I think you are looking at it backwards. For a business to be successful they should not have to burden themselves with the livelihood of their employees. Truly businesses should be able to have people working and living close to the working facility as well as eating there. Dorms will be owned by the businesses and employee will either pay for them or have their wages reduced for the cost of living, same for food. If they fall sick they should pay for the missing hours, no hollidays of course or breaks since those are just wasteful idle time spent. Relationships are forbidden as they put productivity at risk. In an ideal world there will no silly government regulation and the market will sort it out, if the people were unhappy with this model it should be possible to import workers from countries with lesser opportunities who would be more than happy to fill the gap. This is how it is going in most productive electronic facilities in china and why USA is falling behind with all those silly regulations killing businesses.

True businesses? Company towns?

There is a reason they don't exist anymore. They were the quickiest to build but did not survive a downturn most closed up shop after the mine was closed.

Towns built with various piblic/private spaces/businesses can survive one part of the economy doing poorly.

Don't pine for a made in China solution until you could actually live one. If you were in that situation (the average Chinese factory worker) now you wouldn't be on the internet writing this you would be working your 7 day 16 hour shift.

Neo-feudalism is going to be so interesting. Hope I get a cool job like being a jester.

You'd need an economy degree for that. And then off you go preaching trickle-down-econ xD

I actually have an Economics degree, so I guess I'm qualified.

No hard feelings, I hope :)

(none intended)

Nothing stings worse than the 4 wasted years.

Getting a job as a jester would be the coolest thing I've done with my econ degree then!

Any thoughts at why production in the western world is becoming again competitive in sectors where production is automated to agree to make labor a negligible factor?

Also, I thought intended servitude was abolished quite a while ago.

This reads as if it is comedy, but really bad comedy.

Pretty sure it's satirical.

As far as I understand it this hypothesis that was tested with the study done by dube, lester, Reich and the effect was found to be undetectable.

Minimum wage is elastic in (your) theory but in practice it appears the majority of companies opt to take the hit in profits rather than fire people.

Makes sense if the company could have done without the employee they would have fired them earlier.

Or they might hire an employee after all if they're not allowed to run for the bottom of the wage barrel. An employer understating the value of labour for their own profit is the default.