Living wage

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'm sure it's easy to point to the success of 1 company acting of its own volition with its own circumstances. I don't think this proves raising minimum wages is unanimously great for business everywhere and anywhere.

Naturally not, but I don't think it's seriously debatable that paying a non-living wage is (long term) bad for everyone.
Boru

[Mister Agenda]

Would you agree that the wages should be set based on where you live as well?

That's a good point. What constitutes a living wage certainly varies depending on where you live. I'm in SC, it simply doesn't cost as much to get by here as it does in California or New York. There's significant variation in living costs between rural areas, suburbs, small towns, and cities too. I don't think it's too complex to vary the minimum by area. It could have a significant positive effect in drawing business to less prosperous areas, too.

[Mister Agenda]

Along with a new minimum wage we need a maximum wage for government employees.

This is anecdotal, but I have a friend whom I adore and am certain is a hard, productive worker. She's like an assistant undersecretary director or something in the current administration; and I'm also sure her work is important. But does she need to be making six figures? I'm not sure about that.

[Mister Agenda]

Thank you for the rational contribution, I appreciate it.

Thanks. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but it's nice that at least no one seems to think it was knee jerk or thoughtless.

[Mister Agenda]

NZ just kicked the minimum wage here to 14.75/hour (that's around $10US) and I haven't noticed any business owners jumping out of windows or cities burning to the ground.

Boru

Raised from 14.25 an hour, right? That's about a 2% increase, right? NZ has done it pretty well, a steady 2% increase every few years beats the USA method of letting it sit and trying to catch up when enough voters demand it. The unemployment rate may be a little higher than it would be if the minimum wage was a little lower, but in economics everything is a tradeoff.

In the USA we're talking about raising the minimum wage from under $8 an hour to around $15 an hour, almost double. And a lot of people want it right now (present company of sensible posters excepted), not only including but especially 'burger flipper jobs'. It's going to be hard to manage that kind of increase, even over five years, without significant negative economic fallout.

[Mister Agenda]

What all these conservative thinkers fail to adress is that someone is paying the bill in any case. If businesses don't pay living wages, society is basically subsidizing them, since you can't let people starve in the streets. So we have another case of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.

And in most cases we're not talking about the corner shop struggling to get along but about multinationals moving to countries and regions where working regulations are as low as possible.

Socializing the losses is something we may have to get used to. Businesses are run to make money, not as charities. They depend on efficiency to survive in a competitive environment. If a job isn't worth $12 an hour plus benefits and that's what has to be paid, that job just won't get done or at least the company will have a large incentive to find a way to automate it or ship it overseas. Of course, many jobs will turn out to still be worth doing here at higher wages, even if they're something almost anyone can do with a day of training, and those are identifiable as being the ones left after everything shakes out.

Massive unemployment the likes of which we've not seen before is a specter that doesn't quite haunt me, but it's a cause for concern. I'm an optimist and think it will turn out not to be as bad as all that, but I'm still not in a hurry to hasten increased automation. It's inevitable, but I'd prefer it to be more like a tide than a tidal wave.

In about half the cases we're talking about small businesses. They employ about half the people in the private sector. If the concern is what multinationals are doing in other countries, a living wage law here does not address that.

For the record, I've no strong objection to a living wage law that affects large corporations but not small companies, as long as it is implemented gradually.

[Mister Agenda]

It's no big feat for a company that is only paying 1% of its workforce under what's considered a living wage already to bring their minimum wage up. It can be a disaster for a company that pays 90% of its workerforce under that wage.

Of course if everyone were bringing up the price of labor, competition in the market place would be preserved.  If there were any products or service whose viability depended on an indentured working class, fuck em'.

By which you inevitably, if not intentionally, mean: fuck their employees. Let 'em be unemployed. They shouldn't have been so careless as to fail to get the skills that would have found them employment in a company not based on employing the under-educated, under-experienced, or over-incarcerated.

And an indentured working class would not be free to quit a low-paying job to go to a better-paying one as soon as they can find it. 'Indentured' means you can't quit because you're under a binding contract.

I've worked for minimum wage and I've been unemployed, and I assure you, I was not better off unemployed.

[Whateverist]

Of course if everyone were bringing up the price of labor, competition in the market place would be preserved.  If there were any products or service whose viability depended on an indentured working class, fuck em'.

By which you inevitably, if not intentionally, mean: fuck their employees. Let 'em be unemployed. They shouldn't have been so careless as to fail to get the skills that would have found them employment in a company not based on employing the under-educated, under-experienced, or over-incarcerated.

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.

And an indentured working class would not be free to quit a low-paying job to go to a better-paying one as soon as they can find it. 'Indentured' means you can't quit because you're under a binding contract.

I've worked for minimum wage and I've been unemployed, and I assure you, I was not better off unemployed.

There are similar expressions in popular use which are likewise not literal in meaning such as "wage slave". I'm not a fan of literalism.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

[The Grand Nudger]

-adding to the above, in case anyone ever wondered.  The current models of production aren't necessarrily the best models with regards -to- production..but, rather, the best models with regards to distribution, which is a separate endeavor engaged in by distinctly different organizations almost entirely devoted to profit with no other metrics upon which to judge it.  

Increasing the wage that producers are required to pay would would not reduce or remove any portion of their profits (they'd buy labor instead of combines at commensurate costs) but would cut out the distributive arm of the process which could no longer rely on the volume-in-time of product that a combine is capable of producing that human laborers simply are -not- no matter how many you clump together.  Even here their profits would only be diminished from the many billions into the great many millions.  

The current status of wage laws in this country is an issue of greed, no matter how you cut it.  If you find that the margins of your business are so tight that you can't afford to pay a wage greater than the minimum than I have to tell you, unequivocally and demonstrably, that you're bad at what you do....and should find a better way to leverage your assets.  Mcdonalds isn;'t toiling under the same problem that you are, they turn considerably more profit from an hour of labor than they pay out for that ;labor (plus all costs pursuant to their operation - and you can check this for yourself...just tell them you're interested in purchasing a franchise).  This is what happens when we let businesses charge people $2.50 for less than a dime worth of potatoes while simultaneously paying their employees only what is required to reduce their liability come time to get sued.

The people who sell this nonsense are trying to leverage our fear as a fucking commodity in service of those that they are, themselves, employed by. Your life is worth less to them than a fraction of a penny, which is what it would cost them to pay you a living wage.