Why is it the employer's responsibility to provide a living wage?

[FreeTony]

I don't think it is the employers responsibility, though I'dlike to think they should try to. Work is a contract, for which there is a market price. If business A pays a worker more than business B, for the same productivity, business A is under threat of going under. This leads to the race to the bottom, which is where I think the state should step in, in the form of minimum wage etc. Here in the UK for example. people on minimum wage get various subsidies to top up their income. Now in America there seems to be this mass hatred of the state, something I cannot get my head around.

As an aside, I have a friend who has a start up company with a couple of employees. He pays them more than he pays himself, to keep the business going/growing. I'm sure he'd rather it were the other way around, but this is what market forces dictate.

[Cato]

Employees do not work for free. Employers will have to pay them to attract them.

This only applies for positions requiring a certain level of experience and specialization. Employers can pay next to nothing for low skill or generally available higher skill positions. No effort or cost is necessary beyond posting the open position to a job board. It isn't hard to find stories of hundreds or even thousands of people applying for a single position.

Employers get away with paying shit wages because they aren't competing with other employers; they are competing with destitution.

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In hunting gathering times, you either made your nut or you died. The state was invented to help individuals make their nut, not legislate someone else help individuals make their nut.

You are either woefully ignorant of the history of civilization or you intentionally squished civilization's timeline so that 5000 BCE and the late nineteenth century are adjacent.

Isn't this another way of saying your too cheap to help your fellow man so you want to mandate that employers pay a wage high enough so you don't have too?

People have moral/social obligations to other people. You want to shift that obligation away from people and onto corporations.

Are you oblivious to the fact that those with the means to help are the same people that offer low wages?

[Whateverist]

I'm going to go with .. because the rest of us shouldn't have to subsidize the workers of cheapskate business owners who expect us to make their business plan work.

Isn't this another way of saying your too cheap to help your fellow man so you want to mandate that employers pay a wage high enough so you don't have too?

People have moral/social obligations to other people. You want to shift that obligation away from people and onto corporations.

No disrespect intended but are you .. slow?

Are business owners somehow exempt from moral/social obligations to other people? Aren't business owners people too and therefore subject to the same moral/social obligations as other people? By offering a non-living wage while using up their available working hours business owners are keeping their workers impoverished and in need of social services to survive. It is fitting to address through legislation whether that is a fair business practice.

If you have developmental issues and are really doing the best you can I don't mean to insult you. Otherwise, I do.

[coldwx]

In hunting gathering times, you either made your nut or you died. The state was invented to help individuals make their nut, not legislate someone else help individuals make their nut.

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Sorry, I just find this sentence humorous. Legislating people making their nut and everything. Carry on.

[Bad Writer]

Sure. Employers have no moral obligation to pay their workers what they need to survive. However, those employers had better be prepared when people recognize them for the scumbags that they are. So, yes, they can choose immorality if it pleases them.

[LostLocke]

In hunting gathering times, you either made your nut or you died. The state was invented to help individuals make their nut, not legislate someone else help individuals make their nut.

So, if from this point forward, all private business decided they were going to pay their employees $1 an hour for their work, that would be ok?
If not, why not?
I mean, the business is just providing the nut.

[Deepthought]

I'm not interested in discussing if minimum wage is good or bad. This is a much more narrow question. In my youth I used to believe that employers had a moral obligation to pay their employees a living wage. As I have aged...I have abandoned that belief because I could find no compelling reason why it should be so.

So what are the compelling reasons an employer should be obligated to provide all the means of living(the cash equivalent of such in our society) for an employee?

If employers don't pay a living wage, the employee will need to do two or more jobs to makes ends meet. This is not conducive to to the quality of work the employee provides because of tiredness and stress. Also pay rates have to attract talented and efficient employees. The car assembly line workers were paid very good wages not because the work was difficult/demanding - it was because it was boring and repetitive. To retain staff they had to be paid handsomely.

By the way, I strongly object and resent being obliged to pay tips at (particularly American) restaurants. Why should I blood subsidise the employees because the employer is a cheapskate? The employees should demand/agitate for better wages as many employees in other industries have. I will tip only when the standard of service is above and beyond the standard. I'm not expected to tip my child's teacher or the postman, so what makes waiters/waitresses so blooming special?

[Rampant.A.I.]

I noticed Rampant, that you've de-evolved back to employing internet memes instead of good arguments(not that your arguments were ever any good....but you were trying at least).

I've never read Ayn Rand.

Apparently you're willfully ignorant with any of the problems of laissez-faire capitalism as well, and want the government to come in and subsidize the low wages caused by it.

If you're going to mentally drop your pants in the thread and defecate a post on the rug, expect ridicule.

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Why should anybody be forced to provide anything for anyone? This includes businesses, governments, and private individuals.

Don't you remember signing the social contract the left concocted to turn their world view into your obligations?

By your own "logic" that includes the private individuals being forced to provide wage subsidies with their tax money, or the government which must pay the gap in income private businesses deign not to, to increase their profit margin, never mind the destitution of their employees without government subsidy.

Look at the responses in the thread, look at your posts, which show you support the same things you purport to be against, and see if you can figure out why.

[Heywood]

Our system is broken. The expectation that people should work full time and not be able to afford basic shelter, clothing, food and healthcare is morally repugnant. This is a societal problem that our current mixed market doesn't address. I'll state right now that a short term solution I support is to enact legislation to grant a basic income to all citizens. This income is earned by our collective productivity and should be shared to provide basic life sustaining necessities for all citizens. Let me be clear about something; some will call this wealth redistribution which can only be done by ignoring the fact that our economic system is expressly set up to concentrate wealth where it should be set up to adequately share resources. As I respond to some of the themes in this thread keep in mind that my egalitarian nature stops once basic needs are fulfilled. Some people will have more than others. Sometimes this is earned, often times it is not (think Justin Bieber).

I was going to continue here, but think I'll go back and quote previous comments.

I agree about wealth distribution from the state(which is a huge ideological change for me). Not sure if it should come in the form of a Universal Basic income or a Negative income tax. I'm planning on doing a thread about it soon. Figured I would do a thread about living wage first to see if there is something about it I am missing.

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If employers don't pay a living wage, the employee will need to do two or more jobs to makes ends meet. This is not conducive to to the quality of work the employee provides because of tiredness and stress. Also pay rates have to attract talented and efficient employees. The car assembly line workers were paid very good wages not because the work was difficult/demanding - it was because it was boring and repetitive. To retain staff they had to be paid handsomely.

The natural state of homosapiens is to work until their nut is made. Its not the employers responsibility to lift man from their natural state any more than it is the streams responsibility to provide enough salmon. If it is anyone's responsibility it is the states.

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So, if from this point forward, all private business decided they were going to pay their employees $1 an hour for their work, that would be ok?
If not, why not?
I mean, the business is just providing the nut.

Business would not do that(unless their was some massive deflation). The couldn't attract enough employees.

[Chas]

I agree about wealth distribution from the state(which is a huge ideological change for me). Not sure if it should come in the form of a Universal Basic income or a Negative income tax. I'm planning on doing a thread about it soon. Figured I would do a thread about living wage first to see if there is something about it I am missing.

Yes, what you are missing is the social responsibility of business owners and the immorality of our taxes going into their pockets.

The most efficient means of the wealth redistribution is the direct one - require businesses to pay a living wage. Cut out the middleman.