Sally Forth, 07/24
You may think the summer heat's getting to Ted, but he's actually on to something. Economists have recently debated whether increases in the labor supply, specifically of uneducated workers, will lower wages. Most historical examples along with modern data suggest there's not a problem. Why? Not only does the supply of labor increase, but the demand for goods and services does as well. We can handle thousands of Mexican fast-food workers because thousands of the same Mexicans will also be eating fast food, and consuming lots of other things. It's a Say's Law kinda thing, I guess--supply creates its own (effective) demand.
But the case is quite different with zombies.
Of course, it depends on what kind of zombies we're talking. Ted seems to assume they are not the brain-devouring kind, so we'll go with that. What about human capital investment? If they're Romero zombies, they've lost all of their human capital upon death but because zombiism revives or sustains cells they still have some learning capacity. They'll never become rocket scientists, but they can probably take an order at McDonald's or write pop music. If they're Return of the Living Dead style zombies, they're still fully functional and intelligent, so they may not all be working low-wage jobs. Their lust for brains impeded their facilities, but we're ignoring that. To be fair we should probably assume that they're obsessed with something else to make the pain of rotting subside--perhaps morphine or another drug. However, if the zombies in question are like most brands of zombie, they're mindless and not very mobile so they'll have trouble even netting the fast-food gig. Imagine if your arm fell into the fry machine.
Which brings us to the sanitation problems. Flesh decay could of course lead to all sorts of issues, not only in food jobs. A clean work environment is necessary to keep employees and patrons from contracting disease, and what can you say about zombies? They're walking death; you can expect your employees or patrons to get sick regularly, if they can even stomach the smell and the new fly visitors long enough to do business. On the plus side, if all your coworkers die they'll just come back as zombies and you can lower their wages.
But the real issue is whether the science of economics would apply to a zombified world at all. Would the same assumptions hold? Are zombies rational, self-interested decision-makers? Going back to the original immigration example: we can safely say the zombies won't consume normal human food. (What'll happen if they don't eat? They'll die?) So the demand curve for fast food won't shift out like it would with human immigrants. Would they consume any other goods? Expect a worldwide depression if the dead rise from their graves, even if they don't want to eat you alive. Not only would they put fast-food workers out of a job, but economists too.
I have lots of other ideas, of course, but I'll leave it there for now. There's probably a good 25 pages or so of material in the question. Feel free to add your own thoughts.
Update: I'm told that zombies are actually quite bad at filling fast-food orders. (See here.) Read more.
