Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Law of Demand

Robbin' people with a...six gun
I fought the law and the...law won
--Bobby Fuller Four

In the context of minimum wage laws, Prof Walter E Williams discusses the law of demand. "It holds that the higher the price of something the less people will take and the lower the price the more people will take."

Proponents of minimum wage laws have yet to explain why the law of demand does not apply when the price of labor is fixed artificially high by government force.

They can't explain it, of course, because the law of demand is axiomatically grounded in natural law.

Raise the price of labor, and buyers of labor will purchase less of it.

To sellers of labor, the consequence is compulsory unemployment.

1 comment:

dgeorge12358 said...

Minimum wage rates, whether decreed and enforced by the government or by labor union pressure and violence, result in mass unemployment.

In the long run the worker can never get more than the consumer allows.
~Ludwig von Mises