[joe_the_user]

In the real world, actually, this piece of union propaganda does have an effect on the union-management struggle, so actually the world is interested in questions about cost of living. Whether that decides anything is, of course, yet to be determined.

Now in general, people sell stuff to make money and so there may be a demand for a product below what I sell it for but if the costs of producing it, including some skilled labor, are such that no one can make much money selling the good cheaper, well then the "supply" part of "supply and demand" certainly cares about costs of living too. Sure, some electronic products can have their production automated and be made by anyone in the world and thus their supply can feel infinite. But other things involve multiple monopolistic positions. BART has a natural monopoly on medium-rail in the Bay, the union is aiming to preserve a monopoly on supplying labor to BART. In the real world, there no more reason that the union's monopoly should be broken any more than there's a reason to create companies competing someone competing with BART for riders. There are no lessons here, just who wins.

"All's fair in love and war"