SA: Vineyards will turn to machines as wages rise
SA: Vineyards will turn to machines as wages rise
Feb 11, 2013 6
(IOL) - You will not find the Law of Unintended Consequences on any statute book in any country but it is a universal law nonetheless, applying to every human action, either well- or ill-intended. Folk wisdom has other names for it, some rude, some not – Murphy’s Law and Sod’s Law come to mind. In the Western Cape we are heading for a perfect example.
Meddle with the economic law of supply and demand (as Cosatu Western Cape provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich and farmworkers will soon discover) and unforeseen circumstances will surely follow – unforeseen, that is, by those who will suffer and those who led them to strike.
It is an unfortunate fact that the more there is of anything, the cheaper it is. This applies to an oversupply of labour just as much as an oversupply of beans or peas. Minimum wage regulations try to ameliorate this and to some extent they can be successful. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes when the minimum wage prompts counter action by the market.
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