You are giving exaggerated examples, but in practice the capital owner can, if they want, do the long form negotiations with people to lower wages (to the minimum) and raise prices because they have significantly more bargaining power when they control so much of the wealth pie.
Respectively:
If I run a business and I want to stifle wages at my company, I both stop raises and then start cutting gradually. People will leave, I will hire new workers (we have a labor glut after all, if you expand your reach enough you will find more and more desperate people for money) and repeat the cycle until we hit the wage floor.
No, it is probably not $0. There is some point for even the most desperate and hungry person where you say it is not worth my time to make, say, $2 an hour rather than just trying to find another job. It is not about not giving the worker anything in return, it is about finding the least they are willing to take for the work.
But it is not a fair negotiation. When you are talking about almost every employee, they are bargaining from the perspective of having no time (in a business sense) to barter, and their ability to eat or sleep depends on the job. For the owner, their ability to expand their own wealth depends on the employee, and they can wait as long as they want for the hiree to forfeit to their terms.
Likewise with goods prices, if you are in perpetual profit you can constantly amass more money, and in the US economy wealth amassment enables you to take several measures to raise prices in the long term without losing customers to competition - you buy your competitors out, you bribe politicians to pass legislation that reduces competition or the ability to startup in your industry (through expansive regulations, permit requirements, red tape, and sometimes even outright banning competition as is the case with teleco) and you use the market leverage you get to make more profit.
I imagine today companies like Comcast in some areas are charging 100 times more than real market valuation of a cable internet subscription would be in an environment of absolute market freedom.
Respectively:
If I run a business and I want to stifle wages at my company, I both stop raises and then start cutting gradually. People will leave, I will hire new workers (we have a labor glut after all, if you expand your reach enough you will find more and more desperate people for money) and repeat the cycle until we hit the wage floor.
No, it is probably not $0. There is some point for even the most desperate and hungry person where you say it is not worth my time to make, say, $2 an hour rather than just trying to find another job. It is not about not giving the worker anything in return, it is about finding the least they are willing to take for the work.
But it is not a fair negotiation. When you are talking about almost every employee, they are bargaining from the perspective of having no time (in a business sense) to barter, and their ability to eat or sleep depends on the job. For the owner, their ability to expand their own wealth depends on the employee, and they can wait as long as they want for the hiree to forfeit to their terms.
Likewise with goods prices, if you are in perpetual profit you can constantly amass more money, and in the US economy wealth amassment enables you to take several measures to raise prices in the long term without losing customers to competition - you buy your competitors out, you bribe politicians to pass legislation that reduces competition or the ability to startup in your industry (through expansive regulations, permit requirements, red tape, and sometimes even outright banning competition as is the case with teleco) and you use the market leverage you get to make more profit.
I imagine today companies like Comcast in some areas are charging 100 times more than real market valuation of a cable internet subscription would be in an environment of absolute market freedom.