> Similarly, you must use logic and reason to deduce that putting a mandated price floor on labor will reduce the amount of labor demanded. Ehhhhhh. First, acc

> Similarly, you must use logic and reason to deduce that putting a mandated price floor on labor will reduce the amount of labor demanded. Ehhhhhh. First, according to a simple theory, yes, you are correct. This means that if the evidence points in another direction (and the article is suggesting it is pointing in another direction), then clearly your simple theory is missing something. Second, the situation is definitely more complicated than that. It's not like the ONLY effect raising minimum wage has is on the cost of employing people; if you're only paying attention to that one effect, sure, I'd expect your conclusion. But - I say - apparently - I note - in this situation, your conclusion is not occurring, so - How do you tell whether this is due to the other, unexamined effects of raising minimum wage, or whether it is due to other causes? Finally: > You don't need advanced economics to understand that setting a price floor will reduce quantity supplied and increase quantity demanded ...No, I wouldn't necessarily expect that. Let's say I mandate that corn costs $10 a cob. What are effects I might expect to see? - Some farmers switch to making more corn, because it's now worth more (they may not be thinking about whether people will buy it at the new price, just that any sold is sold at $10) - Corn moves to be seen as a more "luxury" resource, a la the "keeping up with the joneses" effect. - Some farmers switch to making less corn, because they anticipate fewer people buying it at the higher price, since fewer people can get $10 worth of value out of one cob. (The nominal price of corn may then rise to $10, due to a reduction in supply moving to match demand at the new price). Let's reverse the situation. Let's say I mandate that corn now costs $0.01 a cob. What effects might I expect to see? - Only shitty corn gets made - People find uses for cheap as shit corn, that weren't economical before. Demand for corn rises as there are more economical uses for it I'm not saying that "price floor for employees" is the same as "price floor for corn", I am saying that clearly they are not the same, so you definitely can't apply the same model to both and expect to predict reality. Setting a price floor on a good is definitely different than setting a wage floor on people. And, I'm saying: this is more complicated than such a simple model can predict. Here's a question: Why are you even trying to explain economic cause and effect through logic, rather than through statistical correlation? It's not like you're ever going to be able to understand enough of each situation to actually model everything* "clockwork-universe style", and that's if you can even derive solid laws with which to run the model. Statistical tendencies seems like a much more reasonable way to try to model everything. * Well, maybe with mass adoption of AR.