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Radu Floricica's avatar

A bit offtopic, but it really rakes me to see minimum wage framed as forcing employers to pay more, when an equally good framing (probably better, tbh) is forbidding people to work if they're less efficient than an arbitrary level.

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Mcallen3's avatar

It's been many years since I cracked an economy textbook. So,a question: Wouldn't unionizing have a similar effect as a minimum wage? Isn't there a lot of stuff on unionizing and its effect?

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Joe Potts's avatar

DIY DOES have some effect on manufacturing ("some assembly required"), too. I used to LOVE building electronics kits. Fix versus replace - the list goes on.

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Bennie's avatar

Just put together some IKEA items that came disassembled down to the molecular level.

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Ian Fillmore's avatar

The elasticity of labor demand depends on the elasticity of product demand, but also (low-wage) labor's cost share and the elasticity of substitution between (low-wage) labor and capital. Note that all three vary by industry. This paper is a great reference.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537111000303

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