL outside influences SUCH AS all the debts being called in! In other words, they change the parameters of the argument to suit their preconceived notion and protect their beliefs!
One has to get away from what one is taught and just look at things afresh. In this community of 4,000, if a person, local or outside claimed that they "pre-owned" and thus loaned out the currency, what does anyone think would happen? We could SEE that it was all money printed to pay us. So who was borrowing it? It's printed in order TO pay us for OUR LABOR! That's what fiat currency is, nothing but a printed record REPRESENTING THE VALUE of what one earns! It isn't the value itself! If it were, that would be like saying my landlord owed me back every check I wrote because I printed it! The check only REPRESENTS that amount, and despite everything taught in schools, that's all that fiat currency is as well - a printed representation of a value!
If you can get this, then there is at least one other thing we can add to the initial question above, what these things have in common: 3) Market bubbles?
You do NOT adjust the representative value of the CURRENCY to the failures of markets. The currency stays stable and measures the values of ALL markets at all times. Market bubbles, inflation and deflation and interest on investments are ALL the result of formulas artificially APPLIED to the world's finances in order to make all three appear to be working in a way that nature requires to maintain the illusion that those who invest control the economy. ALL are artificial and the economy would exist without any of them.