What is an item worth?

[Kazamoto]

---On topic ish---

the closest you could get to arguing that is the time investment that people make to gather/craft, but thats more subjective to each individual rather than a specific wage policy.

That's the exact point I was making earlier. In both FFXIV and Walmart's wage and employment policy, the labor is worthless.

Walmart will always have applicants and they can afford to replace any worker at any time.


---off topic---

If the minimum wage is raised, then the costs for a company would increase. If the costs for a company increase, it will either have to find other areas where it could cut costs or increase the price (and produce less).

This makes the assumption that the company is attempting to make revenue or profits a constant value. Every company is always trying to increase profits, so they already try to cut costs and increase market share. To suggest that a company would look at its ledger and say "yup, these profits are good, lets stop here" is silly. And with the two biggest, or at least most frequently complained about companies, McDonalds and Walmart, both could increase their employee wages and still have very healthy profits. There is no incentive for these companies not to do this, unless there is some outside force or requirement that they pay a living wage to their employees, they have no reason to, and would not.

So now lets look at two types of consumers the minimum wage worker and the middle class worker. The minimum wage worker will have increased wages yes, but also an increased price on products either way it made no difference to them all you did was increase the numbers but proportionally its about the same. The middle class worker was already above minimum wage so their salary hasn't changed, but now they experience an increase in product prices, so the middle class worker loses out. Overall this bad.

The Middle class worker already feels the increased prices through tax burden.
The low wage worker, in addition to surviving on government benefits is likely tax exempt, especially if they have children. The middle class worker is forced to pay higher taxes to cover the entitlement programs that keep the lower class workers alive.
(I'm going to skip going into upper class tax burdens because that is a whole different ball of wax)

This is because even though while wage might have increased, their real wage which is the amount of buying power they now have is actually different

This direct relationship is really only true if the only place they can buy from is Walmart (which granted, could be the case). When workers have more to spend, it increases demand for goods, and luxury purchases become a possibility. As is often said, a rising tide lifts all ships.

The only time an economic policy is truly bad, is when it stops or slows the circular flow of money. People who have limited means always have things they need or want to buy. A slight jab at wealthy people, they don't generally keep the money moving. They still need housing, and transportation. But if a person have 10x the average wage, do they consume 10x the goods? Do they buy or rent 10 houses? Do they buy 10 cars, eat out 10 times as often, buy 10 times as much clothing?
This is all possible, but what happens when that ratio hits the average hits 380 times their average employee's pay? Do they buy 380 times more goods, and produce 380 times more demand?

A strong economy requires people to be spending money, and a people need to have money to spend.