Destiny doesn't like rent control and believes doubling the minimum wage is good for democrats in terms of optics. Destiny quite liked UE's last video on housing (th-cam.com/video/rBbhZWZf0gM/w-d-xo.html) but he's not convinced we should throw out Econ101 just yet. Timestamps▼Click▼ 0:00 - Minimum wage and elasticity 4:16 - Destiny starts to critique the video 15:42 - Landlord study and rent control 32:05 - Basic economics is pervasive and perverse... it's why we can't have nice things
Adam Smith said 'The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed' Which was not that they were inherently morally worse than other men, but that their privilege allowed them to collect an unearned income from others labour. He went on from here to justify a tax on 'ground rents' on economic terms, which is what we now call a land value tax. ' A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground.' This is an idea he got under influence of the Physiocrats whom he visited, they advocated a 'single tax' on land. Though he did not accept it as a single tax he did agree it was the most natural source of government revenue. Following on from him Ricardo, Mill and other classicals also agreed it was a sensible tax, Henry George famously revived it as a single tax , but whilst the Physiocrats wanted to leave about 1/3 of land rents with the landlords to preserve the social order, George advocated collecting all of it, or as much as possible. Some evidence shows in reaction to this, the neo-classical movement under influence of John Bates Clarke then spent much of the 20thC reducing land to a footnote in economics textbooks, and Marx and the revolution became the bogie man for the orthodoxy to rail against whilst never confronting the insights of classicals on land, let alone George.
I will say that as someone studying both politics and economics, economists won't assume that a supply and demand curve applies to an entire society, however political writers will cite economic studies as if they do
True. Economists are slightly more intellectually honest then that. It doesn’t change that neoclassical economics, aka the economics used to make most economic policy decisions in America and many other places, is bad theory because it is necessarily incomplete
Yeah, exactly right. People don't understand that those are MODELS and models are APPROXIMATIONS of reality not reality itself. Just drawing a basic curves of supply and demand is sufficient model to describe that phenomenon, equaly as drawing an Earth as a sphere or doing a back of the envelope calculation.
Doesnt mean hes right though. His video just seems like Cherry Picking while ignoring states like Mississippi where 15$ would destroy small businesses.
@@Stefanofitch93 UE dude kinda seems biased or his PHD is more for show and he forgot alot of the stuff cause you can feel in his video that there is a heavy slant in 1 direction when economist in the world are still debating this issue
@@noahaloah7802 Because he is not making the argument for 15 dollar minimum wage. UE is making the argmument for minimum wage rise in general. Destiny dosent seem to get it either (18:00) so I wonder if UE could have formulatet it better tbh
@@resshantanmorgan7107 As opposed to the armies of economists bought by the wealthy to influence tax policies? Fox News trots out Arthur Laffler as dog & pony show every now & then.
But everyone is doing that. All I know comes from other people. And all the redditor knew, came from someone else too. How do we solve that? What do you suggest? New copyright laws?
Not keen on all the comments saying "Wow this guy knows nothing about economics, his PhD is a joke" etc. Bro you're commenting on a TH-cam video, settle down.. we can disagree with experts, I disagree with tons of economists but it's kinda Trumpian to dismiss them as uneducated or stupid. All the stuff Destiny mentioned is stuff i guarantee the researchers considered, and I thought the video was pretty even-handed. I love Destiny but this really felt like motivated reasoning (trying to justify his conclusions) mixed up with legitimate points.
@Ben Woodcock Do you want him to qualify every other statement with "Oh I think", "Some people say", "This is just my opinion", "I could be wrong"? Everybody understands that a video essay is not absolute knowledge.
Yeah I unironically think this is because Destiny's audience moved so much to the right. They see "leftist" and boom that person automatically doesn't deserve any respect or charitability.
@Ben Woodcock So, what do you even want? Is there just no way to present information that is supposed to support your prescriptions for society? It seems like you're offended at the idea of an essay.
Nice job destiny, skip the woman explaining economics and then smear her You can also tell he is an expert that totally didn't prepare when he randomly stops the video to cite joe schmoe from his subreddit as an authority worth entirely rejecting the points being made, and then bravely disagrees with the conclusion being a wash when it clearly cites benefits of 20% in minority retention(good effect) and also landlords avoiding complying with the policy(bad effect) Very big brained
@Imran Agassy He did in one of the streams, but he had reservations about MMT and other leftist ideas. He described himself as a PosT-Keynesian economist, so the arguements against mainstream economics are not surprising, considering that Keynes' most influential book is a series of arguement against a pillar of economic theory in his days.
@@spacetoast7783 He did. The video highlight the parts, and the sources are in the descriptions. I also got a pdf of MIT economists empirical refutation of common economist recommendations. Empirical findings that do not correspond to theories are common to all social sciences, so its nothing new.
Literally just watched the UE video last night. I don't have a PhD like UE does, but I do have a BA in Economics, and his views tend to align with my own. Econ 101 is useful for establishing how models work and how economic theory has developed over time, but too many people (even economists in positions of authority) tend to not look for more recent developments or see how the old models are still holding up in practice. When you dive into it, some of the assumptions these models use just don't seem to be true in reality, so they lead you to false conclusions. For example, it would be true that competitive markets don't respond well to a minimum wage, but there's actually quite a bit of concentration in lots of labor markets or industries so a minimum wage or unionization can be a good thing because it corrects an existing market failure. I usually think Destiny is pretty good, but let's not kid ourselves, Destiny has an Econ 101 understanding of economics. Econ 101 is more than most people have, but it isn't enough to really grapple with the flaws in these models or dive into the empirical papers and critique them. That's why people like UE, who do have that ability, are so valuable.
Ah, yes, people that miscite and misrepresent academic papers only to further their point (even though they should know better having a PhD) are so valuable...
@@Nomad1735 ah yes because the random youtube commenter and video game streamer are going to be better sources for analyzing academic papers true intent than a ba and phd in econ :')
@@Ivan-qf4mt y'all are getting really fanatical about him acknowledging misspeaking in a 2-minute segment where he didn't even change his conclusions 🥴
Welcome to the world of TH-cam political contents. Almost nobody is actually an expert in the subjects. That's why they should accept the conclusions of researchers instead of trying to substitute their own.
@@shrub8644 You don't need to for this. He's just a friend of Destiny's who is a landlord. Would recommend the video and even the Unlearning Economics TH-cam channel though. Seems like a smart guy who enjoys talking about economics.
yeah it's interesting isn't it. What's the incentive really to increase your productivity other than stock or tying your wage to the profits you make on that day. A flat wage like $10 per hour doesn't seem right to me.
Put your achievements on your resume when you apply to different positions, and a company will reach out to you offering more than you're currently making. Don't settle for being at an unappreciative employer.
I think Destiny brought up some good points. I still think UE’s video still makes a good point about Econ 101 though, since it seems like the negative effects Destiny brought up weren’t a direct result of Supply and Demand, but rather externalities of those policies. Ie. “Econ 101” isn’t enough to dismiss these policies.
I think most people misunderstand Econ 101. Actors are rational beings: This doesn't mean they are logical and reasonable. It means they act as expected. Actors know everything: This doesn't mean they are all knowing. It means they know everything that is public knowledge (what you and I know, what we see on TV, etc). Also there is no alternative to science. If we don't decide based on science, on what do we base our decisions? Gut feeling?
@@devalapar7878 What? The entire point is that econ 101 is closer to austrian thinking than mainstream thinking. UE has already said mainstream economics is more empirical, and while he is certainly very critical of it, he is actually attacking a priori thinking in this video, he even points out natural experiments as a positive, which is as scientific as you can get.
I don't think Destiny is qualified to talk on this issue, unfortunately. Seems like Unlearning Economics is going to have a new part in his Economics vs Breadtube series.
Please don't act like intelligent econ people don't dislike unlearning economics(terrible name, btw) as well. Most of what destiny said about the rent control section was correct even if he seems a bit too adverse to 15min/wage given Dubes research. Just go to r/badecon dt anytime UE is posted there and see how well his arguments hold up to scrutiny.
Letting the minimum wage stay stagnant means you're lowering the barrier to entry for new businesses, which is a BAD thing if it means they can only operate while underpaying their workers based on the cost of living in a specific area. Any idiot can balance their books if their labor costs haven't kept up with inflation over the past several decades. The argument that a $15 minimum wage will kill businesses looks bad politically, but this purge is necessary to weed out companies that can only operate at an artificially stagnant wage.
Skipping the entire final third of the video just on the basis you don't like who was speaking is pretty ignorant. The messenger shouldn't be the person who is assessed it should be the message. Everyone makes mistakes and has bad opinions but it doesn't mean they always do.
I'm sorry but even in Mississippi you cannot afford to buy a one bedroom apartment with the minimum wage we have now. If a small business can't afford to give their employees a living wage then it should snuff out of the free market AND/OR we need to stop having private companies pay for insurance and move to a Medicare for All system, or Single Payer. I don't agree with Destiny's take at all to be honest.
@@jonh5941 I said a one bedroom apartment, which you have to rent. People who live on a minimum wage can't afford a one bedroom apartment, which you are renting. I never mention buying a house, which is a whole other story.
24:24 your "Important notice" needs an "IMPORTANT NOTICE" Attached. In the abstract of the paper it says: "landlords treated rent control reduce rental housing supplies by 15%". You might want to fix that. Overall I agree with a lot of what Destiny and the paper are arguing, but don't lie in you editing to dunk on UE.
14:36 you kind of described working flat rate at a dealership right here. Each task has a time limit set to it, and if you finish it faster than the set time, you get paid the same amount as if you took the whole time to finish it. The only downside is if you get tasks where a car is fucked and takes longer than the allotted amount set for a task, you don't get paid for the extra time spent on it.
Unlearning Economics fans are calmly explaining why they disagree with Destiny's takes, yet that's "sperging" (nice way of referring to autistic people by the by).
While destiny has a point about how the magnitude of change will also create an effect of similar magnitude (big change to min wage creates big externalities) the first point of UE video was to point out that US min wage has been stagnating for decades and so a larger magnitude of change is offset by the fact that it has been behind for a long time. For strong economies the average wages should exceed the rate of inflation (even if only by a small amount). Not acknowledging that point in destiny's rebuttal makes it seem off the mark
around 6:00 - you call an increase to $15 a huge increase, but _is_ it? How much were the increases in these studies? In 1994, the NJ increase was about 18.8% (from 4.25 to 5.05). In 2021 it was $12 an hour - the same sized increase would make it 14.25 an hour, and $15 would only be a little (25% vs 19%) more - you imply that would be some kind of massive shock, but don't put any numbers or actual analysis to your assertion. Wouldn't the 'hugeness' of this increase depend on location and prevailing wages? You wonder about the validity and call an 18+% increase a 'small bump'. Why? Why not actually read the studies and say why they might be invalid instead of just saying your uninformed opinion is that they 'might' be, so let's _completely_ discount them? You then jump right to a slippery slope argument, "because then we can argue for $25 an hour, $35 an hour..." You are treading pretty close to outright dishonesty, and I am not 7 minutes into your video. You also conflate 'what is being proposed' with the 'Seattle Study', which was to $15 an hour (over a couple of years), and kind of slip past the difference between federal and state minimum wages. Should the federal minimum wage be immediately raised to $15 an hour? The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 proposed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 over 4 years (by 2025) with the first year being the largest (31%) increase, the rest of the years all being smaller than the NJ study increase). So - yeah - I will agree that is agressive, but you have _zero_ evidence that it would be bad, and the _most_ you have done is question the validity of some studies - not based on any studies with opposing findings, but just raising questions with no basis. 7:09 - you reiterate that the NJ study - which you admit to not know how much the increase was - was 'nowhere near' $15 an hour. Well - no, but in terms of a percentage increase, it was close to what would be done in aggreagate over the 4 years (an 18.8% increase over 4 years would raise the federal minimum wage to 14.44 an hour - to $15 would be just shy of 20% per year). Elasticity is a curve, and it's slope really depends - moving 'far away' depends a lot on each individual situation. Again - another uninformed guess about what might happen - with no numbers and no data and you clearly don't understand the underlying mathematics _at_ _all_. I mean sure - make up some numbers, why not? _Why_ do you guess that would be the situation? And _wow_ - maybe economists are all really stupid. How arrogant of you! And then you pretend that economists don't think about the objections you are raising - and you ignored Unlearning Economics statement where he mentioned studies that showed the broad affect of the change. And calling everyone 'lazy' while you are making you-tube videos. Gah - I've had enough of your bullshit.
Destiny is literally describing Amazon with his "pay per task". This is why they fire anyone who takes more than 8 seconds to run 4 aisles in the warehouse to grab the next item that comes up on their picking list, and people have to piss in bottles. Why give people 15 minutes to go to the bathroom, when they can easily just piss in a bottle on the warehouse floor in 15 seconds?
This is not the same thing. Amazon does not pay you per task. They pay your a flat rate per hour. Amazon will fire you for not going fast enough. Incentivizing more efficient work is not the same as penalizing low efficient work.
@@frankda4 How is that any different? You are still incentivised to maintain a high level of efficiency, or lose your job. How would it be different than having no time limit on tasks, and paying per task, then making the maximum number of tasks you could physically complete equal $15/hour? Removing the punishment would only make people "lazy". Then you'd have people still doing "just enough" to make the amount of money they want. They'll put in 80% effort and make $13/hour, because busting their ass for the last $2 isn't worth it. The "gig economy" is what this is. Amazon isn't just warehouses, and Uber Eats pays literally per delivery. Which is why sometimes your Uber Eats will not get delivered. I've been at restaurants, and have seen Uber Eats drivers refuse to wait for an order because the restaurant did not have the order ready, and any amount of time the driver sits in a restaurant directly impacts their "bottom line". So by paying per task directly, Uber drivers simply refuse the "bad tasks", and only accept the "good" ones. Does this increase productivity to have drivers refuse to take orders they are assigned? Amazon does exactly what Destiny said, they absolutely would not have people working 40 hour weeks if it was their choice. They totally want people working 20 hours a week. Specifically, 29.9 hours, which are scheduled by algorithm. If you are only working 29.9 hours you are not a "full time" employee, and Amazon is not required to offer you benefits. They would also prefer that everyone was "self employed" and filed their taxes 1099. This would make it so Amazon does not have to pay into Social Security and Medicare, which would save the company billions of dollars.
@@B_B-420 I agree that Destiny's take is way to absolute, first thing that came to my mind where also delivery drivers. On the other hand, creating a baseline with a fixed salary and certain expectations regarding output usually leaves room for a bonus system. Depending on the job it might be harder to implement (don't want to incentivice quick, bad finishes on tasks for example), but in my experience a well thought out bonus system benefits employer and employee. Would at least be a step in the right direction imo
@@frankda4 delivery drivers peeing in water bottles is technically "more efficient" work on paper, since they're delivering more packages faster. But in reality thats a depriving standard to hold workers to. Whats good on paper is defintely not always whats good for humans.
@@B_B-420 so thinking about it more, your right it could be equivalent set up. There is a lot of details and assumptions that I think your making and with what I was imagining that make the outcomes different. How high you set the metric for efficiencies is one. I think the Amazon outcome is not great and for sure needs to be avoided. But also what destiny described is not great with people kinda unmotivated and not incentivized buy flat hourly wage. It seams like a difficult problem and striking a balance seams prudent. However I think at the end of the day it’s a lot of soft skills are needed to motivate and lead people and less metrics should be used.
Man, I'm probably the only one who hates the "up next" cards that pop up. Very distracting to me, although I cannn see why they are beneficial to the viewer.
I have a friend who works for a German company and in their company your days are always paid for, if you finish your daily tasks early you can go home if you want and still be paid for the whole day. However most workers actively choose to stay and work more to help their colleagues leave earlier. Anecdotal evidence for sure but I'm told this type of thing is the norm for Germany because the attitude to work and working is different.
i work in a factory and this is somewhat the norm in that the machines work the whole day. if the group is ahead of the machine, they go on break together until the machine catches up. anecdotaly this is pretty normal for humans to do. especially since helping someone with their work is so much more relaxed that doing your own. it also forms bonds among the workers, for better employment retention
Does Destiny really seriously reckon the rent controlled apartments are worth less not because they aren't being renovated? Can't think of another bigger reason why this might eb the case?
What you explain around 9:30, that elasticity is a function not a constant, is literally taught in most introductory economic courses. It is so incredibly foundational to the concept of elasticity. It is incredibly disingenuous for these elasticity studies to not take that into consideration
@@petarjovovic308 (1) Your comment doesn’t in any way refute what I said. (2) Can you please point to me where the speaker makes the claim that a large enough first derivative over a sufficiently large interval would support his point? It is certainly possible I missed it. In case it was not clear, I was making a specific critique about what was being said. The words that were coming out of the speakers mouth is what I was critiquing. Unless I am not accurately remembering, the speaker never made the claim you are suggesting
@@jloiben12 The point of my comment wasnt to refute you but more to add on.I would like to add that i havent actually read those studies in whole so i dont know whether they went into math behind elasticity or not.Also i m not sure should we label the authors as disshonest since the studies themself maybe just studied past minimum wage increases without trying to make any broader implications.
@@petarjovovic308 (1) I know the point of your comment was to refute mine. I was just making the statement that you failed. (2) What is specifically said in the studies about whether the information that is presented is a function or a constant is irrelevant. Again, my critique is of the words being used by the speaker. The speaker uses the information as a constant. That is disingenuous because that is not how elasticity works and a PhD in economics knows, or should know, how elasticity works
@@jloiben12 Wait, what?First of all no it actually wasnt,my original comment and your original comment are absolutely not mutually exclusive. As for your second point you litterally said in your original comment how "the studies are disingenuous".
Also if we are going to try and test pay per task. I feel quality issues would sky rocket because you will have people try and get as many tasks done and when working fast quality drops from ancedotal evidence lol. (I know ancedotal evidence is terrible, i know i spelled it wrong)
is it not the bosses job to determine if the task was completed to satisfaction? No one is saying people should be paid for taking shortcuts and making shitty products
except for shareholders that skeletonize their worker crew and keep the savings for themselves while the product quality goes to sh1t and there's no way to find alternatives because the alternatives are owned by the same rich shareholders and hedgefunds, and also the barrier for entry is too high for a startup, leading to an oligopoly with barely enough employees making a killing off of crappy products with inelastic demand. Yeah, those are the shareholders we should be helping
The Mechanic shops I have worked in have a system that Destiny is talking about at 13:30. You get your hourly pay and your "production" value is compared to your hourly. If you made more on the per job basis you got the higher amount or the hourly if you didn't. The issue with the system was how the company determined the value of the jobs, I.E. some things like an Alignment gave you 1 hour, but some things were not really worth the time they actually took. Also if there was one slow day during the week you'd be completely screwed and unable to make up those hours due to no fault of your own, you can't control if you only get a few Customers in a day as a Mechanic. IMO This system creates a "ME ME ME!" work situation where you are incentivized to only think of yourself and not work as a team with the rest of your shop.
my country (austria) due to its strong union culture has stuff like this worked out better. i didnt work in those arangements but its called akord. the trick is that there are different kinds. group akord (multiple share one result i.e. painters time on a house, can have a distribution key if a master, journeyman and apprentice work together), piece akord (where it is calculated on the basis of produced parts, i.e. how many 100 pieces a laithe opperator can make) or time akord where its about the time to finish a job (i.e. one painter finishing the house in x hours). There is also tons of accounting stuff behind that. basically the "my work, my work" situation can be avoided, but you need the structures/institutions/know how for it. america isnt there at all sadly.
14:00 I work fast because it makes the day go quicker. I guess it's bad to assume that most people do that. In my social work job it's not really the speed of the task but the care given, which can't really be scrutinized to that level effectively. I'm skeptical of this Amazon level efficiency he is talking about here. Sounds like technocratic panopticon authoritarianism, but that is the direction we're headed.
Supply and demand curves are not accurate at all. They are theory that describes a phenomenon but there is no accurate way to measure this due to thousands of small variables that effect it. It's just a vague guide to determine how to set your prices and how much it would effect your profit if you raise or lower your prices
The little note at 24:26 seems like its trying to be a “gotcha” moment but the note itself is also describing something different than what he said. So its like there are 3 unclear very specific things that potentially were reduced by 15% but no one is talking about the same thing.
People advocating for a $15 minimum wage probably have never gone to a small rural town restaurant and gotten a plate of more good food than you can eat for $8. Prices and cost of living can be radically different in different areas, and forcing an artificially high cost of labor has unintended consequences that the advocates often don't care about considering. It reeks of virtue signaling ignorance.
If the servers at the restaurant in that rural town now make 15/hr and the food increases let's say 50 percent so 8 to 12 you now don't have to tip because before you kinda had to or else you were a dick cause the server prob made like 2 bucks an hour due to some rural states allowing workers who get tips to get paid below the federal minimum wage of 7.25. So in the end the cost is the same.
Vienna has probably the best housing policy in Europe, yet they have rent control and state funded housing. Curious guys how reality doesn't align with "objective scientific facts"? The solution to this must be to correct everything to the models, right?
The negative effects of rent control in certain towns are now starting to show themselves here in the Boston area. Landlords run their old properties in the the ground, not fixing anything, while keeping costs high to take in as much as they can, to then kick out their tenants once the house is beyond repair, to then just invest into building a new modern property that is double or triple the previous cost of the old stay, which is no longer rent controlled. In 2009, the apartment complex I lived in for a very small two bedroom was $1550 a month. Now it's been torn down and remodeled for modern appeal, is now $3000 a month in 2021.
The rent controlled housing gets run into the ground argument is a red herring. At the end of the day, buildings are required to always be held up to code. Its up to states and municipalities to determine how strict or how lax of a code they want to implement. Remember the major point of most rent control isn't to provide affordable housing to the market, it's to ensure that existing residents aren't being priced out of their homes.
Vienna has the best housing policy in europe. They also have rent control and massive state funded housing. People are living in palasts for low rent, doctors and post men live side by side. Ghettos, high social inequality and low equality of opportunity are heavily reduced. It's a dream come true, but of course it is, because social democrats didn't listen to econ 101, which is incapable of accuratly describing reality. How is homelessness, the drug epidemic and ghettoization going for you in america? Livin' the free market dream? Rent control doesn't work as a single policy, this should be clear. The free market never worked on the other side.. rents just go higher and higher.
@@xXWorldgamefunXxI looked into Vienna. Vienna hasn't the same rent control scheme. 2/3 of the houses in Vienna are either subsidized or owned by the city. The city owns so many houses, because Vienna had a shortage in housing after World War I. So it build thousands of houses. Further Austria has a population of 8 million, but spends 540 million Euro for housing per year (that is a lot compared to other nations). There is no problem with rent control if the state takes the short fall. If it uses federal taxes to build new houses, to subsidize them and to maintain the old ones. And Econ 101 would predict Vienna correctly by the way! Cities in the US don't own half of the city and aren't willing to spend billions for housing. The money they would spend on housing would be missed somewhere else. I like Vienna's approach. I am not sure if it would work in the US. I personally don't believe everything should be left to the private market (e.g. public transport, postal service, etc). Your example is actually exactly what Destiny and the other guy proposed as a solution for the problems of rent control.
@@MegaAvinator TFW when you accidentally show everyone in these comments you have no experience with this at all and are just going off of online cliff notes. I know Destiny's community gets really really ass mad when you bring up Lived experiences, but hey, go ask any person living in Bostons Mattapan area, or NYC Bronx/Brooklyn areas and you tell me if you think those spaces are up to code.
13:33 this is so so true. I really like this concept, but it would be very tricky to implement. I think it would be difficult in practice to come up with well-defined “tasks” for certain jobs. Also, you would want to somehow take into account the quality of work done for each task, so that people don’t just rush through a task in a way that would cause problems later on due to poor quality.
My old work place gave lower management a portion of the profits like 1% or less but god damn you'll never guess who the best workers were. Its not possible to incentivize individual actions but it is possible to do that to a behavior everyone else had the same lack of care for doing work and I would have loved to see how it would have worked if they expanded it to the regular employees as well.
@@helios566 Sounds feasible but I would expect that lazy workers would still ride coattails, but there would be more pressure/conflict with coworkers. That’s basically a coop-lite, right?
Maybe rather than tasks done there could be some quantification of the economic value you've given to your employer with your labour in let's say, a day or an hour, and set your wage as a ratio to that.
The paying scheme for contract work seems way better than hourly wages. Employers genuinely do not get the most productivity they can because workers aren't compensated for productivity, essentially just for looking busy
@@agbor9790 Yes, are you saying that isn't considered to be on the left? I have seen hundreds of different political spectrums and idk which one to go by I guess?
destiny pls listen to some richard wolff. he's an ivy league professor of economics, strongly anti-capitlist, but has some really cool pragmatic examples of worker co-ops that are able to compete with market corporations.
The section on rents Vs renters which had destiny's subreddit triggered is quite clearly a misspeak in UE video since the points he raises are in relation to renters and not rents, it could also be a colloquialism for renters here in the UK.
I'm not really sure if destiny really refuted the original point of the UEs video, although the study thing is unfortunate, to say the least. I do think that some action needs to be taken in regards to the housing market situation in Europe which is horrible.
Yeah, removing development controls and various regulations on number of floors would do wonders, especially in cities. Also reversing the trend of making it harder for cars to enter the cities would be huge help becuase then people can actually live outside the city and travel for work.
@@misarthim6538 Whelp where I'm from there are no regulations for developers around the city, yet they still slow down their project to wind the price up, some regulations that would either force them to plan investment or sell the plot would be nice IMHO. I understand the free market... but it just doesn't work, wages in Poland don't go up as fast as either rent or real estate prices. I don't know the policies of car bans in city centers of rest of Europe but here it works pretty well and is mostly directed at center/old town itself to make it more leisure friendly, additionally, I'm really happy how city buses, trains, and trolleys work I was going to work by public transport because its cheaper and faster in many cases. And of course, something that is a plague here is the airbnb, in many other cities around EU they started to combat it and I hope they will start doing it in Poland.
@@Krissos15 Well, the problem is that Poland right now has a gigantic inflation which makes everything worse. But that said, I'm sure you also have things like regulations on building height (so it doesn't disturb the character of the skyline - or more likely it's not a regulation but rather part of the assessment during land development planning phase), etc... but these things are catastrophic for development. For example, limiting the height of the building means that on the same plot, you can build less units, which means that price per unit has to be higher, which means that the flats will be more expensive. I'm pretty sure that developers are holding off on units. It's mostly not because they want to drive up the price, but becase they want to maintain the price - usually how this is done is that you have loan that is being covered by the development. And if you start selling units below it's estimated price, the value of the development will go down and your loan will no longer be covered. But there's also natural process to it - desirable locations get more expensive over time. The solution to this problem always was to develop new locations. This is a normal lifecycle of a city - when the center stagnates and becomes more expensive, peripheries start to develop, more people move there, those parts become more modern with better accessibility... - that's btw why AirBnB is not a problem either. It's just normal lifecycle of a city. But now imagine that you make it difficult to get to city center where you work. People have to drive to some sattelite parking then 1 hour by public transport because the center has been made 'leisure friendly'. It's not a problem for me - I like public transport over driving - I can read a book or something. But for a mom that has on her way from work pick up her daughter from daycare, they go buy some food, maybe help her elderly mother move some stuff,... they need a car.
@@misarthim6538 it seems that you are treating removing regulations as a silver bullet, while I think that both building high limit and a car ban are very good policies that have a hugely positive impact on the city, people, and enviorment. Regarding the inflation, it was only 3.4% while our currency is holding strong therefore it is not as high as people paint it to be(and I think saying it is just helping our bad government) , especially with average salary increase (which unfortunately is not keeping up with house and rent prices)
@@Krissos15 It's not a silver bullet, it just solves the problem where regulation creates a problem. Obviously, the policies you cite are very good for people who already own the property. Who doesn't want a nice neighborhood where houses or flats gain value? But they are bad for people who live outside the city or could potentially move there or rent. It contributes to process of gentryfication. It's just cause and effect. Unfortunately too many people think that they can mitigate effects of things that were suppose to mitigate effects of things that were supposed to mitigate effects of other things. But you are just adding complexity and unintended consequences, unfortunately. I want to simplify. Yes some people will lose advantage that government granted them but many people will shed the disadvantage imposed on them in turn. btw 3.5% inflation is huge - it'll wipe out 1/3 of the value of your money in 10 years. Which is terrible for people who don't hold any inflation-proof assets (usually poor people). And it's double whammy for them because of the Cantillion effect.
Why does the editor claim that there's some sort of "IMPORTANT" error in reporting the claim of the paper by EU? I see no relevant distinction to be made between what EU explained and what the paper claims. Can someone explain? I think the editor is confused.
Won't have time to watch this video till tonight, but I've seen the Unlearning Econ vid in full and here is a comment I wrote with timestamps to that video. I have an Econ degree, so I was happy to see UE caveat that they weren't going after the whole profession, just the dogma. Still, there are some problems with the video. 17:21 - "This only included studies which estimated the effect on employment for the same workers whose wages are increased by the minimum wage." UE presents this as a more direct way of studying min wages, but I think it's a worse way to study employment. Ideally, you don't want to just track the people who have jobs and see if they lose them, but also track the effect on hiring new people. You can imagine a situation in which a company that would have hired more workers next month decides to stick to the ones they have once the min wage is increased, so limiting your study to pre-existing employed people probably biases the data toward showing a smaller effect. Interestingly it biases the data toward a smaller effect whether the elasticity is positive or negative, because it is also true that if the MW for some reason caused more employment (like tons a new qualified people in labor market maybe), these studies would also fail to recognize that. I see why these studies exist and I think they're useful, but I would want to here Dube explain why he only uses them for his report, because I think he could be criticized of the exact same tinkering of which he accuses the CBO. 27:50 - He's either misreading or misrepresenting this paper. Like when he shows the four graphs and concludes that rent control "increases quality". The point is that it increases quality of housing by encouraging landlords to drive out tenants and redevelop. If you look at the paper, it's precisely the areas that get around rent control that have higher quality housing catering to high income individuals. The graphs he's showing are talking about two different sets of people. That's why the authors argue that it does the opposite of the intended goal, because it prevents developers from building more of the type of housing that exists in a neighborhood, and instead encourages them to build condos for new tenants. And his "gentrification is good but also bad" part is projection. At the beginning of this video I was happy to see that he was keeping his criticism on the non-nuanced views of political conservatives who jabber on about "econ 101" that they invented or misunderstood, and also Thomas Sowell who is a hack. He's right to take aim at them, because they're dumbasses and they're lying. But yeah then he starts misunderstanding the literature a bit when he takes aim at the more consensus stuff in the profession. Also, this isn't really important but does he go out of his way to mispronounce people's names? I know you shouldn't criticize mispronunciation because it just means someone learned a word by reading it, but it's not that hard to google "Krueger" or "Dube" before you make the video about their work.
9:06 this is an incorrect description of typical price elasticity. Elasticity should generally be much higher at lower price points and lower at higher price points, this is because at lower price points there's a greater propensity for a given nominal price increase to be a higher percentage price increase. A coke going to $2 from $1 is a 100% increase, a coke going from $100 to $101 is a 1% increase. If I have $202 and I spend all of it on coke, the $1 to $2 price change has a bigger effect on how much coke I can consume (101 fewer cokes) than the $100 to $101 price change (
From my understanding, alternative uses and not % reductions in the capacity to consume a specific thing are the driving force for price increases causing demand fall. With alternative uses, I think very low price increases would have the smallest incremental demand fall. The amount of people that would decide to stop buying cokes from a $1-$1.50 increase is going to be lower than the amount of people that have been footing the bill up until a point where the price now changes from $7.50--$8. These products have existing relative value assigned by consumers who compare that value to other things, it's all about alternative uses.
Destiny doesn't like rent control and believes doubling the minimum wage is good for democrats in terms of optics.
Destiny quite liked UE's last video on housing (th-cam.com/video/rBbhZWZf0gM/w-d-xo.html) but he's not convinced we should throw out Econ101 just yet.
Timestamps▼Click▼
0:00 - Minimum wage and elasticity
4:16 - Destiny starts to critique the video
15:42 - Landlord study and rent control
32:05 - Basic economics is pervasive and perverse... it's why we can't have nice things
I don’t believe you
@Sam K bro.much love from one sam to another❤️
My brother from another mother
there are no non bias sorces
00
00
Landlords bad? I'm glad Destiny finally got around to reading Adam Smith.
Adam Smith is so much more based than conservatives like to pretend he is
Adam Smith said 'The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed'
Which was not that they were inherently morally worse than other men, but that their privilege allowed them to collect an unearned income from others labour.
He went on from here to justify a tax on 'ground rents' on economic terms, which is what we now call a land value tax.
' A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground.'
This is an idea he got under influence of the Physiocrats whom he visited, they advocated a 'single tax' on land. Though he did not accept it as a single tax he did agree it was the most natural source of government revenue. Following on from him Ricardo, Mill and other classicals also agreed it was a sensible tax, Henry George famously revived it as a single tax , but whilst the Physiocrats wanted to leave about 1/3 of land rents with the landlords to preserve the social order, George advocated collecting all of it, or as much as possible. Some evidence shows in reaction to this, the neo-classical movement under influence of John Bates Clarke then spent much of the 20thC reducing land to a footnote in economics textbooks, and Marx and the revolution became the bogie man for the orthodoxy to rail against whilst never confronting the insights of classicals on land, let alone George.
@@alexhobbs2352 I’m a conservative who thinks Adam Smith is cool for the opposite reasons most people do.
Landlords bad mmkay, don't pay ya rent mmkay, rents bad mmmkayy
"The et al guy has published a lot of papers" hahaha Funny joke
Lol i wasnt sure if he was joking, he must be though right, he must be
he obviously is, jesus
@@343N I don't know. Is he? he does not acknowledge the joke later on...
@@davidjohansson1416 Yeah, if you don't acknowledge something it's not a joke
@@TaCo0oCaT That's why i laugh at all my own jokes.
I will say that as someone studying both politics and economics, economists won't assume that a supply and demand curve applies to an entire society, however political writers will cite economic studies as if they do
True. Economists are slightly more intellectually honest then that.
It doesn’t change that neoclassical economics, aka the economics used to make most economic policy decisions in America and many other places, is bad theory because it is necessarily incomplete
The cycle of hard work creating lazy children will eventually revisit itself on society.
I'm studying the same as you. The gap between the two field in terms of how they viewed the reach of their field is a big problem.
Isn’t that basically what the Aggregate demand vs Aggregate supply model is?
Yeah, exactly right. People don't understand that those are MODELS and models are APPROXIMATIONS of reality not reality itself. Just drawing a basic curves of supply and demand is sufficient model to describe that phenomenon, equaly as drawing an Earth as a sphere or doing a back of the envelope calculation.
Perfect timing I'm about to go to sleep
😂
You are legally obligated to watch this video before going to sleep.
Australia?
With me
literally said to myself out loud "man this is some boring nerd shit" before scrolling down to the comments lmao
this is kind of a weird title considering that Unlearning Economics is a published phd in economics lol
Doesnt mean hes right though. His video just seems like Cherry Picking while ignoring states like Mississippi where 15$ would destroy small businesses.
@@Stefanofitch93 i thought that he was pretty openly for a 15$ minimum wage and that these kind of videos were for justifying that?
@@Stefanofitch93 UE dude kinda seems biased or his PHD is more for show and he forgot alot of the stuff cause you can feel in his video that there is a heavy slant in 1 direction when economist in the world are still debating this issue
@@noahaloah7802 Because he is not making the argument for 15 dollar minimum wage. UE is making the argmument for minimum wage rise in general. Destiny dosent seem to get it either (18:00) so I wonder if UE could have formulatet it better tbh
@@resshantanmorgan7107 As opposed to the armies of economists bought by the wealthy to influence tax policies? Fox News trots out Arthur Laffler as dog & pony show every now & then.
Stealing memes from Reddit and now economic analysis? Destiny is a true capitalist exploiting the labor of gentle Redditors.
At this point his Reddit needs to start a union.
@@RealFreedomMG Nationalize Reddit!
I hope you are just joking. Or is agreeing with people suddenly a bad thing?
@@devalapar7878 why would I be joking? Labor theft is a serious issue
But everyone is doing that. All I know comes from other people.
And all the redditor knew, came from someone else too.
How do we solve that? What do you suggest? New copyright laws?
Very kind of Destiny's editor to upload a vid for me to watch while I eat lunch here in the UK
lol same
cheese and lettuce salad cream sandwich for me
@@tomio8072 Pastrami cheese and apple chutney sarnie for me sir. Lovely stuff
@@MichaelLeightonsKarlyPilkboys ooooh! sounds lovely!
@@MichaelLeightonsKarlyPilkboys you know he's a real one when the lad whips out the "sarnie"
Please have a discussion with unlearning economics.
Please have Destiny unlearning economics with a discussion
@@Rewwgh please have unlearning economics' destiny
4am gang, good timing too since I'm at work. Wanted to hear his opinion on Unlearning Economics video.
3rd shift or early 1st shift?
@@johns41 3rd, gotta love graveyard shift lol
Not keen on all the comments saying "Wow this guy knows nothing about economics, his PhD is a joke" etc. Bro you're commenting on a TH-cam video, settle down.. we can disagree with experts, I disagree with tons of economists but it's kinda Trumpian to dismiss them as uneducated or stupid.
All the stuff Destiny mentioned is stuff i guarantee the researchers considered, and I thought the video was pretty even-handed. I love Destiny but this really felt like motivated reasoning (trying to justify his conclusions) mixed up with legitimate points.
@Ben Woodcock Do you want him to qualify every other statement with "Oh I think", "Some people say", "This is just my opinion", "I could be wrong"? Everybody understands that a video essay is not absolute knowledge.
Yeah I unironically think this is because Destiny's audience moved so much to the right. They see "leftist" and boom that person automatically doesn't deserve any respect or charitability.
@Ben Woodcock Do you think I just called every Destiny viewer a right winger?
@Ben Woodcock So, what do you even want? Is there just no way to present information that is supposed to support your prescriptions for society? It seems like you're offended at the idea of an essay.
@Ben Woodcock did you watch all of UE video?
HOW DOES THIS EDITOR ALWAYS KNOW WHAT DESTINY THE STREAMER WILL DO?? EVEN BEFORE DESTINY DOES IT WTF
they lay out things to watch.
Nice job destiny, skip the woman explaining economics and then smear her
You can also tell he is an expert that totally didn't prepare when he randomly stops the video to cite joe schmoe from his subreddit as an authority worth entirely rejecting the points being made, and then bravely disagrees with the conclusion being a wash when it clearly cites benefits of 20% in minority retention(good effect) and also landlords avoiding complying with the policy(bad effect)
Very big brained
I like how all the butt hurt unlearning economics fans can't make a single coherent argument for why he is wrong.
The conclusion of the study was that "rent control contributed to the gentrification of San Fransisco".
@@kebabkebob7808 errrrm they're so heccing butthurt oh my destiny im owning le heccerino leftchuds
The Title should be Economist Explained to Me Unpopular Empirical Economic Findings.
@Imran Agassy He did in one of the streams, but he had reservations about MMT and other leftist ideas. He described himself as a PosT-Keynesian economist, so the arguements against mainstream economics are not surprising, considering that Keynes' most influential book is a series of arguement against a pillar of economic theory in his days.
Well UE didn't even cite empirical findings that supported his position, so even that title wouldn't work.
@@spacetoast7783 He did. The video highlight the parts, and the sources are in the descriptions. I also got a pdf of MIT economists empirical refutation of common economist recommendations. Empirical findings that do not correspond to theories are common to all social sciences, so its nothing new.
@Imran Agassy he has said he's a leftist, just not in that video
@Imran Agassy He identifies as a Socialist
Destiny should have a conversation with UE.
UE hates Destiny.
Which I guess would be great content, but I don't think it's likely to happen.
@@spacetoast7783 He hates him? Why?
@@spacetoast7783 bruhhh why??? He cites destiny and seems fairly charitable to him in the video as well. I doubt that would be the case.
@@adityaanand4802 yo aditya you watch destiny??? lmao
Literally just watched the UE video last night. I don't have a PhD like UE does, but I do have a BA in Economics, and his views tend to align with my own. Econ 101 is useful for establishing how models work and how economic theory has developed over time, but too many people (even economists in positions of authority) tend to not look for more recent developments or see how the old models are still holding up in practice. When you dive into it, some of the assumptions these models use just don't seem to be true in reality, so they lead you to false conclusions. For example, it would be true that competitive markets don't respond well to a minimum wage, but there's actually quite a bit of concentration in lots of labor markets or industries so a minimum wage or unionization can be a good thing because it corrects an existing market failure. I usually think Destiny is pretty good, but let's not kid ourselves, Destiny has an Econ 101 understanding of economics. Econ 101 is more than most people have, but it isn't enough to really grapple with the flaws in these models or dive into the empirical papers and critique them. That's why people like UE, who do have that ability, are so valuable.
Ah, yes, people that miscite and misrepresent academic papers only to further their point (even though they should know better having a PhD) are so valuable...
@@Nomad1735 ah yes because the random youtube commenter and video game streamer are going to be better sources for analyzing academic papers true intent than a ba and phd in econ :')
@@ennuiii UE admitted on twitter he messed up on that study
@@ennuiii phd in econ admitted their mistake. Will you do the same, "random TH-cam commenter"?
@@Ivan-qf4mt y'all are getting really fanatical about him acknowledging misspeaking in a 2-minute segment where he didn't even change his conclusions 🥴
I'm sorry but destiny's lack of a masters in econ is showing.
Welcome to the world of TH-cam political contents. Almost nobody is actually an expert in the subjects. That's why they should accept the conclusions of researchers instead of trying to substitute their own.
Vaush tho
@@christian2i what about Vaush?
@@SPFAlpha tho
@@pappapaps ty
Destiny is drowning in the trashcan of ideology.
Awesome editing! But I did notice that the “up next” card that appears at 21:54 show up way later than the clip it’s referring to rather than before.
good catch
Woke up and saw this RIGHT IN MY FEED
I was worried I wouldn't have a destiny video to listen to while working today, phue
Haha, relatable
phew
phew
Hold up champ, just realized, there won't be any videos next week cuz he's going to be away. Savor it.
@@travisalexphoto he’s been away the past few days, he’s back in America on the 17th. This is from just before he left.
Landlords indeed bad
Poor Dan. Even in TH-cam comments he gets bullied.
@@RealFreedomMG idk what this means I didn't even watch the video
@@shrub8644 You don't need to for this. He's just a friend of Destiny's who is a landlord.
Would recommend the video and even the Unlearning Economics TH-cam channel though. Seems like a smart guy who enjoys talking about economics.
@@RealFreedomMG how about no
@@shrub8644 Up to you mate. Was just a recommendation lol
Someone should use AI to make a text to speech app that reads papers with Destiny's voice. The entire world will become big brain omniliberals.
I will support an app like this
LOL there's an oxymoron!
As a supervisor, I NEVER get rewarded for going above and beyond and increasing productivity in my department.
That sucks bro, I get mad bonuses
yeah it's interesting isn't it. What's the incentive really to increase your productivity other than stock or tying your wage to the profits you make on that day. A flat wage like $10 per hour doesn't seem right to me.
Same.
Put your achievements on your resume when you apply to different positions, and a company will reach out to you offering more than you're currently making. Don't settle for being at an unappreciative employer.
Just take it up with the CEO if you're not statisfied.
Annoyed me live and annoys me here that he skipped the last 13 minutes.
it literally said nothing to the unconverted. its just "huh would you look at that another "evidence" that the capitalist elite controls us"
I think Destiny brought up some good points. I still think UE’s video still makes a good point about Econ 101 though, since it seems like the negative effects Destiny brought up weren’t a direct result of Supply and Demand, but rather externalities of those policies. Ie. “Econ 101” isn’t enough to dismiss these policies.
I think most people misunderstand Econ 101.
Actors are rational beings: This doesn't mean they are logical and reasonable. It means they act as expected.
Actors know everything: This doesn't mean they are all knowing. It means they know everything that is public knowledge (what you and I know, what we see on TV, etc).
Also there is no alternative to science. If we don't decide based on science, on what do we base our decisions? Gut feeling?
@@devalapar7878 What? The entire point is that econ 101 is closer to austrian thinking than mainstream thinking. UE has already said mainstream economics is more empirical, and while he is certainly very critical of it, he is actually attacking a priori thinking in this video, he even points out natural experiments as a positive, which is as scientific as you can get.
@@fellinuxvi3541 The post is one year old.
@@devalapar7878 So it is
@@fellinuxvi3541 What I mean is, you have to provide the context, otherwise I have no idea what we are talking about.
Destiny's Dunning Kruger effect is embarrassing
I don't think Destiny is qualified to talk on this issue, unfortunately.
Seems like Unlearning Economics is going to have a new part in his Economics vs Breadtube series.
True. Destiny has good takes, but his economic ones are his weakest
I mean neither is UE so...
@@spacetoast7783 He literally is.
@@spacetoast7783 Last time I checked, a PhD in the subject makes you pretty qualified to talk about it. Doesn't mean you agree with them.
Please don't act like intelligent econ people don't dislike unlearning economics(terrible name, btw) as well. Most of what destiny said about the rent control section was correct even if he seems a bit too adverse to 15min/wage given Dubes research. Just go to r/badecon dt anytime UE is posted there and see how well his arguments hold up to scrutiny.
Letting the minimum wage stay stagnant means you're lowering the barrier to entry for new businesses, which is a BAD thing if it means they can only operate while underpaying their workers based on the cost of living in a specific area. Any idiot can balance their books if their labor costs haven't kept up with inflation over the past several decades. The argument that a $15 minimum wage will kill businesses looks bad politically, but this purge is necessary to weed out companies that can only operate at an artificially stagnant wage.
That’s an interesting argument I haven’t really seen before
Skipping the entire final third of the video just on the basis you don't like who was speaking is pretty ignorant. The messenger shouldn't be the person who is assessed it should be the message. Everyone makes mistakes and has bad opinions but it doesn't mean they always do.
Early? This ain't early. Euro gang rise up.
THANOS MOOT
THANOS MOOT
THE RESULTS ARE IN
PEPE WINS AGAIN
Yee never loses
@@KodatheYT true
This emote “🥺” makes me feel
I'm sorry but even in Mississippi you cannot afford to buy a one bedroom apartment with the minimum wage we have now. If a small business can't afford to give their employees a living wage then it should snuff out of the free market AND/OR we need to stop having private companies pay for insurance and move to a Medicare for All system, or Single Payer. I don't agree with Destiny's take at all to be honest.
You can’t afford to buy a 1BR anywhere with the minimum wage and why would you if can just rent
@@jonh5941 I said a one bedroom apartment, which you have to rent. People who live on a minimum wage can't afford a one bedroom apartment, which you are renting. I never mention buying a house, which is a whole other story.
@@jonh5941 u got ethered bro
sordidennui if you can paraphrase the argument that would be great
Imagine starting your work and lamenting over no video to watch then destiny is like:
I’ve got you fam.
but then destiny says you should be paid less because you spend your work time not doing the work ;-;
nice monogatari pfp
Imagine being able to watch videos at work. Imagine not being comfortable working without watching a video. Imagine getting paid to learn.
@@GR33TINGSEARTHL1NGS i mean i cant do it usually but working from home whos going to stop you?
@@the500mphtortoise Yeah I suppose there's no such thing as working from home when you're a labourer like me.
24:24 your "Important notice" needs an "IMPORTANT NOTICE" Attached. In the abstract of the paper it says: "landlords treated rent control reduce rental housing supplies by 15%". You might want to fix that.
Overall I agree with a lot of what Destiny and the paper are arguing, but don't lie in you editing to dunk on UE.
Reading papers with destiny unironicly top tier content
Make sure you don’t agree with UE, Destiny. He hates it when you do that.
14:36 you kind of described working flat rate at a dealership right here. Each task has a time limit set to it, and if you finish it faster than the set time, you get paid the same amount as if you took the whole time to finish it. The only downside is if you get tasks where a car is fucked and takes longer than the allotted amount set for a task, you don't get paid for the extra time spent on it.
Holy shit this comment section is unlearning economics fans sperging the fuck out lmao
Unlearning Economics fans are calmly explaining why they disagree with Destiny's takes, yet that's "sperging" (nice way of referring to autistic people by the by).
Watching Destiny at 1.5x speed -> 02:00, engage thrusters
😂😂😂
Try 2.0x. I can feel my brain swelling.
While destiny has a point about how the magnitude of change will also create an effect of similar magnitude (big change to min wage creates big externalities) the first point of UE video was to point out that US min wage has been stagnating for decades and so a larger magnitude of change is offset by the fact that it has been behind for a long time.
For strong economies the average wages should exceed the rate of inflation (even if only by a small amount).
Not acknowledging that point in destiny's rebuttal makes it seem off the mark
I wish he wouldn't have skipped Mexi's portion.
Based leftist, Destiny just got schooled
around 6:00 - you call an increase to $15 a huge increase, but _is_ it? How much were the increases in these studies? In 1994, the NJ increase was about 18.8% (from 4.25 to 5.05). In 2021 it was $12 an hour - the same sized increase would make it 14.25 an hour, and $15 would only be a little (25% vs 19%) more - you imply that would be some kind of massive shock, but don't put any numbers or actual analysis to your assertion. Wouldn't the 'hugeness' of this increase depend on location and prevailing wages? You wonder about the validity and call an 18+% increase a 'small bump'. Why? Why not actually read the studies and say why they might be invalid instead of just saying your uninformed opinion is that they 'might' be, so let's _completely_ discount them?
You then jump right to a slippery slope argument, "because then we can argue for $25 an hour, $35 an hour..." You are treading pretty close to outright dishonesty, and I am not 7 minutes into your video. You also conflate 'what is being proposed' with the 'Seattle Study', which was to $15 an hour (over a couple of years), and kind of slip past the difference between federal and state minimum wages. Should the federal minimum wage be immediately raised to $15 an hour? The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 proposed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 over 4 years (by 2025) with the first year being the largest (31%) increase, the rest of the years all being smaller than the NJ study increase). So - yeah - I will agree that is agressive, but you have _zero_ evidence that it would be bad, and the _most_ you have done is question the validity of some studies - not based on any studies with opposing findings, but just raising questions with no basis. 7:09 - you reiterate that the NJ study - which you admit to not know how much the increase was - was 'nowhere near' $15 an hour. Well - no, but in terms of a percentage increase, it was close to what would be done in aggreagate over the 4 years (an 18.8% increase over 4 years would raise the federal minimum wage to 14.44 an hour - to $15 would be just shy of 20% per year).
Elasticity is a curve, and it's slope really depends - moving 'far away' depends a lot on each individual situation. Again - another uninformed guess about what might happen - with no numbers and no data and you clearly don't understand the underlying mathematics _at_ _all_. I mean sure - make up some numbers, why not? _Why_ do you guess that would be the situation?
And _wow_ - maybe economists are all really stupid. How arrogant of you! And then you pretend that economists don't think about the objections you are raising - and you ignored Unlearning Economics statement where he mentioned studies that showed the broad affect of the change.
And calling everyone 'lazy' while you are making you-tube videos. Gah - I've had enough of your bullshit.
Nice on screen info cards, editor. Very cool.
Economics Bad may go on my ever growing list of inside joke band names.
Destiny is literally describing Amazon with his "pay per task". This is why they fire anyone who takes more than 8 seconds to run 4 aisles in the warehouse to grab the next item that comes up on their picking list, and people have to piss in bottles.
Why give people 15 minutes to go to the bathroom, when they can easily just piss in a bottle on the warehouse floor in 15 seconds?
This is not the same thing. Amazon does not pay you per task. They pay your a flat rate per hour. Amazon will fire you for not going fast enough. Incentivizing more efficient work is not the same as penalizing low efficient work.
@@frankda4 How is that any different? You are still incentivised to maintain a high level of efficiency, or lose your job.
How would it be different than having no time limit on tasks, and paying per task, then making the maximum number of tasks you could physically complete equal $15/hour? Removing the punishment would only make people "lazy". Then you'd have people still doing "just enough" to make the amount of money they want. They'll put in 80% effort and make $13/hour, because busting their ass for the last $2 isn't worth it.
The "gig economy" is what this is. Amazon isn't just warehouses, and Uber Eats pays literally per delivery. Which is why sometimes your Uber Eats will not get delivered. I've been at restaurants, and have seen Uber Eats drivers refuse to wait for an order because the restaurant did not have the order ready, and any amount of time the driver sits in a restaurant directly impacts their "bottom line". So by paying per task directly, Uber drivers simply refuse the "bad tasks", and only accept the "good" ones. Does this increase productivity to have drivers refuse to take orders they are assigned?
Amazon does exactly what Destiny said, they absolutely would not have people working 40 hour weeks if it was their choice. They totally want people working 20 hours a week. Specifically, 29.9 hours, which are scheduled by algorithm. If you are only working 29.9 hours you are not a "full time" employee, and Amazon is not required to offer you benefits. They would also prefer that everyone was "self employed" and filed their taxes 1099. This would make it so Amazon does not have to pay into Social Security and Medicare, which would save the company billions of dollars.
@@B_B-420 I agree that Destiny's take is way to absolute, first thing that came to my mind where also delivery drivers. On the other hand, creating a baseline with a fixed salary and certain expectations regarding output usually leaves room for a bonus system. Depending on the job it might be harder to implement (don't want to incentivice quick, bad finishes on tasks for example), but in my experience a well thought out bonus system benefits employer and employee. Would at least be a step in the right direction imo
@@frankda4 delivery drivers peeing in water bottles is technically "more efficient" work on paper, since they're delivering more packages faster. But in reality thats a depriving standard to hold workers to. Whats good on paper is defintely not always whats good for humans.
@@B_B-420 so thinking about it more, your right it could be equivalent set up. There is a lot of details and assumptions that I think your making and with what I was imagining that make the outcomes different.
How high you set the metric for efficiencies is one. I think the Amazon outcome is not great and for sure needs to be avoided. But also what destiny described is not great with people kinda unmotivated and not incentivized buy flat hourly wage.
It seams like a difficult problem and striking a balance seams prudent. However I think at the end of the day it’s a lot of soft skills are needed to motivate and lead people and less metrics should be used.
Ohhh I can't wait to hear Destiny's views on the Mexie segment.....
Oh....well fuck me then.
24:31 Why did the editor point out something Unlearning was also saying in his video? It makes it look like it's Unlearning's mistake, which it isn't.
Man, I'm probably the only one who hates the "up next" cards that pop up. Very distracting to me, although I cannn see why they are beneficial to the viewer.
I have a friend who works for a German company and in their company your days are always paid for, if you finish your daily tasks early you can go home if you want and still be paid for the whole day. However most workers actively choose to stay and work more to help their colleagues leave earlier. Anecdotal evidence for sure but I'm told this type of thing is the norm for Germany because the attitude to work and working is different.
i work in a factory and this is somewhat the norm in that the machines work the whole day. if the group is ahead of the machine, they go on break together until the machine catches up. anecdotaly this is pretty normal for humans to do. especially since helping someone with their work is so much more relaxed that doing your own. it also forms bonds among the workers, for better employment retention
10:10 destiny discovers the sigmoid function
Does Destiny really seriously reckon the rent controlled apartments are worth less not because they aren't being renovated? Can't think of another bigger reason why this might eb the case?
What you explain around 9:30, that elasticity is a function not a constant, is literally taught in most introductory economic courses. It is so incredibly foundational to the concept of elasticity.
It is incredibly disingenuous for these elasticity studies to not take that into consideration
Well i mean if a first derivative of the function is positive on a big enough interval that could go in favour of UE s arguments.
@@petarjovovic308
(1) Your comment doesn’t in any way refute what I said.
(2) Can you please point to me where the speaker makes the claim that a large enough first derivative over a sufficiently large interval would support his point? It is certainly possible I missed it.
In case it was not clear, I was making a specific critique about what was being said. The words that were coming out of the speakers mouth is what I was critiquing. Unless I am not accurately remembering, the speaker never made the claim you are suggesting
@@jloiben12 The point of my comment wasnt to refute you but more to add on.I would like to add that i havent actually read those studies in whole so i dont know whether they went into math behind elasticity or not.Also i m not sure should we label the authors as disshonest since the studies themself maybe just studied past minimum wage increases without trying to make any broader implications.
@@petarjovovic308
(1) I know the point of your comment was to refute mine. I was just making the statement that you failed.
(2) What is specifically said in the studies about whether the information that is presented is a function or a constant is irrelevant. Again, my critique is of the words being used by the speaker. The speaker uses the information as a constant. That is disingenuous because that is not how elasticity works and a PhD in economics knows, or should know, how elasticity works
@@jloiben12 Wait, what?First of all no it actually wasnt,my original comment and your original comment are absolutely not mutually exclusive.
As for your second point you litterally said in your original comment how "the studies are disingenuous".
Also if we are going to try and test pay per task. I feel quality issues would sky rocket because you will have people try and get as many tasks done and when working fast quality drops from ancedotal evidence lol. (I know ancedotal evidence is terrible, i know i spelled it wrong)
Good point!
is it not the bosses job to determine if the task was completed to satisfaction? No one is saying people should be paid for taking shortcuts and making shitty products
except for shareholders that skeletonize their worker crew and keep the savings for themselves while the product quality goes to sh1t and there's no way to find alternatives because the alternatives are owned by the same rich shareholders and hedgefunds, and also the barrier for entry is too high for a startup, leading to an oligopoly with barely enough employees making a killing off of crappy products with inelastic demand. Yeah, those are the shareholders we should be helping
The Mechanic shops I have worked in have a system that Destiny is talking about at 13:30. You get your hourly pay and your "production" value is compared to your hourly. If you made more on the per job basis you got the higher amount or the hourly if you didn't. The issue with the system was how the company determined the value of the jobs, I.E. some things like an Alignment gave you 1 hour, but some things were not really worth the time they actually took. Also if there was one slow day during the week you'd be completely screwed and unable to make up those hours due to no fault of your own, you can't control if you only get a few Customers in a day as a Mechanic.
IMO This system creates a "ME ME ME!" work situation where you are incentivized to only think of yourself and not work as a team with the rest of your shop.
my country (austria) due to its strong union culture has stuff like this worked out better. i didnt work in those arangements but its called akord. the trick is that there are different kinds. group akord (multiple share one result i.e. painters time on a house, can have a distribution key if a master, journeyman and apprentice work together), piece akord (where it is calculated on the basis of produced parts, i.e. how many 100 pieces a laithe opperator can make) or time akord where its about the time to finish a job (i.e. one painter finishing the house in x hours). There is also tons of accounting stuff behind that.
basically the "my work, my work" situation can be avoided, but you need the structures/institutions/know how for it. america isnt there at all sadly.
Im only up because i have to go pee
Lmao he just skipped over Mexie’s part of the video
Perfect timing I just woke up
Has the usual editor gone to Aruba too? I'm not complaining its just that the editing seems different. More present maybe?
Lmao imagining destiny bringing along his editor with him to Aruba 😂
@@wolfensteinabsolutely8715 I mean he brought his Twitter friend to Aruba too so I guess anything is possible
@@wolfensteinabsolutely8715 wake the fuck up august, we have aruba to burn
14:00 I work fast because it makes the day go quicker. I guess it's bad to assume that most people do that. In my social work job it's not really the speed of the task but the care given, which can't really be scrutinized to that level effectively. I'm skeptical of this Amazon level efficiency he is talking about here. Sounds like technocratic panopticon authoritarianism, but that is the direction we're headed.
Bless you editor, not only timestamps but a prompt in the video to skip-ahead, you're a god.
The thumbnail lol
Yeah, the dude himself is an economist. I don't think the thesis is "economics bad".
@destiny I would be a hundred percent down to have you pick this guy's brain if he would be willing to come on your stream
ah yes Poland with its 53% minimum to median wage ratio shows we are sooooo rich XD
Supply and demand curves are not accurate at all. They are theory that describes a phenomenon but there is no accurate way to measure this due to thousands of small variables that effect it. It's just a vague guide to determine how to set your prices and how much it would effect your profit if you raise or lower your prices
One common critique of minimum wage increases is that it only favors people who work. While the people who don't work often need more help.
The little note at 24:26 seems like its trying to be a “gotcha” moment but the note itself is also describing something different than what he said. So its like there are 3 unclear very specific things that potentially were reduced by 15% but no one is talking about the same thing.
You should get unlearning economics on the show
So he can cite inconclusive studies with 0 attempt to find an explanation?
The Mexie skip looooool
People advocating for a $15 minimum wage probably have never gone to a small rural town restaurant and gotten a plate of more good food than you can eat for $8. Prices and cost of living can be radically different in different areas, and forcing an artificially high cost of labor has unintended consequences that the advocates often don't care about considering. It reeks of virtue signaling ignorance.
If the servers at the restaurant in that rural town now make 15/hr and the food increases let's say 50 percent so 8 to 12 you now don't have to tip because before you kinda had to or else you were a dick cause the server prob made like 2 bucks an hour due to some rural states allowing workers who get tips to get paid below the federal minimum wage of 7.25. So in the end the cost is the same.
Vienna has probably the best housing policy in Europe, yet they have rent control and state funded housing.
Curious guys how reality doesn't align with "objective scientific facts"?
The solution to this must be to correct everything to the models, right?
The negative effects of rent control in certain towns are now starting to show themselves here in the Boston area.
Landlords run their old properties in the the ground, not fixing anything, while keeping costs high to take in as much as they can, to then kick out their tenants once the house is beyond repair, to then just invest into building a new modern property that is double or triple the previous cost of the old stay, which is no longer rent controlled.
In 2009, the apartment complex I lived in for a very small two bedroom was $1550 a month. Now it's been torn down and remodeled for modern appeal, is now $3000 a month in 2021.
The rent controlled housing gets run into the ground argument is a red herring. At the end of the day, buildings are required to always be held up to code. Its up to states and municipalities to determine how strict or how lax of a code they want to implement. Remember the major point of most rent control isn't to provide affordable housing to the market, it's to ensure that existing residents aren't being priced out of their homes.
Yeah we just need to tax passive income
Vienna has the best housing policy in europe.
They also have rent control and massive state funded housing.
People are living in palasts for low rent, doctors and post men live side by side.
Ghettos, high social inequality and low equality of opportunity are heavily reduced.
It's a dream come true, but of course it is, because social democrats didn't listen to econ 101, which is incapable of accuratly describing reality.
How is homelessness, the drug epidemic and ghettoization going for you in america?
Livin' the free market dream?
Rent control doesn't work as a single policy, this should be clear.
The free market never worked on the other side.. rents just go higher and higher.
@@xXWorldgamefunXxI looked into Vienna. Vienna hasn't the same rent control scheme.
2/3 of the houses in Vienna are either subsidized or owned by the city.
The city owns so many houses, because Vienna had a shortage in housing after World War I. So it build thousands of houses.
Further Austria has a population of 8 million, but spends 540 million Euro for housing per year (that is a lot compared to other nations).
There is no problem with rent control if the state takes the short fall. If it uses federal taxes to build new houses, to subsidize them and to maintain the old ones.
And Econ 101 would predict Vienna correctly by the way!
Cities in the US don't own half of the city and aren't willing to spend billions for housing. The money they would spend on housing would be missed somewhere else.
I like Vienna's approach. I am not sure if it would work in the US. I personally don't believe everything should be left to the private market (e.g. public transport, postal service, etc).
Your example is actually exactly what Destiny and the other guy proposed as a solution for the problems of rent control.
@@MegaAvinator TFW when you accidentally show everyone in these comments you have no experience with this at all and are just going off of online cliff notes. I know Destiny's community gets really really ass mad when you bring up Lived experiences, but hey, go ask any person living in Bostons Mattapan area, or NYC Bronx/Brooklyn areas and you tell me if you think those spaces are up to code.
25:10 this is a better criticism.
The endings are always on point.
13:33 this is so so true.
I really like this concept, but it would be very tricky to implement.
I think it would be difficult in practice to come up with well-defined “tasks” for certain jobs. Also, you would want to somehow take into account the quality of work done for each task, so that people don’t just rush through a task in a way that would cause problems later on due to poor quality.
My old work place gave lower management a portion of the profits like 1% or less but god damn you'll never guess who the best workers were. Its not possible to incentivize individual actions but it is possible to do that to a behavior everyone else had the same lack of care for doing work and I would have loved to see how it would have worked if they expanded it to the regular employees as well.
It kind of like Amazon pruning less efficient workers but in an inverse manner.
I agree with both
@@helios566 Sounds feasible but I would expect that lazy workers would still ride coattails, but there would be more pressure/conflict with coworkers.
That’s basically a coop-lite, right?
Maybe rather than tasks done there could be some quantification of the economic value you've given to your employer with your labour in let's say, a day or an hour, and set your wage as a ratio to that.
@@mrsuperguy2073 perhaps the ability for an employee to demand more or search a market of employment opportunities 🧐
You may be on to something major
The paying scheme for contract work seems way better than hourly wages. Employers genuinely do not get the most productivity they can because workers aren't compensated for productivity, essentially just for looking busy
Working in local council obsokurely agree
Destiny said he wouldn't be considered a leftist. What does he consider himself?
You know liberals exist right?
@@agbor9790 Yes, are you saying that isn't considered to be on the left? I have seen hundreds of different political spectrums and idk which one to go by I guess?
FEEED MEEE LIBERALL
I need to do some more research minimum wage and rent control to arrive at a thorough conclusion.
Just wanna say this is pretty well-edited :)
Good Job editor!
destiny pls listen to some richard wolff. he's an ivy league professor of economics, strongly anti-capitlist, but has some really cool pragmatic examples of worker co-ops that are able to compete with market corporations.
Nah Richard Wolff sucks. UE is way better and more realistic
- a lefty
I've grown to hate the English accent.
Based
Hello
Based on what?
Your whole internet demeanor is gãy
The section on rents Vs renters which had destiny's subreddit triggered is quite clearly a misspeak in UE video since the points he raises are in relation to renters and not rents, it could also be a colloquialism for renters here in the UK.
I'm not really sure if destiny really refuted the original point of the UEs video, although the study thing is unfortunate, to say the least. I do think that some action needs to be taken in regards to the housing market situation in Europe which is horrible.
Yeah, removing development controls and various regulations on number of floors would do wonders, especially in cities. Also reversing the trend of making it harder for cars to enter the cities would be huge help becuase then people can actually live outside the city and travel for work.
@@misarthim6538 Whelp where I'm from there are no regulations for developers around the city, yet they still slow down their project to wind the price up, some regulations that would either force them to plan investment or sell the plot would be nice IMHO. I understand the free market... but it just doesn't work, wages in Poland don't go up as fast as either rent or real estate prices. I don't know the policies of car bans in city centers of rest of Europe but here it works pretty well and is mostly directed at center/old town itself to make it more leisure friendly, additionally, I'm really happy how city buses, trains, and trolleys work I was going to work by public transport because its cheaper and faster in many cases. And of course, something that is a plague here is the airbnb, in many other cities around EU they started to combat it and I hope they will start doing it in Poland.
@@Krissos15 Well, the problem is that Poland right now has a gigantic inflation which makes everything worse. But that said, I'm sure you also have things like regulations on building height (so it doesn't disturb the character of the skyline - or more likely it's not a regulation but rather part of the assessment during land development planning phase), etc... but these things are catastrophic for development. For example, limiting the height of the building means that on the same plot, you can build less units, which means that price per unit has to be higher, which means that the flats will be more expensive.
I'm pretty sure that developers are holding off on units. It's mostly not because they want to drive up the price, but becase they want to maintain the price - usually how this is done is that you have loan that is being covered by the development. And if you start selling units below it's estimated price, the value of the development will go down and your loan will no longer be covered.
But there's also natural process to it - desirable locations get more expensive over time. The solution to this problem always was to develop new locations. This is a normal lifecycle of a city - when the center stagnates and becomes more expensive, peripheries start to develop, more people move there, those parts become more modern with better accessibility... - that's btw why AirBnB is not a problem either. It's just normal lifecycle of a city.
But now imagine that you make it difficult to get to city center where you work. People have to drive to some sattelite parking then 1 hour by public transport because the center has been made 'leisure friendly'. It's not a problem for me - I like public transport over driving - I can read a book or something. But for a mom that has on her way from work pick up her daughter from daycare, they go buy some food, maybe help her elderly mother move some stuff,... they need a car.
@@misarthim6538 it seems that you are treating removing regulations as a silver bullet, while I think that both building high limit and a car ban are very good policies that have a hugely positive impact on the city, people, and enviorment. Regarding the inflation, it was only 3.4% while our currency is holding strong therefore it is not as high as people paint it to be(and I think saying it is just helping our bad government) , especially with average salary increase (which unfortunately is not keeping up with house and rent prices)
@@Krissos15 It's not a silver bullet, it just solves the problem where regulation creates a problem. Obviously, the policies you cite are very good for people who already own the property. Who doesn't want a nice neighborhood where houses or flats gain value?
But they are bad for people who live outside the city or could potentially move there or rent. It contributes to process of gentryfication. It's just cause and effect. Unfortunately too many people think that they can mitigate effects of things that were suppose to mitigate effects of things that were supposed to mitigate effects of other things. But you are just adding complexity and unintended consequences, unfortunately. I want to simplify. Yes some people will lose advantage that government granted them but many people will shed the disadvantage imposed on them in turn.
btw 3.5% inflation is huge - it'll wipe out 1/3 of the value of your money in 10 years. Which is terrible for people who don't hold any inflation-proof assets (usually poor people). And it's double whammy for them because of the Cantillion effect.
Is destiny gonna debate Jordan Peterson? I heard he was looking for "leftists" to debate.
Doesnt peterson lean towards the left tho? Except for gender topics
@@rexyz5875 he doesn't really "lean" any direction - but a lot of his stuff about "order Vs chaos" and social hierarchies is pretty conservative.
I'm pretty sure Destiny is specifically trying to avoid leftists... which is easier said than done on Twitch and TH-cam.
@@jameskilgour387 that is true he is pretty neutral
@@jameskilgour387 besides is desting really credible when it comes to these topics?
Why not 50$ an hour???? Why not 100$ an hour????????????
destiny be like: Socialism bad 🥺
This video: LeRuse
When the responses/debates based on this video start: tf
When Destiny's friend has to make a new Twitter account: Omegalul
Encouraging and incentivizing developers to build and develop, as well as easy zoning laws, are the best way to drive housing/rent costs down.
The market should set wage prices based on the supply, demand and the quality of labor required, not central planners.
dang that BM thumbnail sheeeeesh
You broke my scroll-wheel press with your name, now it only scrolls this page horizontally.
@@zeratulrus142 Yes it tends to do that. You have been blessed
Why does the editor claim that there's some sort of "IMPORTANT" error in reporting the claim of the paper by EU? I see no relevant distinction to be made between what EU explained and what the paper claims. Can someone explain? I think the editor is confused.
I should clarify: I'm talking about the bit shown at 24:35 and not the subsequent part with the graphs, where EU apparently made a mistake.
$15/hr is over 5 years. Not over night.
Thank you editor for the notes on the papers, keep up the good work
Won't have time to watch this video till tonight, but I've seen the Unlearning Econ vid in full and here is a comment I wrote with timestamps to that video. I have an Econ degree, so I was happy to see UE caveat that they weren't going after the whole profession, just the dogma. Still, there are some problems with the video.
17:21 - "This only included studies which estimated the effect on employment for the same workers whose wages are increased by the minimum wage."
UE presents this as a more direct way of studying min wages, but I think it's a worse way to study employment. Ideally, you don't want to just track the people who have jobs and see if they lose them, but also track the effect on hiring new people. You can imagine a situation in which a company that would have hired more workers next month decides to stick to the ones they have once the min wage is increased, so limiting your study to pre-existing employed people probably biases the data toward showing a smaller effect. Interestingly it biases the data toward a smaller effect whether the elasticity is positive or negative, because it is also true that if the MW for some reason caused more employment (like tons a new qualified people in labor market maybe), these studies would also fail to recognize that. I see why these studies exist and I think they're useful, but I would want to here Dube explain why he only uses them for his report, because I think he could be criticized of the exact same tinkering of which he accuses the CBO.
27:50 - He's either misreading or misrepresenting this paper. Like when he shows the four graphs and concludes that rent control "increases quality". The point is that it increases quality of housing by encouraging landlords to drive out tenants and redevelop. If you look at the paper, it's precisely the areas that get around rent control that have higher quality housing catering to high income individuals. The graphs he's showing are talking about two different sets of people. That's why the authors argue that it does the opposite of the intended goal, because it prevents developers from building more of the type of housing that exists in a neighborhood, and instead encourages them to build condos for new tenants. And his "gentrification is good but also bad" part is projection.
At the beginning of this video I was happy to see that he was keeping his criticism on the non-nuanced views of political conservatives who jabber on about "econ 101" that they invented or misunderstood, and also Thomas Sowell who is a hack. He's right to take aim at them, because they're dumbasses and they're lying. But yeah then he starts misunderstanding the literature a bit when he takes aim at the more consensus stuff in the profession.
Also, this isn't really important but does he go out of his way to mispronounce people's names? I know you shouldn't criticize mispronunciation because it just means someone learned a word by reading it, but it's not that hard to google "Krueger" or "Dube" before you make the video about their work.
9:06 this is an incorrect description of typical price elasticity. Elasticity should generally be much higher at lower price points and lower at higher price points, this is because at lower price points there's a greater propensity for a given nominal price increase to be a higher percentage price increase. A coke going to $2 from $1 is a 100% increase, a coke going from $100 to $101 is a 1% increase. If I have $202 and I spend all of it on coke, the $1 to $2 price change has a bigger effect on how much coke I can consume (101 fewer cokes) than the $100 to $101 price change (
From my understanding, alternative uses and not % reductions in the capacity to consume a specific thing are the driving force for price increases causing demand fall. With alternative uses, I think very low price increases would have the smallest incremental demand fall. The amount of people that would decide to stop buying cokes from a $1-$1.50 increase is going to be lower than the amount of people that have been footing the bill up until a point where the price now changes from $7.50--$8. These products have existing relative value assigned by consumers who compare that value to other things, it's all about alternative uses.