Trying to explain these labor markets without grasping the most basic thing about labor markets – high supply means low prices – is just ridiculous. So much so that it must be deliberate. After all, it’s not as if journalists don’t know this. The most common complaint within that particular profession is that there are so many people who want to do it that no one can make a living doing it anymore.
It’s an absurd proposition that anyone should need to open a book to learn about supply and demand. Surely every child who traded “comics” at the weekend knew. Or who swapped dead eels for dead frogs.
I think the same could be said about bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram influencers,….
I have heard that a lot of the young female influencers are able to make a decent living by going on business trips to the Middle East. That of course is a different sort of supply and demand.
dearieme. About half the population (the left half) hate the law of supply and demand. To them, it is just people being selfish, unfair, greedy, or whatever. Hence the efforts to set minimum wages, price controls, etc. There is a magic wage or price that is just right, and by golly they know what it should be.
Here’s a fun question:
The UK has myriad price controls on e.g. minimum wages, social housing rents, what train companies can raise their prices by, energy caps etc
But when was the last time a UK price control was repealed?
“This is also why the average actor’s income from acting is zero. It’s fun to do, glorious in fact, which means that there are millions who do those amateur plays, dinner theater, and so on.”
And within acting, it’s supply and demand. Actors really want to do Ibsen. But the demand is for superhero movies. And even within superhero movies the real money isn’t for the acting but the PR work. You make a lot more money being one of the stars who is flying around doing chat shows and such like, because there are a lot of actors who really hate doing that stuff. They’d rather do supporting roles or smaller films to avoid it.
Bongo,
“But when was the last time a UK price control was repealed?”
The last one I can think of is the Milk Marketing Board. Agriculture Act 1993.
Thank you BoM4. That’s an early quality contender.
The Truss repeal of the cap on bankers’ bonuses is still to happen, so doesn’t count.
Net Book Agreement? I think that was 1990s, as it happened just as I was registering my ISBN prefix, and removed a complication that I was unsure how to deal with.
Net Book Agreement wasn’t a law, just an agreement between publishers. Which was legal because it was exempt from Resale Price Maintenance which was otherwise outlawed c1960(?)
Too many journalists with Oxbridge History of Art degrees, and not enough lads with wrenches and screwdrivers.
When I was a lad we didn’t have wrenches. Spanners were what we had. Plus maybe a pipe wrench, I’ll give you that. But that’s because I’m so old that I don’t affect subAmerican speech.
@Dearieme… Tut Tut! “Stilson / Stilsons” please! 🙂
Why do stocks continue to go up even after stock splits unless high supply leads to higher prices?
Why can’t labor be like a stock?
Is the idea that high supply means lower prices just faith-based cherry-picking of actual real-world data?
Resale price maintenance on medicines. Can’t recall the date it ended, but it was removed following lobbying by large pharmacy multiples.
I don’t why I’m bothering with the dopey cunt, but;
A stock split does not alter the expected/anticipated rate of return from holding the stock.