The Law of Unintended Consequences Will Kick You In The Balls Every Time

[johan]

I was thinking more in terms of someone who sells goods. If everyone's paid more, then more people are buying the goods you're selling, so you're getting more income at the same time you're paying your employees more. Who might, in turn, use some of their money to pay for the goods you're selling as well.

You're talking about education, which is another topic, and probably falls under "use taxpayer money to provide education and training, so more people have opportunities to become better, and give more to society".

Ok so let the government subsidizes all the flight training. Got it. Good luck getting your senator to vote for that one.

But there are still lots of jobs in which goods aren't sold. What about those who provide services like a plumber? Plumbing is a wet dirty job. And it pays well because its a wet dirty job. But plumbers don't actually make and sell goods. At least not directly. So in your model, plumbers wouldn't really get paid any more money than they already do.

Except we then find that its more difficult for the owner of plumbing company to find and keep employees because now they can go work at Subway and stay clean and dry and make the same money as they did getting wet and dirty crawling under houses to fix pipes. So now what does our plumbing company owner do? I'll give you three guesses. He raises his pay and also raises his rates to make up the difference. Unless you think the government should pay for plumbing work too?

So what have we done? We've raise pay and in turn, raised prices. How is that better?