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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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The great-uncle comment by @The_Nybbler already covers some of the things companies would do to get around this; laying off higher-paid workers and hiring new workers at lower wages. Another likely consequence is that companies would be much less willing to give raises when times are good, because now raises are a much bigger commitment. And if a company is unwilling or unable to do these things, it might well go under because it simply is unprofitable at higher salaries.

Now, what happens to the newly unemployed workers? If they are willing to work at a lower wage, they can probably find new work soon enough, but now they have to eat the transaction cost of switching jobs; if they were willing to take lower wages in the first place, they could have just stayed with the same employer. Alternatively, if they are not willing to take lower wages, thinking themselves too good for them now that they have been employed at a higher wage, they end up in a sad imitation of Latrell Sprewell refusing a $7 million deal because "I have a family to feed", and the world has to do without their labor until they get desperate enough to change their minds.

This can all be avoided by simply letting real wages vary up and down, and the easiest way to do that is to inflate nominal wages less or more; that way, the number never goes down.