The law that establishes California’s minimum wage rate at twenty dollars per hour is purportedly aimed at uplifting the state’s working poor. The role of economics is to evaluate such claims through economic theory and empirical evidence. In mainstream economics, commonly taught in introductory college courses, the conventional analysis indicates that such laws may lead to heightened unemployment only if the new minimum wage exceeds the market wage. While this insight is important, it does not tell the full story. This limitation stems from the assumptions inherent in the labor market model, which presume that firms and workers are homogeneous.However, the real world does not conform to this assumption of homogeneity. Each market participant is different, and

Friends and family are talking, on Facebook, about the rapid rise in the price of eggs. Their posts also report that there are plenty of eggs in the dairy sections of local grocery stores. A few people, along with some reporters, blame this rapid increase in the price of eggs on price-gouging corporations.
State governments take price gouging seriously. Section 396-R of New York’s General Business law defines price gouging as “unconscionably excessive pricing of essential goods and services during any abnormal disruption of the market, such as severe weather, power outages, strikes, or national or local emergencies.” This law also prohibits price gouging “by all parties in the chain of distribution, including retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, suppliers and

Medicare for All is listed as the top priority of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He describes it as a single-payer system that is “free at the point of service” as there will be no premiums, deductibles, copays, or surprise bills. It will cover more services (dental, hearing, vision, long-term care, substance abuse treatment, etc.) than what the present Medicare system covers. It will also stop the “pharmaceutical industry from ripping off the American people” by capping prescription drug prices.
Medicare for All sounds wonderful until you get into the economic weeds of it.
To understand how Medicare for All is not the utopia it is being sold as, we must first analyze its antithesis, which is modeled below.
The state in this model is an