Category: Meddling with Markets

Saturday Night Live — Chris Rock on Minimum Wage

Chris Rock explains on Weekend Update how a minimum wage (a price floor) is above equilibrium wage. Firms may want to pay lower wages, but an effective price floor is one that is set above the equilibrium such that firms aren’t able to pay the lower wages. Thanks to Jodie Beggs for finding the Jeopardy reference that led me to finding this video.

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Stealing Harvard: Selling Beer

 

Dial-a-bottle beer service provides beer to minors. The government has essentially set a price floor of an $∞ for minors to purchase, such that there is an extreme shortage of minors being able to buy beer. Tom Green steps in to offer packs of beer for well below the price floor.

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Chris Rock: Bullet Control

 

Guns and bullets are complement goods. This clip from Chris Rock’s HBO comedy special talks about how making the price of bullets $5000 would limit the amount of shootings. This is essentially talking about how when the price of a product increases, the demand for complement goods related to that product decreases. By having the price of a bullet cost $5000, Chris is basically saying that the government should put a price floor on bullets. This will result in less people being able to afford bullets and possible a black market for bullets. All of which are addressed in this clip. This clip has been edited for class use.

H/T to James Tierney

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