“Many cities are pricey places to live.” That was the opening line and major premise of a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece advocating that high-cost cities raise minimum wages to mitigate the problem. I was struck by the fact that for years, the exact same basis was used by the same left liberal groups to justify rent controls. Apparently, high costs of living, largely caused by a panoply of government taxes, regulations, and restrictions, justify still more government-imposed coercion in both the labor and housing markets. Unfortunately, those government “solutions” are not only based on flaws in basic economic logic, but they are mutually contradictory.
