[ctdonath]

Money is not wealth. Money is just a convenient abstraction facilitating barter. If you have little to barter, compelling the buyer to give you $7/hr (or suitable unit equivalents) only serves to devalue what $7 represents. If you legislate paying the gas station clerk $100/hr, soon a gallon of gas will cost about $50.

Money just divides up the total value in an economy. Forcing people to trade more wealth, however represented, for less value can only wreck an economy.

The economic law of supply and demand is responsible for not existing such a law.

Links? news.ycombinator.com - it's all about the reality of creating wealth.

[kaonashi]

Minor quibble: money doesn't facilitate barter, it is and always has been a credit relationship.

[IheartApplesDix]

Deabstraction of money doesn't really make your argument any clearer as it has no bearing on the law of supply in demand except to make clear that it's arbitrary and can be changed at any time.

Gas is a commodity so the price wouldn't fluctuate like that. At least not for a long time and not for economic reasons other than greed. Of course, greed is a natural market force, but it's not like that there would be a gas shortage from everyone being able to afford to fill their 20 gallon tanks.

[ctdonath]

Deabstraction does help: compelling the employer to pay a gas station clerk 30 gallons of gas per hour would screw up the economy. That work isn't worth the value of that much gas.

Mundane labor, that which pretty much anyone can do with minutes of training, is also a commodity. And you haven't lived thru the shortages from everyone wanting to fill their 20 gallon tanks at once.

[wnight]

Who covers the difference between the $7/h gas station attendants currently make, and the new $100/h? How do they do this without raising prices? Where does the farmer buy gas so as not to have to raise the price of food to match?

[IheartApplesDix]

I was working under the assumption that the government would subsidize the difference.

[ctdonath]

Correction: government would confiscate the difference from other hard working people and encourage low-end workers to stay in those low-value jobs. Really screws up the labor market: "why work harder? I'm getting $100/hr running a cash register!"