Citizen Weston is alive and well in the liberal establishment.

Remember, the belief that prices go up as a function of increased wages is not true. Supply and demand have little effect on anything in the long term. We literally just went through a prolonged period of inflation, it did occur after a moderate increase in wages, but it was extremely well established during that period that most of the price increases (about 55%) were driven by corporate profiteering, with the rest driven by actual price increases caused by war profiteering in Ukraine. None of it was due to demand squeezes driven by consumption. When wages went up corporations realized they could raise prices. That's it, that's how the system works.

When workers wages go up, they don't suddenly start buying insane levels of groceries. Like if my family eats a carton of eggs and two gallons of milk per week, having more money doesn't mean we suddenly consume twice as many eggs and twice as much dairy. There may be slight increases in consumption in these areas if people who couldn't afford enough nutritional food can suddenly afford enough. But the effect on the economy, if it causes minor temporary shortages, can be adjusted. Only under capitalist "recession" which is an over production of the means of production, does increasing production to meet human need create a problem.

Actually, the more direct cause of differences in wages is not consumer demand but level of unemployment. This is the real risk of increasing production to meet human need. Ultimately, it would require hiring enough workers to meet it! and then as the labor market becomes less competitive for the worker and more competitive for the employer, the new workers need to be paid more. We also recently saw this go into effect after covid. So many people died from covid that it shrunk the unemployed population in the US by 12%-15%. How did the Federal reserve respond? By raising interest rates, making it more expensive to borrow money, putting restrictions on new hiring. They literally said that this is why they were doing it, to drive down wages, in order to lower inflation. Stop hiring new workers, hire them for less money. Rather than do something about corporate profiteering.

And why is that? Not because it is good business, but because it maintains power between classes. Its actually good for business when workers make more money. Workers pay down debt, spend more on luxury goods, vacations, home ownership, all these objectively good benchmarks of a healthy economy improve. But employers have less control over the movement and activity of workers. I can easily find another job in my field for the same or better pay. As a class, the workers get more power, and the owners give up power. That's how capitalism works. What is good on one side is bad on the other.

We must be absolutely certain not just that raising wages does not increase prices, but specifically why this is the case.