…is how the comments section here and here is so full of people who refuse to admit that their successful drive to impose a $15/hr minimum wage on Seattle businesses is going to result in the steady exodus of businesses from Seattle (see also here). This is what happens when you let people who think that ‘capitalism’ is a dirty word run economic policy; it’s like letting a Ptolemic astrologer write your astronomy textbooks, or a phlogiston-believing alchemist plan out your chemistry curriculum. I mean, I’m sure that some of those economic illiterates meant well, but meaning well doesn’t make payroll.
What’s the road situation like for Seattle, anyway? Can people effectively escape to the suburbs for their dinners out (and other retail activities)? – Because that’s probably the best-case scenario for how this situation plays out. Of course, if retail flees to just outside the city limits then poor people take it in the chin; but then, ‘poor people taking it on the chin’ is a natural by-product of pretty much every economic system besides free-market capitalism.
Oh, I certainly hope that saying that ticked off some socialists. A day without ticking off a socialist is like a day without sunshine…
Moe Lane
Starnesville sends their regards!
That’s rather cruel. The Pthoemics and the Phogiston-believers tried to model Reality, rather successfully (With some problems on the edges, but they knew that, and were trying to fix the problems). The “Economics” people are willfully denying Reality, and they know it. They may govern as Marxists, but they do not live like them. Witness, for example, the brutally Capitalist Elizabeth Warren, who made an awful lot of money “flipping” properties (The Worst Kind of Capitalist to any Marxist, for she produced nothing of Value……..).
A better and more inclusive term for socialists, “Progressives,” communists, and Marxists is economic creationists.
“People who believe in evolution in biology often believe in creationism in government. In other words, they believe that the universe and all the creatures in it could have evolved spontaneously, but that the economy is too complicated to operate without being directed by politicians.”
— Thomas Sowell
And from the same column:
“When politicians say, “spread the wealth,” translate that as “concentrate the power,” because that is the only way they can spread the wealth. And once they get the power concentrated, they can do anything else they want to, as people have discovered — often to their horror — in countries around the world.”
Seattle’s road system is rather infamously bad.
It’s a steep area between mountain and sea that doesn’t have many natural routes of travel. It’s very prone to earthquakes. The citizens are litigious and consider views as a major portion of their property values. And the leftist city government does not like spending money on highway maintenance.
When I visited some friends who lived in one of the nearest suburbs, it took well over an hour to get to the city, and that wasn’t during rush hour.
Capitalism trumps everything because it is not so much a system as it is an *observation*.
More of Heinlein’s “bad luck” for those that get stuck in the city.