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

[Heywood]

Any business contract between two parties should have an equitable outcome for both parties. Otherwise it is viewed as theft or fraud on the part of one of the parties to the contract.

And the relationship between the employer and the employee is a business contract.
Therefore, if the employee isn't getting fair remuneration for his efforts then his employer is stealing from him.

Do you understand that?
Or should I redo it in crayon for you?

People are generally very good at determining the fair value of something. You would have me believe that somehow, when it comes to labor...people become very stupid and need the government to negotiate for them. I just don't accept that.......people are pretty good at exchanges.

Further, your argument....isn't an argument. It is an opinion that fair value for labor must equal the laborers needs. There is no reason to think this is true other than that is the way you want to world to be. Sorry, but your world view doesn't make for a compelling argument.

I'm afraid you have failed(but I am sure you are used to that).

[MindForgedManacle]

This is just the problem. People like Heywood want (or heavily imply) they want some unfettered capitalist system, especially with regards to labor, and claim they're being consistent in doing so. The problem is that this would basically be a Darwinian enterprise, and that is morally repugnant. This would REQUIRE the inescapable death and suffering of the many to give the few a life of prosperity, with almost no social mobility from the bottom to the top.

And I always find it surprising when Christians are libertarians, given how antithetical it is to Jesus' teachings and actions, which at bottom are the giving of a handout (salvation) from the ultimate authority.

[Jackalope]

You would have me believe that somehow, when it comes to labor...people become very stupid and need the government to negotiate for them. I just don't accept that.......people are pretty good at exchanges.

That isn't the situation at all - the issue is not one of stupidity - it is one of equity and an imbalance of power. Businesses have a large pool of potential employees to draw from, the pool of employees have a much, much smaller pool of employers to chose from, assuming that they have a choice to begin with.

Do you seriously think that outside the very skilled labor market that potential employees have any where near the negotiating power of employers? The employer-employee relationship is by it's very nature an inequitable one.

[KUSA]

Does anyone here own a small business and if so what do you pay your employees?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Any business contract between two parties should have an equitable outcome for both parties. Otherwise it is viewed as theft or fraud on the part of one of the parties to the contract.

And the relationship between the employer and the employee is a business contract.
Therefore, if the employee isn't getting fair remuneration for his efforts then his employer is stealing from him.

Do you understand that?
Or should I redo it in crayon for you?

People are generally very good at determining the fair value of something.

Irresolvable claim in its current context.

Define 'value'.

Also, a lot of people from a multitude of castes and economic/social backgrounds would have difficulty defining value, economically speaking (which I will presume in this instance) of a multitude of 'things' when confronted with them. How do I define the economic worth of a single cancer research PhD student based on the fact she has had no immediate success in finding a cure for a given form of cancer? Do I then cast the net wider and include all possible future research outcomes? All I have in a snapshot is money sunk into a research grant and nothing to show except personal gain for the researcher (in a PhD). I admit this is simplistic

However, I think its much more complex than you appear to imply.

[Mister Agenda]

Does anyone here own a small business and if so what do you pay your employees?

I don't own a business, but I run a department of mostly entry-level employees. The least any of my associates is making right now is 9.30 an hour; the most is 12.92 an hour. I make around twice as much as my highest-paid associate.

---

People are generally very good at determining the fair value of something. You would have me believe that somehow, when it comes to labor...people become very stupid and need the government to negotiate for them. I just don't accept that.......people are pretty good at exchanges.

In aggregate perhaps, but individuals getting cheated is common enough. One of my concerns with altering wages by fiat is that prices are signals, and changing the signal reduces its value as a source of information. Labor prices tell us how much different kinds of work are valued by employers, which is a good thing to know when getting education and training,

I don't think there's aggregate information on productivity increases for minimum wage jobs, but in low-service food provision, the minimum wage has been rising much faster than the productivity of their low-wage workers. Improving productivity in these jobs could make them more valuable to employers and justify higher pay.

Some people on this thread have been very straightforward about thinking that a business that really can't afford to pay low skill workers what they think they should be making should go out of business...I've been a low-skilled minimum wage earner, and it would not have been my preference to get a nice raise but lose my job becasue my employer went out of business. Just sayin'.

[Ryantology]

Employers owe their workers a living wage because those employees are the only reason they have one.

I can certainly think of cases where they won't have one if they pay all their workers, say, 12 bucks an hour. Some jobs aren't worth $12 an hour. There's a simple formula: if it costs more to employ someone than their labor generates for you, there's no reason to employ them, except charity.

Say I run a car wash. I pay most of my people 8.25 an hour. After payroll, I'm making about two dollars per person per hour. The minimum wage goes to 10.10 an hour. Now I'm making 15 cents per person per hour. I either have to increase my prices to maintain my income (about thirty dollars an hour if I employ 15 people on average). automate, or go out of business because I can't live on 2.25 an hour. The best case scenario for my employees is the one where I raise prices, provided my customers don't very reasonably start going to a cheaper automated car wash.

The most likely outcome is I automate or go out of business after variable amounts of struggle. Are the people I employed, mostly high school dropouts, made better off by the wage hike? They weren't paid well, but at least they were getting work experience and learning important job skills that most of us take for granted but many HS droputs lack, like showing up on time and putting in effort.

All this tells me is that we have an employer who lacks the innovation and ethic to actually work to make his business generate more profit, so he simply underpays his employees so that he can maintain his own lifestyle at their expense.

I don't buy this argument that an employer is entitled to a certain level of pay when the employees are not. You pay your expenses before you pay yourself. You don't get a pass buying equipment and supplies. You don't get a pass on your bills. Why do you get a pass on your labor? If you can't afford to pay your workers, you can't afford to pay yourself, or operate a business, and you should probably step down and let someone better take over.

Apparently it is not enough for employers to pay for the labor they get...they must pay for the people themselves. It doesn't matter if Joey's work is only worth 7 dollars an hour to the employer, Joey deserves 10 dollars an hour just for being a human being. Why should the difference between what Joey's work is worth and what Joey is worth fall solely on employers?

It is not enough for employers to pay for the equipment they get; they must also pay for the maintenance themselves.

An employer can simply mark up the value of their products to make up for a deficit in income, and in many cases can spread that markup so thinly that few even notice the difference (like, Papa Johns deciding to mark up their pizzas by 4 cents, or whatever, rather than cut hours and lay people off, when the ACA came into effect). Employees have little or no power to mark up the value of their work to make up for an income deficit.

[LastPoet]

The OP on this thread never worked a day on his life.

[Zen Badger]

Any business contract between two parties should have an equitable outcome for both parties. Otherwise it is viewed as theft or fraud on the part of one of the parties to the contract.

And the relationship between the employer and the employee is a business contract.
Therefore, if the employee isn't getting fair remuneration for his efforts then his employer is stealing from him.

Do you understand that?
Or should I redo it in crayon for you?

People are generally very good at determining the fair value of something. You would have me believe that somehow, when it comes to labor...people become very stupid and need the government to negotiate for them. I just don't accept that.......people are pretty good at exchanges.

Further, your argument....isn't an argument. It is an opinion that fair value for labor must equal the laborers needs. There is no reason to think this is true other than that is the way you want to world to be. Sorry, but your world view doesn't make for a compelling argument.

I'm afraid you have failed(but I am sure you are used to that).

So why work if you are not going to be better off financially for the effort expended?

Or do you think that the peasants should work 12 hours a day for crumbs and be pathetically grateful for the "largess" of their owner...sorry....employer.

But then again the bible endorses and encourages slavery so you're probably all for it.

[Ben Davis]

How do I define the economic worth of a single cancer research PhD student...
However, I think its much more complex than you appear to imply.

As a business analyst, I can tell you that calculating future/lifetime value on human resource investment is both difficult and complex however it's a necessary component of the Cost/Benefit analysis for any decent strategic investment plan.