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

[Aloysius]

Like I said: I didn't say HOW it should be accomplished, only that it SHOULD--something which you should agree with and therefore have no problem with the term "living wage".  It's up to you as a Catholic to determine how your own ideological political system accounts for the fact that Catholic teaching says it's unjust to pay someone less that what their subsistence necessitates.  the Compendium on Social Teaching talks about family wages as well, and even suggests the possibility of stay at home parents being paid for the value they're contributing to society.

 

the fact of the matter is, we could eliminate TONS of "jobs" from our economy and be no worse off for it except insofar as the system we have CONSTRUCTED would still operate.  we choose to have a consumerist economy in which there are a lot of rather useless jobs feeding a bunch of other rather useless jobs that from a certain broad perspective are just as useless as a government hiring people to dig holes and then hiring people to fill them.  I'm not proposing a solution to that, but the system itself is flawed and unjust when people cannot work for a wage that earns their subsistence.  that's unjust.  would a higher minimum wage fix that?  argue your case that it won't, but don't tell me the other situation is not unjust.  because it is.  and it cries out to heaven for vengeance against the greedy of the world who benefit from it.

[Pliny]

HOW that happens is up for a question, but you should not cringe at the term "living wage"--because as Catholics we believe everyone who is willing to work SHOULD get a living wage.  work it into your political ideology however you like, Leo XIII insisted it should be enforced by unions, guilds, etc, protected in their existence by the state but providing a means to avoid necessitating state interference.  by the time we get to John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, the suggestions tend to be more along the line of some increased regulation by governments to make it happen.  the one thing that is consistent is that it OUGHT to happen and that it is UNJUST when it doesn't. 

 

 

It CAN'T happen if enough goods are not being produced.

 

If we all crash on a desert island, we may not all be able to gather even enough materials and food to eek out survival, no matter what pope says that everyone must be earning a "living wage."

 

Unions and guilds give an unfair advantage to some at the expense of those who are left out, i.e. monopolistic auto worker unions that overpay laborers at the expense of nonunion labor whose purchasing power is reduced because of artificially higher priced cars.

 

Government regulations REDUCE the size of the pie, squander and misdirect resources, and help CAUSE wages to be less than "living wages."  For example as already discussed, minimum wage laws CAUSE those who cannot produce enough to merit the minimum wage to be out of work.  Raise the minimum wage more, and more will be thrown out of work, and more businesses will look for ways to use capital goods to replace labor.  Looking to the government for "economic justice," whatever that is, is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.

 

No, not EVERYONE "should" get a "living wage," whatever that is.  Everyone should be free to trade his talent and labor for whatever the market will bear.  That's freedom and that's justice.  The kid who mows lawns might not be earning a "living wage."  So what?  Some day he will.  For now he's earning some money and learning some skills. 

 

 

[Aloysius]

a "living wage" related to Catholic doctrine is a subsistence wage... that kid mowing your lawn is getting his subsistence just fine.

 

there are enough resources for everyone to live and eat comfortably on our "desert island"--that's the accurate picture of the earth.  so we ought to have a system in which everyone willing to work can get their subsistence.  the freedom to make contracts is subservient to the natural law, as the Compendium on Social Doctrine points out.  how is that system best organized?  I couldn't tell you.  I could tell that the system we have now is not "natural"--that it is based on artificial constructs that do not need to be this way.  I could agree with Hasan that there is no such thing as market forces that can be studied like physicists study gravity.... but ultimately, the point is that a just wage is a subsistence wage--make it happen.  you want it to happen through free markets, fine, but something somewhere needs to make sure that Betty Sue Singlemom can work 40 hours a week and she and her children will be able to live on it.  that's a living wage.  that's justice, according to Catholic social teaching.  justice according to Catholic teaching and justice according to neoliberal economics, however, are two entirely separate things.

 

you can rail against government waste all you want, you can say we'll have more people getting living wages if we got rid of the minimum wage altogether, and then people would argue against you surely.  but as a Catholic you can't say it's okay that people willing to work can't make their subsistence, you can't say that's not unjust--it definitely is.

[NotreDame]

Like I said: I didn't say HOW it should be accomplished, only that it SHOULD--something which you should agree with and therefore have no problem with the term "living wage".

 

Well, I'm not really sure what I should be agreeing with because you didn't quite answer the question.  Should the minimum wage be the living wage?  And if everyone deserves access to a job, as you just said, how do you reconcile these two separate and, at times, opposing directives?

 

So should the minimum wage be a "living wage"?  If so, how do we determine that wage?  And if raising the minimum wage to that level eliminates jobs (as it most likely will), how do you reconcile that with everyone having access to a job, which everyone should have, as you point out?

 

[Pliny]

It is an interesting question from a Catholic perspective. Assuming there should be a minimum wage, would it be fundamentally unjust for that wage to be below a living wage?

It would be and is unjust to fix a price prohibiting people from freely entering into agreements.

What is your definition of a "living wage"? And does it change according to the times and country?

[Pliny]

Define "subsistence" Al.

And where did you come up with a 40 hour week?

Why 40 hours? Why not 60?

[Aloysius]

As all those sources with high levels of magisterial authority I cited show: it is NOT unjust to prohibit people from freely entering into agreements on the matter of a living wage because "natural justice precedes and is above the freedom of the contract."  And okay, 40 is not an absolute number, it's the number we culturally associate with the amount of work that should be standard in a week... if you wanted to tweak it up or down, that's fine, so long as people still are capable of fulfilling their obligations to their families.  In my opinion, with modern technology the way it is, there is absolutely no reason anyone should NEED to work more than 40 hours to earn their subsistence.  honestly they shouldn't even need to work that much, look at all the energy slaves (machines) we have doing all this work for us.  people should certainly be able to freely work MORE so that they can get MORE, but the idea that they should need to work so much?  it's rather superfluous, and especially because all of that work is done to just get by, it's stagnating to humanity's future.

 

Notredame, I'm not sure raising the minimum wage to be a living wage in and of itself would work without some other drastic changes to the system.  I don't want to get into an in-depth argument about my specific economic system--(which is a form of distributism, Peschian solidarist economics, certain libertarian/anarcho strains, all constantly in flux because honestly I guarantee you I'll never be the one with all the answers)--because I think there are many ways to work it out so that people are ensured that if they're willing to work they can achieve their basic subsistence, and there are ways to do so with way less government regulation I'm sure, though the more people are working for under a subsistence wage the more you have to make up for that through welfare systems... so it's generally a choice between higher minimum wage, or more available welfare assistance, when you're talking about satisfying the requirements of Catholic morality that people have subsistence wages available to them if they're willing to work.  There's different ways to go about it... there's interesting suggestions in the Compendium (I linked to it in my other post).

[Aloysius]

See, the whole reason there's a benefit to the free market is that people are motivated towards innovation and growth, creating new things and advancing our way of life and increasing our standard of living.  but how many of those advancements are made by people on an empty stomach?  who are homeless in the streets?  there is no reason why the profit incentive can't begin at the basic level of subsistence--food and shelter.

[NotreDame]

"...but something somewhere needs to make sure that Betty Sue Singlemom can work 40 hours a week and she and her children will be able to live on it."

 

I'm not getting the above from anything that you've quoted...  and as I dig into what you quoted further, I'm looking at this... but I don't see this in Rerum Novarum, although that's what's cited... Do you know which paragraph it is in? 
 

The simple agreement between employee and employer with regard to the amount of pay to be received is not sufficient for the agreed-upon salary to qualify as a “just wage”, because a just wage “must not be below the level of subsistence”[662] of the worker: natural justice precedes and is above the freedom of the contract.

 

(emphasis added)

 

Citations are:

[659] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 19: AAS 73 (1981), 625-629.

[660] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2434; cf. Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23 (1931), 198-202: “The Just Wage” is the title of Chapter Four (nos. 65-76) of Part Two.

[661] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 67: AAS 58 (1966), 1088-1089.

[662] Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum: Acta Leonis XIII, 11 (1892), 131.

 

 

[Aloysius]

well you'd have to read through the whole Compendium on Social Doctrine, particularly when it talks about Family wages, and it has stuff in there about social welfare systems too... just that quote alone deals specifically with a subsistence wage.  the Rerum Novarum citation was to paragraph 131, I haven't cross-referenced it but I assumed the Vatican would get their citations right... if you're just using cntrl + F through Rerum perhaps there's a difference in translation at play.

 

oops double checking, that can't be a paragraph number haha... I dunno maybe the vatican citations are mixed up let me see...

[Nihil Obstat]

Snip...

 honestly they shouldn't even need to work that much, look at all the energy slaves (machines) we have doing all this work for us.  people should certainly be able to freely work MORE so that they can get MORE, but the idea that they should need to work so much?  it's rather superfluous, and especially because all of that work is done to just get by, it's stagnating to humanity's future.

 

Notredame, I'm not sure raising the minimum wage to be a living wage in and of itself would work without some other drastic changes to the system.  I don't want to get into an in-depth argument about my specific economic system--(which is a form of distributism, Peschian solidarist economics, certain libertarian/anarcho strains, all constantly in flux because honestly I guarantee you I'll never be the one with all the answers)--

LD has some really interesting things to say about the concept of a post-economic society.

[NotreDame]

well you'd have to read through the whole Compendium on Social Doctrine, particularly when it talks about Family wages, and it has stuff in there about social welfare systems too... just that quote alone deals specifically with a subsistence wage.  the Rerum Novarum citation was to paragraph 131, I haven't cross-referenced it but I assumed the Vatican would get their citations right... if you're just using cntrl + F through Rerum perhaps there's a difference in translation at play.

 

Right, and rerum novarum has only 64 paragraphs... And I don't find the substance of the quote in encyclical anywhere.
 

[Aloysius]

hmm... apparently it's a reference to a page number in Acta Leonis XIII... don't know where to get a copy of the official Acts of Leo XIII, who knows if it's even in English... maybe we must write to the Vatican lol.

[Aloysius]

while there's no way this was the quote they were referencing, this lays out the same principle:

 

 45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice

 

he then goes on to say that ideally the state shouldn't have to interfere to make this happen, as ideally unions or guilds could so so, but that they should be protected by the state in their right to exist.

[NotreDame]

hmm... apparently it's a reference to a page number in Acta Leonis XIII... don't know where to get a copy of the official Acts of Leo XIII, who knows if it's even in English... maybe we must write to the Vatican lol.

 

No, I'm pretty sure it's referring to rerum novarum and that "Acta Leonis XIII" just means "by Leo the 13th"
 

[Aloysius]

curious what the 131 means, I actually think it must be a page number in Volume 11 of the official Pontificis Maximi Acta of Leo XIII... hmmm... either way, it says the same thing as Rerum Novarum 25, just doesn't use the actual word "subsistence" (and who knows what kind of translations were used/translated from, etc)

[NotreDame]

 though the more people are working for under a subsistence wage the more you have to make up for that through welfare systems... so it's generally a choice between higher minimum wage, or more available welfare assistance,

 

Well, this isn't a given at all.  Assuming the demand for labor is somewhat elastic, if the minimum wage gets raised above the prevailing wage in any market, jobs will be lost.  So were these heads of household, we'd have to run the math to see what the "gross assistance needed" would be.  (I made that term up.)

 

But since most people making minimum wage are young (under 25) and by and large never married, they aren't likely to end up on assistance whether they are working or laid off.  What they really need is something you outlined earlier, access to work, which is precisely what will be put at risk by raising a minimum wage above a prevailing wage.

 

This access to work is increasingly important in a knowledge economy where skills are at a premium and take time to develop.  This is the problem that Europe is facing now, where youth unemployment is through the roof (though it's not doing great here either.)

 

Anyway,  it's a big conversation.  I appreciate the posts.

[NotreDame]

curious what the 131 means, I actually think it must be a page number in Volume 11 of the official Pontificis Maximi Acta of Leo XIII... hmmm... either way, it says the same thing as Rerum Novarum 25, just doesn't use the actual word "subsistence" (and who knows what kind of translations were used/translated from, etc)

 

Well, let's be precise...  It doesn't say the same thing.  They are different.  Similar, but different.

 

I don't know why they couldn't get the citation right, but this is by bishops for the pope, not by the pope. 

 

And it's off-topic, but I'm not a big fan of the guy writing the opening letter to the compendium, since he protected and took bribes from the rapist and child molester Maciel.  

 

So I'll stick with actual papal encyclicals. 
 

[Aloysius]

hold on, just because Cardinal Angelo Sodano wrote that introduction doesn't mean the Compendium itself doesn't have the same level of authority as the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It is a compendium and it is merely compiling and transmitting the same teachings about social justice that the Church holds.  disparaging those teachings on the basis that Sodano was involved in the Council that was compiling it for John Paul II at the time is completely illegitimate.  

[Aloysius]

oh, and my apologies to Hasan for chasing him away by making the discussion about Catholic doctrine, but it's important to do so when Catholics are cringing at the term "living wage" when the Church holds that living wages are required by justice.