You can grasp for vague conspiracy theories about “the money printer”, or you can sit down and think about the concrete factors that make demand for labor (i.e. capital investments in buildings and equipment) less elastic than supply for labor. Here are a few:

- It’s fundamentally more difficult to raise and organize millions of dollars to build a factory and fill it with automatic weaving machines than it is for someone to train for a few weeks to become an automatic weaving machine operator.

- Various government regulations, from environmental protections and zoning laws that make it harder to build factories to safety regulations for operating factories, make it harder to open new factories and so decrease the elasticity of labor demand. I want to be explicit here that I am not saying these regulations are bad—but we must recognize the side effects they have.

- Long lead times on capital investments greatly increase the risk of market movements or technological advances making the business plan untenable before it gets off the ground.

- Organizational inertia slows staffing changes. Corporations often make decisions at glacial speeds. Want to hire a new team? Who is going to manage them? Who do they report to? Where will they work? These discussions can take up months, at which point the market has changed and ehhhh maybe we don’t want to hire a new team after all.

- High cost and difficulty of firing people makes hiring for a possibly short-term market opening less attractive. Think union contracts, severance pay, etc. Again, I want to be explicit that I’m not saying these are bad things, but we need to understand the effects they have.