The Titanic is taking on water and no amount of fiscal and monetary bailing will fix the underlying problem, but there've only been 35 years of recurring attempts...
There are no shortage of overpaid self-absorbed tools willing to tell us that "we" can't afford a higher minimum wage. After all, "free markets" must clear and the minimum wage leads to higher unemployment by artificially propping up the cost of labour above what the "market will bear". Maybe just once they should admit that today's ever-growing excess profit margins are what's truly unsustainable.
"Walmart can't afford higher wages"
Really? What about Dollar Tree, the ones eating their lunch...Time is running out on lying sociopaths:
Dollar Tree and Dollar General both just missed on revenue...
As I've pointed out, a 35 year trade deficit is not a *free market*, it's a market based upon debt accumulation. It's a Ponzi scheme at the expense of all future generations. Intra-generational theft.
Getting back to wages, the industry wage is bounded by an upper and lower range. The upper range is the marginal productivity of labour which is why the minimum wage opponents say that the minimum wage - in certain cases - would lead to higher unemployment i.e. because some businesses would be rendered unprofitable. That's the upper bound.
We are told constantly: "Productivity drives wages"
Except when it doesn't...wages (green) versus productivity (red)
The Grapes of Wrath 2015
Absent a minimum wage, the lower bound for wages is determined by the overall supply of labour, which under globalization is limitless. In a slack labour market there is downward pressure on wages towards the "lowest cost" producer i.e. the wage earner willing/able to work for the least amount. Clearly Third World countries have an overwhelming "advantage", if that's what you want to call it...
Globalization Doesn't Clear
Under Globalization, supply and demand are separated and brokered by debt accumulation aka. trade deficits. Ponzi financing.
In other words, it's not higher wages that are unsustainable, it's current levels of profit:
The answer to a higher minimum wage causing higher unemployment, is a reverse tax credit set at the poverty line. Individual companies could set wages based upon the market, and the tax base would pick up the tab for the remainder.
Nevertheless, the Titanic has a colossal hole in the side through which Third World deflation is pouring in, without "fixing" that aka. via tariff, no amount of fiscal and monetary "bailing" will stop the ship from sinking.
But today's fools will wait until the ship is resting on the bottom before they figure it all out.
Either way, the days of the multinational corporation arbitraging poverty for liquidation profit, are numbered.
