If you suppress prices, you reduce supply. Demand remains high, supply is now artificially low.<p>One unspoken benefit of this history of wage suppression is the dearth of engineering talent today. Rather than high prices signaling an opportunity to invest in an engineering education, labor market participants should have rationally chosen different skills and disciplines given the relatively low perceived market pay.<p>It stands to reason that engineers are getting paid more now than they otherwise would be thanks to temporal lags and education costs. If an unrigged market had been signaling prices that conformed to job market participant's real demands, the students of yesterday could have recognized better job opportunities today.