Moreover, handicraft tradesmens' high wages, which they exact for their work, is greatly mischievous [. . .] is destructive to trade, hinders the consumption of our manufactures by foreigners, and the exportation of those vast quantities
Wow you can feel the Capitalism being born
source: page 54 of this dusty old tome whose title is too long
Check out this "nobody wants to work anymore" c.1349:
Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many seeing the necessity of masters, and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages, and some rather willing to beg in idleness, than by labor to get their living; we, considering the grievous incommodities, which of the lack especially of ploughmen and such laborers may hereafter come, have upon deliberation and treaty with the prelates and the nobles, and learned men assisting us, of their mutual counsel ordained:
From the Ordinance of Labourers, 1349
