Quote Originally Posted by JKDS View Post
I dont understand why ”wages increase with free market activity"

Isnt the reverse shown to be true repeatedly thought history? We can follow taxes on the wealthy, for example, and see that income inequality was at its highest in times of minimal regulation, and at its lowest with heavy regulation.

The other problem I see with leaving wages to the market is that there is a huge difference in bargaining power. Anyone who has ever been unemployed knows this, to the point of accepting any wage...even at the cost of getting a second job. What history tells us though, is that conditions will progressively get worse if businesses are left to their own devices, until the people resort to violence ala the French revolution, the march on wall street, and countless other examples.
Income inequality and wages are two entirely different things. Inequality doesn't tell us anything. Here's one easy example why: triple everybody's income and you have eliminated poverty but increased inequality. The media's obsession with inequality does not come at the behest of most economists.

History has shown that markets are what increase wages. This happened in every western nation, including the US, and East and Southeast Asia have been demonstrating this for the last few decades. China's growth is entirely about pro-market reforms and it has been growing mind-bogglingly fast. The western media has no idea how to cover China, and we're sorely left in the dark about exactly how rapidly its wages have risen. They've gone up so quickly that China is now losing out some industry to poorer places that are pursuing their own market reforms, like Cambodia.

Employees have a lot of bargaining power in the market too. In fact, regulations like minimum wage are one of the main things that detract that bargaining power. The intellectual and policy backing of "pro-labor" reforms like the minimum wage have always been unions with the goal to kick their competition out of the market. Irony.

The French Revolution was a disaster and wasn't about rebellion from markets and businesses.

The US is the most regulated entity in world history. By a lot. Banks are regulated about six million times more than the media or those who march on Wall Street realize. The most consistent way to keep the powerful in power and keep the powerless out of power is regulations. Besides, I think if everybody knew what many of these regulations are or who are giving them, everybody would be against them. They mostly work in the shadows and have nothing to do with who or what people vote for.