Living wage

[The Grand Nudger]

If everything works out nicely in 'halves' sure. No doubt it will be just like that, and the half who get nothing will be philosophical that at least the other half is getting more.

The half that gets nothing will get what the half that gets nothing -already- gets. Unemployment.

There's something objectionable about turning a profitable business into an unprofitable one that happens to rely on low-skilled labor into an unprofitable business with the stroke of a pen.

Really? More or less objectionable than a business that can be tanked simply by preventing employers from exploiting their employees, in your opinion?

Business viablilty is determined by competitive success in the marketplace, any business can be put under if you make enough laws to handicap it. You're like a guy who shoots a horse, then blames it for not finishing the race.

There are millions of people who don't have a high school diploma, don't have work experience, have a criminal record, a problematic work record, or have some other disadvantage that currently makes it difficult to find employment at $8 an hour. Most of those who do will be making more money a year later, either from a raise or because they've found a better job (they now have a little work experience on their resume'). But they will have an even harder time finding employment at $10 an hour. And it's not little businesses like car washes and corner groceries that are going to drive most of the unemployment among these folks; it's the choices made by employers not to create new positions that can be filled by them or replace vacated positions. Most businesses can adapt to higher wages. Most unskilled workers will have more trouble adapting to getting the skills that would justify employing them at those wages without a job.

Those millions of people -also- need a living wage.  

The community I volunteer in has enough trouble finding employment without being priced out of the labor market.

But it will be temporary. Thanks to inflation brought on by the wage hikes it won't be long before $15 an hour doesn't get you any more than $8 an hour used to, and all those folks will be as desireable for employment at $15 as they were at $8; but they still won't be any closer to being middle class than they were before. The work experience they missed in the meantime might have brought them closer to being middle class though.

Not -quite- the way it works, but sure, 15$ at a federal minimum could be worth relatively less than 15$ today.   No free lunches, and all that.

I just don't see subsidizing business interests for the sake of subsidizing business interests working out for us, past or present. It's all "competitive marketplace" - except that business is at the tit, while simultaneously leveraging our government to devalue a commodity they -all- require, labor. Not exactly my definition of competition. I get that some people think that it would be armageddon for business and profit, I just can't see how.

Using my example from earlier. Doubling wages paid to farm workers would mean that 30K lbs of tomatoes still only cost 6k USD to produce. Looks to me like there's quite a wide margin left....54k USD (doubled wages) vs 57k USD (current wages). If we payed farm workers -15$/hr-......theres still 42k USD left to fuck around with, all at 2$/lb. Even adjusting for increase in costs to producer -entirely-.......you're new minimum wage is going to buy you more tomatoes than the old minimum wage. It's certainly going to buy more than the 2.50$/hr average wage of immigrant labor (though, granted, that was illegal labor, legal labor was 6 dollars and change in the area I last managed tomatoes in - specialized workforce-). The price of tomatoes would have to go up -pretty high-...6x their current value....before it would even -break even- for those of us who are the worst off.

Six and change probably doesn't sound like a lot...but it is. The people who make that rate are extremely skilled - very quick, very gentle-. Most pickers make significantly less, but, due to the effect of outliers on averages..... Technically, if a picker falls below a certain amount you're required to pay him a minimum rate, the floor. Practically, you threaten to assign them to that floor right exclusively if they complain about a smaller piece rate payment (-this-, btw, entirely legal). They see other workers making more money than they do, it can be done, you have to get a good row (helps to be buddies /w the bossman) and so they genuinely -want- to be on the peice rate and absolutely will not complain about being payed a lesser amount than the floor. This is something that business can do(and this is only one example, from one type of business). This is it's toolkit, now, show me how Joe Citizen (or Migrant) competes /w that?