only works under absolute pricing control.
Things are priced based on local wages. That is, if a single person is averaging $2K a month, the rent market for a studio apt may average of $1500 a month. Raise local wages to $3K a month, rents go up to $2000 a month. 4K, $3500 a month. Multibedrooms are even more because it’s expected in this day and age that both adult occupants will be working.
And it’s not just landlords. Restaurants increase their prices (the $6 burger for $3 is now $8), grocers increase their prices, even doctors and dentists increase their prices. A tooth pulled in NYC costs more than a tooth pulled in Sweetwater, TX. And, the state and local tax authorities get involved. A landlord may hold his price at $1200, but the city doubles the property taxes based on wages and expected rent. The water company raises rates, garbage rates go up, and the electric company gets their share, too.
So it’s not just rent-control you’ll have to do, it’s price control everywhere - you can only charge this much for cereal, or rent, or electric, or a new car, based on current wage. A cadillac for me is $10,000 and for you is $100,000. My ‘wage card’ is brown, your ‘wage card’ is silver.
Local conditions have always been the best governor of wages. When govt gets involved in mandating wages it throws a natural balance off and ends up costing the individual more.
“ends up costing the individual more”
Just because Lazy Larry won’t justify getting paid $10/hour doesn’t mean leaving the fate of 10 million people to the mindset of businesspeople who all get the idea from a leading business journal to pay low-skilled labor no more than $5/hour.
It’s not your beliefs that matter, it’s not your business’s cash flow that matters, it’s not Lazy Larry’s lifestyle that matters, it is the mathematics of federal cash flow that matters.
On Biden’s ballfield, every game will have to be played by his rules. Would you like to help set those rules?