Samsung makes phones as good as the iPhone and have a lot more options, including apps, but charge less. So, no supply and demand effect there. Just vanity at ‘owning’ only Apple tech.
Fast food jobs are no more automated in Australia, or anywhere else for that matter, than in the US. Although, I was wrong on Australia’s minimum wage- it varies from just under $19 per hour to $25+ per hour depending on where one lives. And fast food chains are “flourishing” in the US, as well.
The UE rate there is typically, if not always, higher than in the US, depending on how that rate is measured, but their social safety net is far better than in the US. And the US doesn’t even make the top ten list of the best places to live. Another lie we’re told in school and often by politicians (now, they ARE trying to “sell something” to voters).
And those “12 million illegal immigrants” help farmers grow our food more cheaply so it costs us less. CA, among a few other states, have tried several times to only hire American citizens but no ‘spoiled’ young American will take that kind of job because of the long hours of back-breaking labor. So they’re not here ‘taking jobs from Americans; they’re here providing the cheap labor we insist on having to keep the Standard of living to which we’ve come to expect. I’ve yet to hear of an illegal immigrant taking an office job or being a doctor, dentist, nurse- well, that list goes on and on. So the effect on the ‘“labor pool” is actually beneficial, not detrimental.
I may have said this in my first reply to you but raising the minimum wage costs the loss of a relatively small number of jobs for a short period of time, roughly one to two years, then an increase of available jobs over what was available before the wage increase. You may see increasing the minimum wage as “social engineering” and it may well be but it’s social engineering that benefits society; nothing wrong with that.
Oh, and while the science of economics may not be political, it’s often used that way by politicians, to, as you say, the detriment of trust in true economists.
Did you intend to fill your reply with red herrings or did it just come out that way?
btw, I like the masked man photo, the guy hiding his face.
