Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 27 Oct 2022 19:49)
I heard a term a year or two ago called "economism".
Basically it's using economic arguments as the end-all of political discussions from people who just aren't that well versed in economics. Similar to the edgy atheists who don't really know much about science talking about how evolution disproves god, except in this case it's right wingers saying "of course you can't raise the minimum wage, don't you know supply demand curves?"
Really it boils down to using first approximations, like supply/demand curves, assuming all markets are perfectly elastic, etc. to justify what are almost always right-wing arguments, and never acknowledging that the rules of the market are determined by us and a totally artificial playing field we've created.
Then when you point out that minimum wage increasing unemployment has been debunked for over 20 years, and that an influx of low skill labor actually leads to increased wages, it's just dismissed as "not following basic economics", even though it's pretty easy to understand the economic reason.
It appeals to normies who aren't necessarily right wing by giving "common sense and universally accepted laws of economics" as the argument to abuse immigrants so they stop coming, or never raise the minimum wage or expand the social safety net.
Do you have sources for the bolded claim?
This honestly sounds like a very rough simplification of its own.
Instinctively, an influx of low skill labor should grow the economy and increase profits, and thus lead to higher profits for the capital side and probably also higher wages for the professional-managerial class on top of the labor-side food chain. But it should also depress wages of domestic low skill workers; and it should lead to a spike in unemployment if the influx exceeds the domestic economy's demand for low skill labor. On the aggregate level, its effect on mean wages should be hard to gauge, the effect on median wages should clearly be negative, and it should drive up income inequality.
Likewise, the point about the minimum wage is definitely undercomplex the way you present it here. If the federal minimum wage was raised to $40/h, you can be damn sure that unemployment would surge. If the mimimum wage happens to sit far below the level the local labor market can sustain, then raising it will have no noteworthy impact on unemployment, lead to higher wages, more equality, less poverty and be good policy all around. Due to 40 years of offshoring and neoliberal policies, the lower end of the labor market is deeply underwater in large swaths of the industrialized world, so this case is more common. However, I still wouldn't be so sure that every small bumfuck town in rural America can sustain a $15 minimum wage. Meanwhile, even $15 is far too low in expensive places like NYC or San Francisco.
Simply put, while your criticism of these simplistic right-wing arguments based on "economism" is valid, it seems like you are yourself falling for fundamentally the same shortcomings in support of your left-wing arguments, just one or two intellectual tier above the dunces, but still far below the level of expertise and complexity needed for a true understanding of the subject. (And just for the record, I am myself also falling far short of that standard!)
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 27 2022 01:43pm