Salario mínimo

Más de este tema. Parece que después de la victoria demócrata en las elecciones de EEUU se viene una suba del salario mínimo. Es un debate que me resulta muy interesante. Creo que hay mucha gente en todo el mundo, pero particularmente en los países más pobres y atrasados, que siguen profundamente convencidos de que el estado genera riqueza y que la interacción entre la oferta y la demanda puede ser reemplazada por burócratas iluminados.

Seguimos creyendo que estas cosas son gratis:

Raising the minimum wage has been a hardy perennial of the left for decades now. What is striking is the degree to which is has come to be seen as an economic free lunch. Even some reputedly unbiased economists have started to tout the view that raising the minimum wage has no discernible effect on job creation.

But if this were true, they'd be calling for a $10, $20 or even $50-an-hour minimum wage. They're not, and neither is Nancy Pelosi. That's because the law of demand is one of the most dependable precepts of economics. It says that when the price of something goes up, demand for it goes down. An employee's wages are the price the employer pays for his services, so raising their wages means forcing employers to pay more for workers. The price goes up and there is downward pressure on demand for workers. Other things being equal, jobs are lost.