Wage Theft is a Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft (2014)

Re:Wage Theft is a Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft ... by roenxi on Saturday June 02, 2018 @06:40PM (#17216786)

The money is only useful for the goods and services it can purchase. Labour conditions is a classic case of the government is mandating allocations of resources that a free market would not make; it isn't going to result in more goods and services being produced. The same workers are not going to produce more because of labour law enforcement.

The three outcomes are:

1) Workers get a bigger proportion of a smaller total

2) Workers get the same proportion of a smaller total

3) Workers get a smaller proportion of a smaller total

The pro-labour-laws types have to be very certain that they can force outcome 1, but there are 2 ways in 3 that the outcome is bad, on net, for workers. Especially if the job they were working in was the best option they had. Workers might even be getting less overall (through reduced job availability) when individual workers get more due to reductions in the number of jobs created.

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Re:Wage Theft is a Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft ... by xapata on Saturday June 02, 2018 @09:16PM (#17217371)

It's always possible that a policy will have a bad outcome. In this case, I'd like to run the experiment. My guess is that the dynamics will be good for the economy: more cash in the pockets of workers means more cash flow through the economy, more activity, more growth, everyone wins.

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