I Cringe When I Hear The Term "living Wage."

[Pliny]

I'll have more to say about this in subsequent posts, but for now, it doesn't make any sense.

 

Labor is not priced according to the goodwill of an employer but by market forces.  

What is especially sad is when capitalism is blamed for economic ills, when it is capitalism which has brought us (at least in the US and other countries which have some remnant of a free market system) to the point of being able to have a "living wage" as we know it and not having to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week, and to have a surplus to share with the truly needy.

 

Also, we fail to see why some wages are not "living wages," which is that so much of our economic output is leeched out via overpaid government workers, those who don't work at all, government support of monopolistic unions, and other shifts of wealth, that have lowered everyone's purchasing power.  The government and those who benefit from unfair shifting of resources are often the enemies, but "greedy" capitalists get the blame.

 

Further, we retard economic output and growth by imposing a minimum price on labor, which shuts out those who cannot produce enough to justify this wage, and shuts down production of those goods and services which cannot sell at prices sufficient to pay these wages.  So we have uneducated and unskilled people living being an unnecessary burden on their families and/or society, when instead they could be producing, contributing, and learning skills that would lead them to better paying jobs.  Minimum wage is an impediment to the economy and to a "living wage."

 

 

 

[arfink]

So, do you think it's possible for humans to live decent and reasonable lives without producing something for their fellow men to consume? Do such people have a place in society?

[Anastasia13]

So, do you think it's possible for humans to live decent and reasonable lives without producing something for their fellow men to consume? Do such people have a place in society?

 

What sort of person would consider himself a part of a community and never do a thing for his neighbor? Such a person as this who is so according to his own free will and choice is not a part of society but has chosen to be a society unto his own.

 

 

 

 

This is society:

 

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne

Edited February 11, 2014 by Light and Truth

[add]

The two biggest welfare queens in America today are Wal-Mart and McDonald's.

This issue has become more known as we learn just how far some companies have gone in putting their employees on public assistance. According to one study, American fast food workers receive more than $7 billion dollars in public assistance. As it turns out, McDonald's has a “McResource” line that helps employees and their families enroll in various state and local assistance programs. It exploded into the public when a recording of the McResource line advocated that full-time employees sign up for food stamps and welfare.

 

if a person works full time he or she should not be so poorly compensated that they qualify for public assistance.  another thing that is rearing its ugly head is the 30 hour  obamacare rule. 

IE: if walmart only offers 29 hours a week for its employees , then they are circumventing the spirit of the law,

[CrossCuT]

This topic makes me cringe.

[NotreDame]

The two biggest welfare queens in America today are Wal-Mart and McDonald's.

 

This is insightful to the extent that we are living in a society where big business, wall street, and state/federal governments are colluding like never before off the backs of about 45% of the country, and to the benefit of pretty much only themselves. 

 

We've either spent or printed TRILLIONS of dollars in the name of equality over the last 5 years and it's gone almost exclusively into the hands of the 1%.  The poor have nothing to show for it.

 

 

[NotreDame]

So, do you think it's possible for humans to live decent and reasonable lives without producing something for their fellow men to consume? Do such people have a place in society?

 

Arfink,  I'm not sure what you are getting at here.  Could you expand on it a bit?
 

[4588686]

'Market Forces' are not socially independent phenomena.  

 

Physicists do not study 'market forces.' 

[4588686]

We've either spent or printed TRILLIONS of dollars in the name of equality over the last 5 years 

 

 

What?

[4588686]

Joseph Stiglitz has a good thought experiment.  Right now capital is highly mobile and labor it highly immobile.  It's not too hard for Wal-Mart to work with a subcontractor in Bangladesh to get cheap labor but it is very hard for a Bangladeshi to move to the US.  Imagine if we had an inversed legal system.  One that greatly constrained capital's mobility but made it extremely easy for individuals to cross national boundaries.  How would globalization look in that scenario?   

 

The point isn't that such a legal system would make good economic sense.  The point is that when people talk about how 'market forces' like 'globalization' are re-creating the world these aren't forces that totally exist independent of human control.  Our current process of globalization is highly informed by the international legal system that has developed since the 18thish century onward.  There is no such thing as a 'free market.'  Markets are shaped and molded by different power structures.  Public and private. 

[NotreDame]

I have no idea what you are talking about, but in general Stiglitz identifies the correct symptoms, but can't properly trace them back to the proper root causes (ie. some of his assumptions are wrong.)

 

Globalization has nothing to do with the current malaise except to obfuscate the real issues and to eventually exacerbate the ultimate consequences.   We are going on 20 years of global credit expansion and money printing.  We've been here before, but globalization has, as I said, made it worse.  It will end badly. 

[4588686]

I have no idea what you are talking about, but in general Stiglitz identifies the correct symptoms, but can't properly trace them back to the proper root causes (ie. some of his assumptions are wrong.)

 

 

 

Well, to begin with I don't know what was unclear about the above post.  People identify things like globalization as an example of intractable market forces.  But of course, globalization is occurring the way that it is because of the legal and social context in which it is occurring.  It is not some independent phenomena.  

 

Secondly, I don't know if you're talking about his public pronouncements or his technical work but, as a researcher I'd say that Stiglitz is pretty good at tracing symptoms back to their root causes.  That's kind of why he won the noble prize (his work on informational asymetries in markets).  

[4588686]

I'd love to know more about the Trillions of dollars we've spent in the name of equality over the past five years.  I must have missed that.

[NotreDame]

Obama and Harry Reid have spent trillions and trillions we don't have using debt and they've printed trillions more via the fed. 

 

I thought everything they did was in the name of equality?  That's what they tell us in every speech.  If you don't believe Obama, maybe you are just racist.

[4588686]

Obama and Harry Reid have spent trillions and trillions we don't have using debt and they've printed trillions more via the fed. 

 

I thought everything they did was in the name of equality?  That's what they tell us in every speech.  If you don't believe Obama, maybe you are just racist.

 

 

Right.  So, the US Congress has passed, and Executives (Bush and Obama) have signed, spending bills that have totaled in the trillions to prop up the banking industry and as a limited stimulus program.  Maybe that was right or wrong but it was not done in the name of equality.  Nor is everything the Democratic party does in the name of equality.  Nor has President Obama or Senator Reid ever claimed, as far as I know, that everything they do is in the name of equality.  

Edited February 11, 2014 by Hasan