What Should the Minimum Wage Be (USA)?

by Village Idiot 66 Replies latest social current

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  Saintbertholdt

  And how would such a mystical force do any correcting?

  You seem to think the market is not a natural force. Let me explain:

  Pick up a normal everyday item like a pencil. It consists of parts like a wooden casing, some paint, carbon on the inside, a rubber eraser on its back end, a metal holder for the eraser.

  You buy this item for a negligible amount.

  Now here's the trick: How much would it cost you to make one from total scratch on your own?

  One dollar? Ten dollars? A hundred dollars?

  It would actually cost millions of dollars.

  Here's another trick: No one knows the manufacturing process of that pencil from end to end in its entirety.

  From the wood being cut, to it being treated, the chemical composition of the paint, the processes involved in the manufacture of the base materials. That simple item encompasses the ingenuity and force of our entire civilization.

  Think about it for a while: The market is a natural force, like the ocean, like hurricanes or any other great natural phenomena you can think of.

  When humans intervene in the market through legislation like a minimum wage, one better know what one is doing because one could end up with unintended consequences. I'm not saying that it cannot be done, the Dutch have been keeping the Atlantic ocean at bay for a very long time, but what I am saying is that when you choose to impose limits on the market you better have thought this through thoroughly.

  
  
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  Village Idiot

  Saintbertholdt: You seem to think the market is not a natural force.

  Floods are a natural force that's why cities are designed with drainage and flood control channels.

  As for your pencil analogy you have left out the cost of employing the producer which takes us right back to the issue.
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  Saintbertholdt

  As for your pencil analogy you have left out the cost of employing the producer which takes us right back to the issue.

  If you mean by producer, it encompasses the tool manufacturers, the architects, engineers, technicians, miners, lumber jacks, supervisors, accountants and ALL the labor involved, and not just the factory floor worker though.

  Floods are a natural force that's why cities are designed with drainage and flood control channels.

  See: Dutch Watersnoodramp 1953 - And they're some pretty darn good engineers when it comes to dykes.

  
  
  
  

  
  
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  Crazyguy

  There is a country that has no minimum wage no welfare system and no medical programs where peoples money is being taxed to pay for it all. It called Somalia.
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  Saintbertholdt

  There is a country that has no minimum wage no welfare system and no medical programs where peoples money is being taxed to pay for it all. It called Somalia.

  Just for interest, five countries with no enforced minimum wage, instead relying on collective bargaining:

  Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland

  
  
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  pepperheart

  If people wages are too high how has donald trump managed to make billions of dollars.there is to much greed in the world when people who have millions and billions still want more.
  
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  2+2=5

  Reminds me of the words from a famous poet.

  "So this life is sacrificed, to a strangers bottom line"
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  dubstepped

  I'm late to this part and certainly no expert on the subject. Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong or answer any questions I pose.

  First, why should someone be able to live independently on minimum wage? It seems that now people expect to be able to raise a family on that. Why? Also, the wage is then multiplied by 40 hours. Why 40? Who says that is an acceptable amount of time to work?

  Could it be that if minimum wage jobs are all you qualify for, maybe you shouldn't plan to have kids or a spouse that doesn't also work? If you do, should you maybe then have to work more to pay for your life? Should you maybe have to work on increasing your skills and becoming more valuable in the marketplace?

  I grew up poor to the point where if it wasn't for the kindness of people at the KH at times we wouldn't have really had food. Why? My dad wasn't exactly a go-getter and my mom didn't work. My dad would turn down overtime and seemed to just want to work as little as possible. He hated his job, and I get that, but we all suffered. Had he worked more, had my mom worked, had they spent time bettering themselves, maybe we wouldn't have been in that position.

  I'm no college grad, but I have always been willing to work as much as it took not to be in the financial position of my parents. My wife and I clean houses. We support ourselves well doing that, no higher education required. And you know what? We have a waiting list of families that want us to clean for them. Why? Because we not only do a good job but we're conscientious, hard working, honest people. Why don't we hire? Because finding people that want to be conscientious, hard working, honest workers is hard. We have a client that has a handyman business paying a very good wage that cannot find reliable help. In fact, many people that he hires have stolen from him.

  I do think that minimum wage matters. But nothing works if people aren't willing to. Surely in some areas there is a dearth of work and minimum wage may be all that is there. In others there may be opportunities out there that nobody is bothering to reach for because they might have to work hard and not handed to them. I also wonder how much the government supporting people has discouraged people and made them lazy. Why bother working or even trying if you can survive without doing much of anything? I know many cleaning business owners that can't even get people to show up for interviews or just use them to put on unemployment records to act like they're trying to find work. So the minimum wage, at least to this guy who is admittedly not an expert on the subject, seems like only a small part of the overall problem.
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  Village Idiot

  Just for interest, five countries with no enforced minimum wage, instead relying on collective bargaining:

  Which is considered to be a Socialistic way of doing things.
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  Saintbertholdt

  Which is considered to be a Socialistic way of doing things.

  Sure. But isn't minimum wage doing the same thing?

  Let me quote from a well known Economic text (Basic Economics - Sowell): "A belated recognition of the connection between minimum wage laws and unemployment by government officials has caused some countries to allow their real minimum wage levels to be eroded by inflation, avoiding the political risks of trying to repeal these laws explicitly, when so many voters think of such laws as being beneficial to workers. These laws are in fact beneficial to those workers who continue to be employed—those who are on the inside looking out, but at the expense of the unemployed who are on the outside looking in."

  The economist view is that the minimum wage is generally a bad thing, but I've not bought into the notion entirely, but as our discussion is progressing I am starting to see some merit in the abandoning of a minimum wage (except to prevent extreme exploitation).

  I come back to the following thought: Isn't using minimum wage to ensure a specific lifestyle a form of social engineering? Is social engineering a good idea?