You're ignoring a very, very basic principle: if employees were in a circumstance where they were able to earn more money by doing nothing, they individually come to the realization that they were being underpaid. This provides them leverage to look for higher paying jobs which inadvertently creates a labor supply issue.
This literally makes zero sense. The Government has the power (through declaration) to create money out of thin air.
They can pay people any amount they want and they can do so without actually creating any economic value for anybody in order to do so.
Everybody else has to create money by creating value (i.e. -- the economic means rather than political means).
You're acting like employees have suddenly realized they're "underpaid" because an entity with a monopoly on money creation decided to print TRILLIONS of it and hand it out like fun coupons.
But they're not "under-paid" -- they're only "under-paid" in relation to what someone with a money tree is handing out to them for free.
But the folks who own the money tree do not have to create any actual value to produce that money and business DO.
Business chose to pay the bare minimum.
Where did you get that bullshit from? Businesses are always competing for talent and they will pay a HUGE premium for it as well.
Businesses do not by any measure now -- nor have they ever -- just tried to pay "the bare minimum."
Businesses do not even set prices -- the free negotiation between employees and employers set prices (unless the Government is interfering, which they are now).
Often, employees were in circumstances which forced them to work for low pay. When they complained, the argument was that minimum wage was never meant to be a permanent job, but the reality is that is exactly why the minimum wage was introduced.
That was never the argument.
First of fall, minimum wage was never a good idea to begin with (but that's an entirely different argument).
Jobs that pay minimum wage are often jobs that have the lowest threshold to entry because they require the absolute LOWEST amount of skills.
They are often entry level jobs for younger people who have never built up any skills and want to enter the work force for the first time.
If the Government prints trillions upon trillions of dollars and hands it out and then businesses are forced to compete with the Government...the only way they can raise wages is by raising the cost of everything they sell.
This is another driver of inflation -- so all that will happen is the employee will get more dollars, but those dollars will be worth the same or less than they were before.
That's all this does. It doesn't increase purchasing power.
Now that they demand more money, the argument was that the country held business at gunpoint when counties all over the world did the same. America was no different. We actually completely shit the bed with our response specifically because there was no guidance from the fed. They didn't tell states how to run the show, so states were forced to do it themselves.
The Fed has nothing to do with closing businesses down at gunpoint. And the United States Federal Government has no right to tell States what to do (unless you want a totalitarian dictatorship).
It's also immoral and an act of tyranny to shut ANY business down by force.
However, I'm confused where this argument fits into anything to begin with.
The new admin worked to get the states to administer vaccines more efficiently, provided resources for them to do so, etc. Also, the government is attempting to recoup money spent through increasing taxes and funding the IRS to pursue tax evaders, not by simply printing more money. That increase in revenue provides more money that the country can use to stimulate the economy via job creation.
The number one way the government recoups the money is by inflating away their debts. That is the immoral act of lowering the purchasing power of every dollar you earn day after day -- and keeping you in a perpetual state of wage slavery.
They can try to "raise taxes and pursue tax evaders" but that's only going to cause capital flight.
For example -- I am renouncing my US Citizenship and I have purchased citizenships in other countries with no income taxes.
What you're about to see is the greatest level of capital flight out of the United States in history and you're about to see the dollar fall as a reserve currency within the next decade.
That means -- as always -- the burden always falls back on the most reliable tax payer in any society: Poor people who cannot leave, who cannot lessen their taxes, and who will work in an endless loop of wage and debt slavery until they day.
You're nothing but cattle, in other words.
Your comment is a very basic and improper view of how things worked out. You look at the US in a vacuum but ignore that other countries did the same thing. You also ignore that these international corporations somehow can afford to pay people more in countries with much stronger employee protections.
I'm not sure what other countries you're taking about.
Yes, central banks all throughout the world printed endless amounts of liquidity, made entire populations dependent on them, destroyed small businesses (who are responsible for employing over 60% of the entire working population), drove up unemployment rates to record levels, and created inflation across the globe.
As I said in one of my other comments -- this was the greatest wealth transfer in human history done in the shortest amount of time in history.
It was systematic. It was worse than what happened in 2008.
The only people who came out on top were corporate elites and the Governments they own.
So no I didn't get anything wrong in my assessment at all.
Also, you're speculating that companies need to raise prices to maintain profits. McDonald's will continue to record insane profits with a pay increase to employees nationwide.
McDonald's is not responsible for raising prices "nationwide."
McDonald's is a franchise business. Each McDonald's you see is a small business owner who took enormous capital risks (going into debt to the tune of $2 million on average) to open that business.
And those business owners will have to raise the prices of everything because the cost of everything around them will rise.
Their profits just won't be as large because they're less able to exploit their workers. If they raise prices, they're passing the cost onto you, the consumer, to maintain board/executive salaries.
Workers are not "exploited" -- workers are people who voluntarily decide to work or not and where they want to work and what they want to work at.
Because a worker does not take on the enormous capital risk that a business owner does (for example the guy who took out a $2 million loan to build a McDonald's) then they instead contribute toward the profitability of that operation and receive a cut of the profit.
That's not exploitation.
The worst thing that will ever happen to them is they lose their job because the business went under. However, because they did not borrow the money to open the business or put their entire livelihoods on the line to make it profitable, they share no other risk besides that.
This is the trade off someone makes when they decide to work FOR a company, rather than run one themselves.
And employees ARE simultaneously consumers .