Seattle's Minimum Wage Hike
- Thread starter GasBandit
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figmentPez
Staff member
If a job takes 40+ hours a week to do, shouldn't someone be paid enough to live on that? Why is their effort not worth a living wage, just because it's deemed "menial" labor?
F.D.R. said “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”, “By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)
Seems pretty clear it's not "no one" who is arguing that wages paid to employees should be enough to have a decent life based on.
GasBandit
Staff member
FDR, king of the Keynesian ruination of the US, said that? Color me sarcastically unsurprised.
I said no one argues the possibility of actually maintaining a living based on what minimum wage currently is, you're misquoting me.
But to answer your initial question (with another question, and also pointing out I never said "menial"), why does an unimportant contribution, not worth a living wage, suddenly become so because of the amount of time spent doing it? Minimum wage is for temporary entry level stuff and kids' summer jobs. If you're doing something worth paying for, you get paid for it. Maybe work on increasing one's earning power and jobworthiness before starting a family?
@stienman has a long and storied history of asking questions that make us think about things more deeply. He often does this by presenting the other side of a story. I have noticed that he does not necessarily believe these statements to be true, to me it seems as though if someone says that A + 5 = B, he will then ask us to ponder whether or not it automatically should follow that B - 5 = A. Sometimes this will be something which is uncomfortable to contemplate.I find it disappointing that someone like stienman feels the need to simplify "my" point into something I didn't say. I wouldn't have commented on it if Charlie had done it, but I hold stienman to a higher standard. it's his own fault for being often on the "other" side of debates than where I'm at, but still managing to make sense.
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
If that's true, then why is the average age for a minimum wage earner 35?
Because it's not unimportant. A lot of tasks considered menial are actually quite important. If they weren't important enough to get someone to be in the position for hours on end, then the position wouldn't exist in the first place. By the very existence of the job, and the fact that the employee is hired to be there for a significant chunk of their time, shows that the job is important to that business. If they need that position filled, then they need to be paying the person a fair wage for their time. Doesn't matter if they're waiting tables, sitting at a security desk, answering phones, or whatever. If they're being asked to take enough of their day that they couldn't reasonably be expected to have another job just to live, then they deserve to be paid enough to live for the hours they're employed. If the work can be done in less time, then the business should hire them for fewer hours.
GasBandit
Staff member
Because we're in the slowest recovery on record for the worst economic downturn since the great depression, and the real unemployment rate is still at 13%, which means all that suffering rolls downhill, and raising the minimum wage in a situation of high unemployment certainly isn't going to help.
Again, I didn't say "menial." The fact of the matter is that if a job is only worth 7 dollars to a company to do, but the minimum wage is 15 dollars, that means half the people get hired to do it as would normally be, but are still expected to accomplish the same total amount of that work. And if any one of them has an unsatisfactory performance level, the other half of the people, the ones who didn't get hired, are waiting to pounce on that position. This creates an unfavorable situation for those who already have it hardest. People are not entitled to a wage, to a job, to much of anything other than life and liberty (and that second one is rapidly dwindling as we speak). No matter how much of "their time" it takes up. It is not, and should not be, up to others to provide an individual with a livelihood - it is up to the individual to leverage their skills and training to become desirable, and thus, enticed by higher compensation. And after, all, if I am entitled to $30,000 a year no matter my contribution, what motivation have I to contribute more than just enough to not get fired? Heck, in Texas, a single person can live fairly well on that.
figmentPez
Staff member
Well, you must live in some magical other world where businesses never take advantage of workers, there's never been such a thing as a company town, and people always have a choice of a better job if they just work hard enough. Since you don't live in the same world I do, I'm done with this discussion.
GasBandit
Staff member
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying the minimum wage hurts those it is supposed to help much more than it does the employer.
But if it helps, I'm right with you there on corporate welfare. Or was that Necronic.
Necronic
Staff member
People who think Keynes or Austrian/Mises system is a one size fits all (or none) system don't understand the Laffer curve or economics. Both have their time and place. Austrian economics is for times of prosperity, to accelerate the momentum of a good economy. Keynes is to artificially create momentum in times of economic need. It baffles me that this is so hard for people (including politicians) to understand.
But the real issue to me is the corporate wellfare that the low minimum wage requires. Regardless of what the minimum wage is, somoene pays the difference between that and a living wage. My "always low prices" are artificially held low by the welfare and foodstamp costs that eat up my paychecks. As a taxpayer I would rather see my wallmart/McDonalds prices increase to pay a living wage to their employees. It's a bullshit system. d
edit: I have a lot more to say about this and I don't think I can do it without pissing off pretty much everyone on this forum. Now, I've pissed most of you off at one point or another, but all at the same time? I dunno, gonna have to think about it before I pull that trigger.
ed2: Ah ok I took too long writing and then deleting stuff, GB responded on the corporate welfare. I would be curious what you would rather have happen then. Should these companies pay real wages or should the government subsidize Walmart? Or should we just let them starve?
But the real issue to me is the corporate wellfare that the low minimum wage requires. Regardless of what the minimum wage is, somoene pays the difference between that and a living wage. My "always low prices" are artificially held low by the welfare and foodstamp costs that eat up my paychecks. As a taxpayer I would rather see my wallmart/McDonalds prices increase to pay a living wage to their employees. It's a bullshit system. d
edit: I have a lot more to say about this and I don't think I can do it without pissing off pretty much everyone on this forum. Now, I've pissed most of you off at one point or another, but all at the same time? I dunno, gonna have to think about it before I pull that trigger.
ed2: Ah ok I took too long writing and then deleting stuff, GB responded on the corporate welfare. I would be curious what you would rather have happen then. Should these companies pay real wages or should the government subsidize Walmart? Or should we just let them starve?
GasBandit
Staff member
I don't think it is right that a company give substandard compensation based on the understanding that government will pick up the slack. I view this as a side effect of redistributory government policy. We saw it again in action recently - Obamacare goes live, companies drop health care coverage. As for what we do about it, that's a stickier wicket, isn't it? The genie's out of the proverbial bottle. It'd not be best to simply sour the milk by immediately eliminating the crutches they've come to take for granted - even assuming they would make the adjustments to their compensation to make up for what isn't there any more, it would undoubtably take time that the kind of people who live paycheck to paycheck couldn't afford to absorb. And you can't simply levy an additional tax on walmart to balance the equation, they'd just pass the expense on to their customers (and employees).
I'm sort of an unconventional libertarian in that I'm against both government AND business getting "too big." I view one critical, essential role of government is to make sure that competition is present in the marketplace, for in a free market it is competition which makes sure that the goods and services of highest quality are delivered for the lowest price, thus most benefitting the consumer. And really, what's good for Ma Bell is good for Sam Walton, isn't it? A lot of Walmart's leverage to do this sort of thing comes from their gravitas as what you might could even call an "ultranational" corporation. Their ability to absorb loss in one area by virtue of being everywhere else too gives them the ability to act in bad faith when it comes to employee relations and in competition - hence, their poorer compensation packages and their long-running tendency to put small, local stores out of business. I believe an argument could be made under the interstate commerce clause that Walmart is starting to encroach on monopolistic practices territory, at least to the same degree AT&T was. So break them up. I think if a way was found to do so, you'd see a lot of these other concerns would also find themselves getting fixed as competitive balance is restored.
So they're acting like Rockefeller, except instead of ruining competition one corner at a time, they're going one State at a time.
When I worked for Kodak, Wal*Mart came along and wanted to have us do their development. "We'll increase your business 20%." And they did. And then about 6 months later, they "negotiated" to have all of their business done first. "We account for 20% of your business, so we expect you to meet our demands or else we'll pull out."
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Imagine if the three+ walmarts in town had to compete with each other, instead of collude.
Well, we'd lose the benefits of economy of scale. Though I am not against the idea of each Wal*Mart being a franchisee instead of corporate arm.
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Not all the benefits of economy of scale. It wouldn't be necessary to make every single walmart an independent company... just break the whole mess into say, 5 companies. Give or take. And make it so that each company can't have more than 1 store within 100 miles of another.
figmentPez
Staff member
Why would you need to have the stores be 2 hours of driving apart? Do you know how impractical that would be for a large city like Houston? There are 11 Walmarts (and 8 Targets, numerous Krogers and HEBs, some of which have furniture sections) within Beltway 8, and that's just a 15 mile radius around the center of Houston. You expect 5 stores, all from different companies carrying different store brands, to serve what 11 stores do now... Plus all the other locations in the suburbs that would fall into the 100 mile radius around Houston?
I'm not sure you thought this one out.
GasBandit
Staff member
While I did pick it more or less arbitrarily, the underlying idea is to not let a geographic monopoly develop like the cable companies. The number of companies and the mile radius can be fiddled with - the point is it's not enough to break up WalMart, it the pieces have to compete with each other - for both customers AND workers. Thus, we're not reducing the number of "superstores" in Houston, just making them be run by different companies. If the prices/wages aren't good enough at Walmart, now you just go down the street to WalCoStore. And I'm not talking about a blanket legislation here - it wouldn't apply necessarily to all the other companies you mentioned. It's a specific, targeted action to break apart a force so dominating its market that it is toxic to competition and bad for both consumers and employees.
Imagine if the government had not broken up AT&T. You think they're bad now (and they are), but imagine how bad they'd be if Verizon, Sprint, etc all didn't exist. Or, conversely, as bad as Verizon is now, imagine how bad they'd be if they were permitted to buy AT&T, or if AT&T just went out of business, leaving the markets to be gobbled up by Verizon.
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figmentPez
Staff member
It would seem to me that the mile radius does the exact opposite, and only encourages each of the companies to stake out their own neighborhood, and not fight with the other stores. If they're limited to how many stores they can put in a city, then they're not going to try to compete, they're going to be like cable companies are now, where each services their own little domain, and they all work together to keep new competition from coming up to ruin their sweet deal.
GasBandit
Staff member
They can't, unless they agree to not build a store within 100 miles of each other as well as themselves - which already can't be done because there's 11 stores in Houston alone. But even if they started off by bulldozing all existing stores, it still opens up the market by creating a demand for another upstart company to swoop in and build a store to undercut the others. There'd be a lot of money to be made doing that, and opportunities like that don't go just left on the table.
That's why it's a 100 mile radius and not a 10 mile radius. It has to be big enough to create and maintain a demand for multiple stores in a single city, but yet small enough to not prevent a store from having a location in both Houston, and say, College Station. But as I said, one company alone can't satisfy the demands of all of Houston, and where there is demand, supply moves in to make money. Hence, more companies in the same market, and voila - competition. Keeps prices low, quality high, and makes employers at a disadvantage when negotiating with workers instead of being able to lock workers out and dictate terms.