Henry Ford paid those high wages to his own staff. He did not prevent any other local companies from also paying low wages.
So Ford’s strategy had a significant advantage over minimum wage laws, in that his strategy didn’t destroy any jobs.
When you increase minimum wage, there is a sliver of the market that gets shut down: the set of jobs that made sense between the old minimum and the new minimum. Those are jobs that people were happy to work, but which they aren’t allowed to any longer. Those people are now out of a job.
When Henry Ford decided to pay his own workers well, he did so with his own money, and in a way that didn’t break anyone else’s existing economic arrangements.
In other words, he didn’t violate anyone’s consent in order to enact his version of economic activism. This matter of consent is the key difference between the actions of a private entity, and the actions of a government.
That’s complete and utter BS. Spain has risen the minimum wage from 735€ (2018) to 1080€ (2023) and unemployment has gone down. And if the raise in minimum wage is the reason you have to close your business you weren’t having a benefit on your customers but on your workers. And that has another very different name.
How about increasing wages to promote more consumer spending? Henry Ford-- a literal Nazi-- of all people, knew this!
Henry Ford paid those high wages to his own staff. He did not prevent any other local companies from also paying low wages.
So Ford’s strategy had a significant advantage over minimum wage laws, in that his strategy didn’t destroy any jobs.
When you increase minimum wage, there is a sliver of the market that gets shut down: the set of jobs that made sense between the old minimum and the new minimum. Those are jobs that people were happy to work, but which they aren’t allowed to any longer. Those people are now out of a job.
When Henry Ford decided to pay his own workers well, he did so with his own money, and in a way that didn’t break anyone else’s existing economic arrangements.
In other words, he didn’t violate anyone’s consent in order to enact his version of economic activism. This matter of consent is the key difference between the actions of a private entity, and the actions of a government.
That’s complete and utter BS. Spain has risen the minimum wage from 735€ (2018) to 1080€ (2023) and unemployment has gone down. And if the raise in minimum wage is the reason you have to close your business you weren’t having a benefit on your customers but on your workers. And that has another very different name.
I’d say if the customers were buying what you were selling, then it was of benefit to them too
That would be a benefit FOR your customers. A business has to benefit FROM the customers, not from the workers.