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What would you eat in medieval times?

Probably bread and poverty

So when Europeans first came across tomatoes, they thought they were poisonous for a couple of reasons. First off, they are apart of the nightshade family, and nightshade berries are supposed to taste very good, but are very toxic. The second reason is a lot of the plates, bowls and cookware Europeans used at the time was made of pewter, which generally contained lead back then. This was actually fine for a bland diet of bread and poverty, the lead leaching isn't very bad. When you put something really acidic, like tomatoes, on something lead based, it really absorbs a lot of lead.

Using lead for plumbing is also fine, so long as you're just moving water through it. The water doesn't have much contact with the lead, so won't absorb much. Water also doesn't take up much lead by itself. It's only when you have other acids present in the water it becomes an issue. You also very quickly build up a sediment layer on the inside of the pipes that insulates the water from the lead. If you start pumping through acidic stuff (like industrial run off), that insulating layer can get destroyed, and the acids can pull the lead off into the water. It's pretty much what went down in Flynt. The Roman lead plumbing likely did not cause any noticeable lead poisoning, and there is no evidence it caused some of the Emperors to go crazy. The Romans also knew high exposure to lead was toxic, and only used slaves to mine and process the stuff. Being sent to those mines was pretty much a death sentence.

There's also a hypothesis (essentially unprovable) that the banning of leaded gasoline is responsible for the decline of violent crime in places that used it heavily. Violent crime in the US peaked in the 90s, and has been in a decline since then. Mild lead poisoning has been associated with poor impulse control. It's impossible to say for sure if this is the reason, or not, though, so take it with a grain of salt and other reasons maybe responsible or have contributed to the decline in violent crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–crime_hypothesis

I blame the decline in violent crime on violent video games. It's much easier to maim, kill and destroy on your living room couch. Also less messy...

What would you eat in medieval times?

Probably bread and poverty

So when Europeans first came across tomatoes, they thought they were poisonous for a couple of reasons. First off, they are apart of the nightshade family, and nightshade berries are supposed to taste very good, but are very toxic. The second reason is a lot of the plates, bowls and cookware Europeans used at the time was made of pewter, which generally contained lead back then. This was actually fine for a bland diet of bread and poverty, the lead leaching isn't very bad. When you put something really acidic, like tomatoes, on something lead based, it really absorbs a lot of lead.

Using lead for plumbing is also fine, so long as you're just moving water through it. The water doesn't have much contact with the lead, so won't absorb much. Water also doesn't take up much lead by itself. It's only when you have other acids present in the water it becomes an issue. You also very quickly build up a sediment layer on the inside of the pipes that insulates the water from the lead. If you start pumping through acidic stuff (like industrial run off), that insulating layer can get destroyed, and the acids can pull the lead off into the water. It's pretty much what went down in Flynt. The Roman lead plumbing likely did not cause any noticeable lead poisoning, and there is no evidence it caused some of the Emperors to go crazy. The Romans also knew high exposure to lead was toxic, and only used slaves to mine and process the stuff. Being sent to those mines was pretty much a death sentence.

There's also a hypothesis (essentially unprovable) that the banning of leaded gasoline is responsible for the decline of violent crime in places that used it heavily. Violent crime in the US peaked in the 90s, and has been in a decline since then. Mild lead poisoning has been associated with poor impulse control. It's impossible to say for sure if this is the reason, or not, though, so take it with a grain of salt and other reasons maybe responsible or have contributed to the decline in violent crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–crime_hypothesis

That might actually mean something if these billionaires were making good or responsible decisions. Reality shows us otherwise.

Once again, the only two things financially a company can control is it’s labour and the price of its goods and services.

If something like minimum wage goes up (let’s make it easy) from 7.50 to living wage standards of $14, The company has a choice to either fire half of employees or raise it’s prices by 50% to just break even from that increase.

If they don’t think thier products can sell for 50% more due to supply and demand, if they choose raising their prices, they might lose enough customers that they are no longer profitable, making that employee they kept lose their job as well, so sadly, a company will always err on the side of caution and control their costs instead of relying on profits.

Even if they find a happy middle, raise prices by 10% while laying off 10% of their work force, someone is still losing their job.

Flat out raising minimum wage is not a good idea, even if it is considered noble.

@deltago while you're right that classical economic models suggest that a minimum wage should reduce employment, real world experience is that there is no significant impact. Possible reasons for this include:
- classical models assume perfect information without cost. In practice transaction costs are significant both for employees and employers and minimum wages tend to both reduce those costs directly and indirectly (as a result of less turnover of staff).
- classical models also assume prices are set at the equilibrium of supply and demand, that demand is price elastic and that an individual business has no ability to influence this equilibrium. In practice, in most industries, an increase in costs to all businesses can drive prices up across the board to compensate without a significant impact on demand (that's much less true where there is strong competition from imports and no tariff protection).
- cost differentials between employees tend to narrow, i.e. the gaps between wages paid to staff become narrower, reducing the apparent cost of the minimum wage.
- the increased purchasing power of low-paid staff promotes demand, which translates into more jobs.
Of course, while there may be no impact on jobs overall, there will certainly be some impact on the nature and distribution of jobs, which will create winners and losers.

This site refers to numerous studies of the impact of a minimum wage. This site refers to a major literature review and summarizes the changes in economists' views in recent years about the impact of a minimum wage.