Quote:
Originally Posted by ewokpelts
A salary cap CONTROLS COSTS for management/ownership.
Imagine you are a plumber. Apprentices get paid less than journeymen or foremen. In the current system, the shop can hire whoever they want as long as they are union. But imagine if the ownership had a salary cap? Now, he could choose to hire more Apprentices than journeymen to “be competitive”, but nothing is stopping him from raising his fee to clients.
IS THAT FAIR?
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It's not an apples to apples comparison. The plumber's union treats all apprentices or journeymen as interchangeable, and they get paid fixed rates accordingly. The MLBPA and CBA-mandated salary arbitration treats all players as having different levels of skill with different values.
Without prevailing wage laws or labor unions, labor wages would drop -- there are too many illegal aliens willing to work under the table, etc.
Every plumber is a free-agent who can work anywhere they want, but only a small percentage of MLB players are free-agents in any given year. A true free-market in MLB would cause chaos in MLB and possibly cause salaries to drop -- there would be no artificial scarcity of labor driving prices up.