A quick reminder that Government Enforced Price Controls Equate To Shortages of Goods and Services (Minimum Wages and Rent Controls lead to SHORTAGES) – January 25, 2022,
Countries like Canada, the United States, and Australia currently suffer from manufacturing and housing shortages, why? Because of Minimum wages and Rental controls. The concept behind Rental Controls was to prevent landlords from price gouging their tenants. Let’s tell it for it what it is, there are instances in which landlords are horrible business people, but from another perspective, let’s not forget that some tenants are horrible people.
Allow me to quickly present you with a scenario of why the government should have never allowed Rental Controls. The tenant destroys the landlord’s property, the landlord wants to kick out the tenant, but the tenant is a single mother with 5 children, but the landlord is losing money because the rent the tenant pays will not cover the damage the tenant caused to the property.
With rental controls laws, the landlord will have to make up the money they lost by charging a future tenant more money because ALL existing renters are protected from rental rate hikes above the amount set by the government. What’s the big deal you say? that sounds fair, some will argue, well what that does is that makes building rental purposed housing more scarce.
No human wants to be in the business of losing money. The point of pursuing profitability is to avoid being a SLAVE. Being rich is great, but most people are comfortable with being FREE. Well, rental controls create SHORTAGES of rental purposed housing. Because if there’s no profit motive or the government regulations make a certain investment too risky, fewer people will want to get involved in that type of investment.
How minimum wages create labor shortages
To understand minimum wage laws, you first have to understand, that minimum wages law were targeted at the entrepreneur. First and foremost, nobody was forced to participate in the industrial revolution, there are still countries that are undeveloped, it was a privilege at one point in history to not only work for a manufacturing company but to also live in a major city. People took the PRIVILEDGE of living in a major city as RIGHT!
For some working for a manufacturing company is an opportunity to become an entrepreneur, for others working at a manufacturing company feels more like a RIGHT. I’m entitled to work at “ABC Inc.” for as long as I want and therefore I should be paid a livable wage, that keeps pace with “Inflation”!? Government makes minimum wages the law and this creates a LABOUR SHORTAGE problem, why? Because business owners aren’t slaves, they need to make a profit and if n employee can’t make them profit, because of an arbitrary government wage, the business won’t hire the employee.
Now when most people think employer in 2022, they imagine Walmart, Amazon, or Mcdonalds, when instead they should imagine a mother who needs a babysitter, how now has to pay the minimum wage at a daycare with scarce labor. There are so many jobs that don’t exist anymore because of the minimum wage laws. These labor shortages now have to be filled exclusively by skilled labour.
Skilled labour obviously wants to be paid more than the minimum wage and therefore if you can’t afford the minimum wage, you’re at the mercy of the government. Anyway, both wages and rental controls are nothing more than prices that governments give special titles to. Once the government begins to enact more price controls expect that there will be more shortages of stuff.
Interesting times ahead!