The Steak and A Wage
If you go to the meat counter and rib eye is $15.00 per pound and your budget is limited, you look for alternatives. The chuck steak is $7.50 per pound for a ratio of 2/1 when compared to the rib eye, making the chuck very attractive even though you prefer rib eye. You ponder the ways that you can use the chuck steak and decide that the chuck is a reasonable replacement. You buy two pounds of the chuck.
A month later, you again decide to look for a steak at the meat counter, and discover the rib eye and chuck are exactly the same cost. Further, all meat at the counter averages $15.00 per pound. Your budget has not changed, yet the pricing has limited your options of replacement. You decide to purchase one pound of rib eye as it is your favorite steak.
Whatever the reason for the price increase is, no matter the intention, the increase has altered your options, reduced the overall amount you purchased, and may send your searching for alternatives away from the meat counter. Beans anyone?
So it is with labor. The quantity and quality of labor demanded is related to the pricing of labor - the wage. When the pricing is altered by market forces or government policy and regulations, businesses alter the quantity and quality of labor purchased. It matters little in the long run the reason for the government regulation, demand for labor will be just like the steak and the employer will purchase high quality labor and less of the lower, just like you did at the meat counter. You may have gone looking for beans as an alternative, so will the employer look for alternatives away from employing labor. The beans may be automation or other attempts to reduce labor cost.
The pricing of labor in our modern society is influenced by a wide variety of taxes, policy, regulations, quality of the labor force, demand for product or services, type of product or service, and so forth. This pushes those that hire, to continually alter the decisions they make. We keep adding to that variety of policy and regulations in the hope of fairness, or to implement a moral or ethical cause, but have we reached the utopia of fairness or moral and ethical standards in the past? Will we in the future?
No matter how noble, no matter if it is moral, or appears moral, the reason for a policy or regulation will not change how the demand for labor will be altered over time. The next time you have a friend get laid off, you get laid off, see people struggle will limited financial capability, or you struggle, ask if it is the "steak" policy or something else.
keep in mind that this analogy doesn't answer all the nuances we can observe around us, but it does give us a beginning point to assess many of the ideas being floated by socialist, leftist, liberals, conservatives, and the elites. Ideas that are seemingly benign or even noble, can over time become tyrannical causing much human suffering. The tyranny of ideologies is one of the most perverse.
I would like to give credit to Walter Williams (1936-2020), a PhD economist and professor, for the steak analogy. I recommend his book "Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?
A month later, you again decide to look for a steak at the meat counter, and discover the rib eye and chuck are exactly the same cost. Further, all meat at the counter averages $15.00 per pound. Your budget has not changed, yet the pricing has limited your options of replacement. You decide to purchase one pound of rib eye as it is your favorite steak.
Whatever the reason for the price increase is, no matter the intention, the increase has altered your options, reduced the overall amount you purchased, and may send your searching for alternatives away from the meat counter. Beans anyone?
So it is with labor. The quantity and quality of labor demanded is related to the pricing of labor - the wage. When the pricing is altered by market forces or government policy and regulations, businesses alter the quantity and quality of labor purchased. It matters little in the long run the reason for the government regulation, demand for labor will be just like the steak and the employer will purchase high quality labor and less of the lower, just like you did at the meat counter. You may have gone looking for beans as an alternative, so will the employer look for alternatives away from employing labor. The beans may be automation or other attempts to reduce labor cost.
The pricing of labor in our modern society is influenced by a wide variety of taxes, policy, regulations, quality of the labor force, demand for product or services, type of product or service, and so forth. This pushes those that hire, to continually alter the decisions they make. We keep adding to that variety of policy and regulations in the hope of fairness, or to implement a moral or ethical cause, but have we reached the utopia of fairness or moral and ethical standards in the past? Will we in the future?
No matter how noble, no matter if it is moral, or appears moral, the reason for a policy or regulation will not change how the demand for labor will be altered over time. The next time you have a friend get laid off, you get laid off, see people struggle will limited financial capability, or you struggle, ask if it is the "steak" policy or something else.
keep in mind that this analogy doesn't answer all the nuances we can observe around us, but it does give us a beginning point to assess many of the ideas being floated by socialist, leftist, liberals, conservatives, and the elites. Ideas that are seemingly benign or even noble, can over time become tyrannical causing much human suffering. The tyranny of ideologies is one of the most perverse.
I would like to give credit to Walter Williams (1936-2020), a PhD economist and professor, for the steak analogy. I recommend his book "Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?
The Expert -
We all know an expert or two, yet we seldom stop and think about how we should define an expert and their role. Over the last few years experts have become front and center in our society. They now reach into every crevice of yours and my existence in an unprecedented manner. The experts are not just an educated or experienced person in a particular field as in the past, they are now pundits in the media, moralizing finger wags, prophets, advocates, policy makers, non-elected political animals, and they seemingly never run short of breath as they love to hear their own voice as they shout from a soap box advocating a policy or ideology. If we do not think about how we define an expert and what their position in society actually is, could they not do much harm? Can we hold them accountable for mistakes that cost us all in treasure or blood? What is the relationship of an expert to the constitution, philosophy, theology, and science? Can they disregard the rule of law as they advocate for a particular policy? Should they even advocate for a specific policy, let alone make policy?
We have not answered these questions sufficiently nor in open public debate, thus we are plunging into an abyss at great peril to us individually and collectively as a nation. Tyranny may come not from those we elect, but those we did not elect.
As we contemplate the role of experts, it may behoove us to start from a very simple "law" postulated by Sir Arthur C Clarke in his book Profiles of the Future (1999), "FOR EVERY EXPERT THERE IS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE EXPERT." (I shouted that in caps so it might catch our attention as it seems we are becoming dull in thought.)
We have not answered these questions sufficiently nor in open public debate, thus we are plunging into an abyss at great peril to us individually and collectively as a nation. Tyranny may come not from those we elect, but those we did not elect.
As we contemplate the role of experts, it may behoove us to start from a very simple "law" postulated by Sir Arthur C Clarke in his book Profiles of the Future (1999), "FOR EVERY EXPERT THERE IS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE EXPERT." (I shouted that in caps so it might catch our attention as it seems we are becoming dull in thought.)
“Nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists.”
John C. Lennox
John C. Lennox
