RE: Living wage
June 25, 2015 at 5:18 pm
(This post was last modified: June 25, 2015 at 5:31 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(June 25, 2015 at 1:24 pm)whateverist Wrote: If no consumer would want the service or product at the price resulting from every relavant business being required to pay a living wage, then the business should not exist. This would fuck both the employee and the business assuming neither was able to find a product whose production can support a living wage. We'd all be paying much more for fresh produce, that's for sure. But would every fast food restaurant truly go out of business without the ability to employ the desperate at a sub-living wage? I'd prefer to see that put to the test.I think you'd be surprised at how little the price of labor would affect the price of your food, all other things being equal. It costs roughly 3k USD worth of manual labor (and all other inputs, but labor is 90% of it easy) to produce 30K lbs of tomatoes ( a conservative yield estimate).
Our current system subsidizes the -opportunity cost- of the producer -specific to his equipment-, not his outlay in labor (or material). Many, many, many alternative model farms -already- pay their labor in excess of 15hr....and they're some of the most wildly profitable farms, acre for acre, in spite of this (or in part because...I'd argue).
In those instances where labor might break the back of the producer (say, corn) it is simply an indicator of the inefficiency of their business -and- production model (and quite possibly the inefficiency of their commodity as a staple).
Go price a combine, if you want to see why producers prefer to pay their laborers as little as possible. After having done that, recall that the combine sits...doing nothing (except accruing interest), for the vast majority of the year.
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