BERNIE SANDERS UNVEILS HIS LATEST INSANE IDEA:

Back in reality, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Any economic change has significant trade-offs, and you can’t get around them just by writing legislation that says everything has to work out great for everyone.

For one, this change would constitute an enormous increase in costs for many employers and businesses. And it’s just basic economics that when businesses’ costs go up, they have to raise their prices. Workers aren’t actually going to be better off if everything they consume gets more expensive.

Regardless, while the federal government could try to prohibit employers from reducing current workers’ wages in light of this legislation, that wouldn’t really work. After all, employers will still presumably be free to offer lower wages for all new hires.

More essentially, a worker’s real wage is not the number on his or her paycheck but what it can buy for the worker. And the government can mandate that the worker’s pay not be cut on paper, but it can’t stop prices from rising and his or her real wage from effectively falling.

Milton Friedman, and the Gods of the Copybook Headings, smile.