I get food stamps, and I’m not ashamed — I’m angry

[Bomb#20]

Why should businesses be able to get away with paying below a living wage?

Good question.

Maybe eventually someone will answer it with an answer and not questions designed to avoid it.

Why should businesses be required to pay a living wage? I think the onus here is on those of you demanding they must.

So you also have no answer.

Apparently it is you who have no answer.

Wrong. Ksen asked the question first. Instead of an answer, he got more questions. Asking questions in response to a question is not answering the question. And you have yet make a declarative statement on the query at hand. Let's try it again.

Why should businesses be able to get away with paying below a living wage?

You demand something and give no justification for it. And then you say it is I who have no answer. And that after I have given an answer in a previous post.

I demand nothing. If you had no answer, you could have posted nothing. You chose to engage, just not with the actually question asked, Must be a scary question.

It's not a scary question. It's a rhetorical question. You are play-acting at being a persistent questioner faced with persistent evasion. But in fact neither ksen nor you is actually trying to get a serious answer to a serious question. At least ksen is up front about it -- he came right out and said his preferred policy shouldn't be up for argument. His notion of a civilized society is evidently the same as Fred Phelps's: a theocracy where everybody has to live according to his religion's groundless beliefs. You, on the other hand, are disguising your choice to engage in preaching rather than discussion with "Have you stopped beating your wife?" rhetoric.

Your question assumes facts not in evidence. There can be no answer to "Why should businesses be able to get away with paying below a living wage?" because "get away with" by definition refers to something one shouldn't get to do. The whole point of including that in the question is to put your desired conclusion in as a presupposition. Further, calling what you want "a living wage" even though you know full well that people do in point of fact manage to stay alive on the current minimum wage, just not as well as you wish they would, is an additional attempt to short-circuit the discussion and prejudge the conclusion. If Fred Phelps asked you "Why should homosexuals be able to get away with performing unnatural acts on one another?", would you take that as a serious request for explanation and discussion?

At this point you could come back with a straight question, and say " Fine! Why should businesses be allowed to pay below $X?", where X=15 or whatever other wage you label "living". But instead, you're probably planning to respond to this either not at all or with "So you also have no answer." And that might even hand you the content-free rhetorical victory you appear to be seeking, in the eyes of whatever gallery you're playing to.

So to forestall that, here's a straight answer to the straight question you probably won't ask. Businesses should be allowed to pay below $15 because businesses are composed of people, and people should be allowed to pay below $15, and people don't automatically lose their rights just because somebody categorizes them as "a business".

People should be allowed to pay below $15 for exactly the same reason that homosexuals should be allowed to have sex with one another: because people should be allowed to do anything they want that isn't immoral and isn't likely to hurt anyone, because freedom is a good thing and imposing arbitrary restrictions on a person at the behest of somebody else's religious dogma is a bad thing.

Paying below $15 isn't immoral because actions, like people, are innocent until proven guilty, and in all the endless discussions of this topic here, nobody has yet exhibited any actual reason to think it's immoral to pay below $15. Just as with sodomy, all anybody has offered in support of the theory that it's immoral are logic errors and religious dogma.

Paying below $15 isn't likely to hurt anyone because "hurt" is measured relative to doing nothing, not relative to doing whatever arbitrary different thing you pull out of your ass. A person is better off if you pay him $15 than if you pay him $0; therefore it isn't hurting him.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Why should businesses be able to get away with paying below a living wage?

Good question.

Maybe eventually someone will answer it with an answer and not questions designed to avoid it.

Why should businesses be required to pay a living wage? I think the onus here is on those of you demanding they must.

So you also have no answer.

Apparently it is you who have no answer.

Wrong. Ksen asked the question first. Instead of an answer, he got more questions. Asking questions in response to a question is not answering the question. And you have yet make a declarative statement on the query at hand. Let's try it again.

Why should businesses be able to get away with paying below a living wage?

You demand something and give no justification for it. And then you say it is I who have no answer. And that after I have given an answer in a previous post.

I demand nothing. If you had no answer, you could have posted nothing. You chose to engage, just not with the actually question asked, Must be a scary question.

It's not a scary question. It's a rhetorical question. You are play-acting at being a persistent questioner faced with persistent evasion. But in fact neither ksen nor you is actually trying to get a serious answer to a serious question. At least ksen is up front about it -- he came right out and said his preferred policy shouldn't be up for argument. His notion of a civilized society is evidently the same as Fred Phelps's: a theocracy where everybody has to live according to his religion's groundless beliefs. You, on the other hand, are disguising your choice to engage in preaching rather than discussion with "Have you stopped beating your wife?" rhetoric.

Your question assumes facts not in evidence. There can be no answer to "Why should businesses be able to get away with paying below a living wage?" because "get away with" by definition refers to something one shouldn't get to do. The whole point of including that in the question is to put your desired conclusion in as a presupposition. Further, calling what you want "a living wage" even though you know full well that people do in point of fact manage to stay alive on the current minimum wage, just not as well as you wish they would, is an additional attempt to short-circuit the discussion and prejudge the conclusion. If Fred Phelps asked you "Why should homosexuals be able to get away with performing unnatural acts on one another?", would you take that as a serious request for explanation and discussion?

At this point you could come back with a straight question, and say " Fine! Why should businesses be allowed to pay below $X?", where X=15 or whatever other wage you label "living". But instead, you're probably planning to respond to this either not at all or with "So you also have no answer." And that might even hand you the content-free rhetorical victory you appear to be seeking, in the eyes of whatever gallery you're playing to.

So to forestall that, here's a straight answer to the straight question you probably won't ask.

Well since I probably won't ask it, There is probably no reason to read its answer.

 

[laughing dog]

Paying below $15 isn't likely to hurt anyone because "hurt" is measured relative to doing nothing, not relative to doing whatever arbitrary different thing you pull out of your ass.

What? When someone is gets by a hammer it hurts. There is no measuring relative to doing nothing - there is actual pain. Paying someone less than $15 may cause them economic or physical pain.

A person is better off if you pay him $15 than if you pay him $0; therefore it isn't hurting him.

By that reasoning, a person is better off if you pay him nothing rather than paying him with a bullet to the head, therefore being paid $0 isn't hurting him.

Sorry, but your argument is ill-conceived.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Paying someone less than $15 may cause them economic or physical pain.

Only if you presuppose that they have some right to the job and you have some responsibility to hire them and to pay them more than $15. Why would you presume that?

 

[Bomb#20]

What? When someone is gets by a hammer it hurts. There is no measuring relative to doing nothing - there is actual pain.

Yes. It hurts more than not getting hit with a hammer.

Paying someone less than $15 may cause them economic or physical pain.

You paid me less than $15. My eyelid hurts. Therefore you caused me physical pain. Is that your reasoning?

For X to cause Y, it's not enough that X and Y both occur; it also has to be the case that Y would not have occurred if X had not occurred. Who got paid $15 and experienced economic or physical pain, who would not have experienced that pain if the payment of $15 had not occurred?

A person is better off if you pay him $15 than if you pay him $0; therefore it isn't hurting him.

By that reasoning, a person is better off if you pay him nothing rather than paying him with a bullet to the head, therefore being paid $0 isn't hurting him.

Sorry, but your argument is ill-conceived.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. What's a bullet to the head got to do with anything? I said comparing a payment with something you pull out of your ass is not a valid measurement of hurt, and you try to disprove me by pulling something out of your ass?!?

This is very simple. Paying someone $0 is not hurting him. We can tell, because he's no worse off than if you paid him $0. Do you think I'm wrong? You paid me $0. Are you contending that you hurt me?

 

[SimpleDon]

We seem to be going around in the same circles reciting the same arguments over and over.

Here is my reasoning on the subject. I would appreciate if everyone could tell me the steps in the chain that you disagree with and a brief explanation of why.

1. In capitalism businesses are forced into competition with other businesses.
2. It is this competition that forces prices down benefiting their customers.
3. It is competition that forces businesses into constantly trying to lower their costs of production.
4. Labor is a cost of production.
5. Profits are also a cost of production, a reward for the risk of investment.
6. If one competitor achieves a cost savings all of his competitors are usually forced to follow suit or to lose business and profits.
7. The capitalistic economy is the way that we distribute the substance and the rewards to members of our society.
8. For the vast majority of the population this is done by paying wages for work.
9. Paying wages for work is the best way to distribute resources to the members of society.
11. Since wages are a cost of production competition pressures will force businesses to reduce labor costs.
12. This is true of even the most paternalistic companies with the best intentions.
13. The competition for labor helps to balance the competitive pressures to lower labor costs and wages.
14. The competition for labor is greatest when the economy is operating at full capacity.
15. Full employment isn't the same as low unemployment.
16. Full employment means that everyone who needs or wants a job has one.
17. At full employment employers would be at a disadvantage and wages would be too high.
18. There is an inverse relationship between labor costs and profits.
19. If you believe that supply and demand sets prices this is true.
20. If you believe that businesses set prices to maximize profits, a more realistic view, it is also true.
21. Both are true because the producer can't change the price because of higher wage costs in the short or even in the middle term.
22. Producers make more profits at less than full employment when the competition for labor is less and they can force down wages.
23. Therefore they believe that their best profits are made in a sub-optimal economy.
24. Everyone else, the 99%, benefits more from a full employment economy.
25. The 1% have an outsized influence with the government and also with the economics that is taught and applied.
26. As a result the economy is run sub-optimally.
27. At any part of the business cycle the competition for labor is much less for the lowest paid unskilled workers.
28. External support for increased wages has to come from a third party, especially for the lowest part of the income distribution. .
29. This most often government but it can be unions.
30. But unions can't be effective without government support.
31. So finally government has to be involved.
32. To prevent low wages in down times and to prevent runaway wages in a full employment economy
33. There is a rich history of the government interceding in the economy to control and to direct it.
34. The extreme amount of income inequity that we currently suffer from is largely due to government policies intended to create income inequity.
35. Even if you believe that the current inequality is due to other factors there is no excuse to continue with government policies that make the inequality even worse.
36. We need a change in government's economic policies to increase the wages of the at least the lower 20%.

On another note, the Fed didn't raise interest rates again. They passed on raising interest rates for the last seven years. We are now in the untenable position of low interest rates, up against the effective demand limit, high profits, no wage growth, no productivity gains, and effectively zero inflation. In short, the Fed has no control over the economy. They can't do anything to influence it. The economy is going to slowly fall apart from here and there is nothing that the Fed can do about it.

Capitalism requires creative destruction in order to improve productivity. Our economy has made nearly every concession to the supply side, to the companies, that they have asked for. And conceding absolutely nothing to the demand side, to labor.

The economy allows companies to be lazy, they don't have to work hard enough for their profits.

I am not sure that many if any here will understand this. You have to understand effective demand. Most here discount demand, conflating it with desire. Effective demand is not just the desire to own something, you have to have the money in order to buy something, or at least the anticipation of making money in the future to pay back a loan.

Low effective demand limits the potential of the economy, making the economy behave as if the economy is at full utilization, but with the actual utilization being far from full. This means that there is no business investment to increase jobs.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

9. Paying wages for work is the best way to distribute resources to the members of society.

I would stop you there. What evidence do you have to support this assertion?

 

[fast]

Why should businesses be able to get away with paying below a living wage?

Businesses are under no obligation (moral, ethical, social) to ensure that employees are paid enough to live on. It's up to people themselves to figure out how they are going to make enough money to live in today's world, and one way they do that is by becoming employees of a company and being compensated for the work they do, but not every job commands sufficient compensation to do that.

In a world where we are seeking to satisfy the wants and needs of the consumers, there are insufficient resources to cover burdensome living wages.

There are some amazingly lazy, hard workers out there. That might sound like a contradiction, yet what I mean by that is while on the one hand, there are those that will bust their butt day in and day out and put forth a genuine effort to give it their all, they have a false expectation that compensation earned should cover or exceed their financial needs and are too lazy to put forth the other kind of effort that is needed. Let me put it another way. If you put in fifty hours a week helping to make your employer money and put in no hours beyond that to make a better life for yourself, then you are doing something right, but you're also doing something wrong.

The solution isn't to require employers to pay a living wage: that's a recipe for disaster, as it will needlessly put businesses out of business and employees out of work.

The very (and highly left) idea that the onus is on the business to meet the financial needs of its employees is grounded on (or at the core of) the same kind of mind set that gives rise to the feeling of entitlement that is running rampant in the minds of many. It's also what sustains the outrageous tipping culture we have.

Expectations are off the chart.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've put in well over 10 years in the workforce.

The payment I would receive would be grossly inadequate to replace my income, even with what my employer would pay in early retirement benefits at my current age.

Yeah, SSDI isn't enough for most people. I simply brought it up as a measure of how many would become disabled.

I honestly get your point but having lived the reality and having had friends go through a great deal of financial hardship while raising very young families, my observation is that you are grossly ignorant about the reality of these situations.

One of the biggest causes of poverty is having kids too young. Once you've made that mistake there usually isn't much of a way out.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

[*]Full employment means that everyone who needs or wants a job has one.
[*]At full employment employers would be at a disadvantage and wages would be too high.

Moving machinery with zero play doesn't work. The same thing happens to our economy--if there's no unemployment there's no play and the system doesn't work. There are two potential answers: Some people will be looking for a job or some jobs will go unfilled. The former can be addressed with unemployment insurance, the latter is a drag on the economy, not to mention leading to inflation so it doesn't persist anyway.

Thus in the real world you have a system where it takes a little bit to find a new job if something happens to yours.

[*]Producers make more profits at less than full employment when the competition for labor is less and they can force down wages.
[*]Therefore they believe that their best profits are made in a sub-optimal economy.
[*]Everyone else, the 99%, benefits more from a full employment economy.

No. Everyone gets hurt in a full employment economy because the competition for workers causes inflation until that's done enough damage to the economy to take it out of full employment. Thus it's better to hold things at the point just before the inflation starts.

 

[Bomb#20]

Equating a living wage = social support is a logical mistake, since a wage is earned with the work providing some self-satisfaction and self-worth while a person on social support may be viewed as some sort of parasite (that view frequently appears in threads like these) in the USA.

But a "living wage" forced through legislation is social support by definition. It is by making people pay others more than the market deems the work is worth.

It actually isn't. You can't make people pay others more than the market deems the work is worth unless you make people have employees they don't want, i.e., featherbedding. What increasing the minimum wage actually does is it makes the market deem the work to be worth more. You can see this pretty clearly if you draw it out on a supply & demand chart.

What keeps getting lost in these discussions is that a market will price goods and services based on marginal value; it doesn't price them based on absolute value. And marginal value varies with the quantity purchased, in accordance with the Law of Diminishing Returns. If you imagine operating a McDonald's all by yourself, you'd have a very tough time of it. Hire an employee and you can serve a lot more Big Macs and make a lot more money. Hire a second employee and your revenue goes up again, but it doesn't help as much as the first one helped -- the return on adding more of the input diminishes. Each employee you add helps less than the last. That's why your demand curve for labor -- the highest price per worker-hour you'd willingly pay for N worker-hours -- goes down as N goes up. The equilibrium price lands wherever on that curve the Nth worker increases your revenue and your labor expense by about the same amount.

So if somebody (typically either a government or a union) stops you from getting labor for the equilibrium price, but doesn't make you take on workers who cost you more than the extra work helps you, then your N will simply drop, down to whatever number of workers are few enough for the marginal value of the Nth worker to match the higher price. When you have fewer workers, the return on the labor input doesn't diminish as much; and when the Nth worker adds more to the employer's income, that makes the market value labor more. So the wage increase is achieved not by making the employer pay any worker more than that worker's work is worth to the employer, but by reducing the number of jobs.

So a minimum wage isn't social support. What it is is a de facto compulsory labor union. Like a labor union, it works by restricting supply. Like a labor union, it's a big win for the union members with jobs. Like a labor union, it's a big lose for the members without jobs.

 

[laughing dog]

Paying someone less than $15 may cause them economic or physical pain.

Only if you presuppose that they have some right to the job and you have some responsibility to hire them and to pay them more than $15. Why would you presume that?

I wouldn't presume that because your presupposition is untrue.

 

[laughing dog]

Yes. It hurts more than not getting hit with a hammer.

Ah, pedantry.

You paid me less than $15. My eyelid hurts. Therefore you caused me physical pain. Is that your reasoning?

No, that is something you pulled out of your ass.

For X to cause Y, it's not enough that X and Y both occur; it also has to be the case that Y would not have occurred if X had not occurred. Who got paid $15 and experienced economic or physical pain, who would not have experienced that pain if the payment of $15 had not occurred?

WTF are you babbling about?

Huh? That doesn't make any sense.

Of course it does.

What's a bullet to the head got to do with anything? I said comparing a payment with something you pull out of your ass is not a valid measurement of hurt, and you try to disprove me by pulling something out of your ass?!?

No, you pulled a nonsensical argument out of your ass.

This is very simple. Paying someone $0 is not hurting him. We can tell, because he's no worse off than if you paid him $0. Do you think I'm wrong? You paid me $0. Are you contending that you hurt me?

Being paid nothing for working is harming someone because they actually worked and got nothing in return. And before you start with more pedantry, a wage is paid for working.

 

[Bomb#20]

Paying someone less than $15 may cause them economic or physical pain.

You paid me less than $15. My eyelid hurts. Therefore you caused me physical pain. Is that your reasoning?

No, that is something you pulled out of your ass.

Yes, yes, by now we all must be well aware that you can beat any six-year-old on the planet at "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you." You claimed that paying somebody can cause them economic or physical pain, but you offered not the slightest hint at a physical mechanism by which the purported cause might bring about the purported effect; so I was sarcastically commenting on that.

For X to cause Y, it's not enough that X and Y both occur; it also has to be the case that Y would not have occurred if X had not occurred. Who got paid $15 and experienced economic or physical pain, who would not have experienced that pain if the payment of $15 had not occurred?

WTF are you babbling about?

You seriously couldn't follow that? You made a claim that one thing may cause another. So I'm pointing out the logical criterion for causality, and I'm challenging you to explain how your alleged case of causality satisfies that criterion. If I pay somebody $14 and he experiences pain, am I supposed to just take your word for it that my act caused his pain?

Huh? That doesn't make any sense.

Of course it does.

What's a bullet to the head got to do with anything? I said comparing a payment with something you pull out of your ass is not a valid measurement of hurt, and you try to disprove me by pulling something out of your ass?!?

No, you pulled a nonsensical argument out of your ass.

Tell it to a six-year-old. If you want to say something worth being read by an adult, explain what the bullet to the head has to do with anything. Explain how your response in

A person is better off if you pay him $15 than if you pay him $0; therefore it isn't hurting him.

By that reasoning, a person is better off if you pay him nothing rather than paying him with a bullet to the head, therefore being paid $0 isn't hurting him.

qualifies as "By that reasoning". The criterion I exhibited is to compare something with doing nothing. When the criterion you use is to compare something with shooting someone in the head, you're applying different reasoning.

This is very simple. Paying someone $0 is not hurting him. We can tell, because he's no worse off than if you paid him $0. Do you think I'm wrong? You paid me $0. Are you contending that you hurt me?

Being paid nothing for working is harming someone because they actually worked and got nothing in return. And before you start with more pedantry, a wage is paid for working.

People volunteer to work for $0 all the time. I cleaned out my invalid father-in-law's rain gutters. He didn't offer to pay me; I didn't ask him to. By what stretch of the imagination do you figure he hurt me?

 

[arkirk]

But a "living wage" forced through legislation is social support by definition. It is by making people pay others more than the market deems the work is worth.

It actually isn't. You can't make people pay others more than the market deems the work is worth unless you make people have employees they don't want, i.e., featherbedding. What increasing the minimum wage actually does is it makes the market deem the work to be worth more. You can see this pretty clearly if you draw it out on a supply & demand chart.

What keeps getting lost in these discussions is that a market will price goods and services based on marginal value; it doesn't price them based on absolute value. And marginal value varies with the quantity purchased, in accordance with the Law of Diminishing Returns. If you imagine operating a McDonald's all by yourself, you'd have a very tough time of it. Hire an employee and you can serve a lot more Big Macs and make a lot more money. Hire a second employee and your revenue goes up again, but it doesn't help as much as the first one helped -- the return on adding more of the input diminishes. Each employee you add helps less than the last. That's why your demand curve for labor -- the highest price per worker-hour you'd willingly pay for N worker-hours -- goes down as N goes up. The equilibrium price lands wherever on that curve the Nth worker increases your revenue and your labor expense by about the same amount.

So if somebody (typically either a government or a union) stops you from getting labor for the equilibrium price, but doesn't make you take on workers who cost you more than the extra work helps you, then your N will simply drop, down to whatever number of workers are few enough for the marginal value of the Nth worker to match the higher price. When you have fewer workers, the return on the labor input doesn't diminish as much; and when the Nth worker adds more to the employer's income, that makes the market value labor more. So the wage increase is achieved not by making the employer pay any worker more than that worker's work is worth to the employer, but by reducing the number of jobs.

So a minimum wage isn't social support. What it is is a de facto compulsory labor union. Like a labor union, it works by restricting supply. Like a labor union, it's a big win for the union members with jobs. Like a labor union, it's a big lose for the members without jobs.

In the end, the physical environment can only support a certain level of industrial activity. The strongest argument for a command economy is that we need to restrain our industrial effects on the world's ecosystems in order to survive. You can be as opinionated as hell about what you think a person should have to do to get paid and demand industrial output of him, but if that demand you make on him is multiplied by seven billion, can the earth sustain that? It is not so much a matter of supporting moochers because industry itself is a moocher in the physical environment.

From so many right wing posters here, I hear a rigid dictation that a man must do a certain amount of productive work to make a living wage, without any consideration for what following their advice would do to both the environment and the impacted portions of our society. We simply have to admit our destructive industrial potentials and the responsibilities such potentials burden all of society with.

 

[Bomb#20]

... So a minimum wage isn't social support. What it is is a de facto compulsory labor union. Like a labor union, it works by restricting supply. Like a labor union, it's a big win for the union members with jobs. Like a labor union, it's a big lose for the members without jobs.

In the end, the physical environment can only support a certain level of industrial activity.

Is there a reason you quoted my post in yours? They don't seem to have much of anything to do with each other.

The strongest argument for a command economy is that we need to restrain our industrial effects on the world's ecosystems in order to survive.

But that's no argument at all for a command economy. We've had a century of experience with command economies and their environmental records are just terrible. Eastern Europe was a lot more polluted than western Europe. The world's worst nuclear accident was in the USSR. Sure, theoretically a command economy could protect ecosystems better than a market economy, if the commanders of the economy decide to prioritize that. But they don't. They prioritize staying in power.

You can be as opinionated as hell about what you think a person should have to do to get paid and demand industrial output of him, but if that demand you make on him is multiplied by seven billion, can the earth sustain that?

What are you talking about? I didn't offer an opinion about what a person should have to do to get paid. I didn't demand industrial output from anyone. Those are things economy commanders do.

From so many right wing posters here, I hear a rigid dictation that a man must do a certain amount of productive work to make a living wage,

Quote one.

 

[Canard DuJour]

What keeps getting lost in these discussions is that a market will price goods and services based on marginal value; it doesn't price them based on absolute value. And marginal value varies with the quantity purchased, in accordance with the Law of Diminishing Returns. If you imagine operating a McDonald's all by yourself, you'd have a very tough time of it. Hire an employee and you can serve a lot more Big Macs and make a lot more money. Hire a second employee and your revenue goes up again, but it doesn't help as much as the first one helped -- the return on adding more of the input diminishes. Each employee you add helps less than the last. That's why your demand curve for labor -- the highest price per worker-hour you'd willingly pay for N worker-hours -- goes down as N goes up. The equilibrium price lands wherever on that curve the Nth worker increases your revenue and your labor expense by about the same amount.

I can't imagine operating a McDonalds all by myself at all and would need no fewer than n employees to meet local demand for burgers. The demand is determined by burger price offset against local wage levels, the going rate for employees is determined by the labour market, and the marginal value of the last employee I need is an irrelevant abstraction.

 

[angelo]

It actually isn't. You can't make people pay others more than the market deems the work is worth unless you make people have employees they don't want, i.e., featherbedding. What increasing the minimum wage actually does is it makes the market deem the work to be worth more. You can see this pretty clearly if you draw it out on a supply & demand chart.

What keeps getting lost in these discussions is that a market will price goods and services based on marginal value; it doesn't price them based on absolute value. And marginal value varies with the quantity purchased, in accordance with the Law of Diminishing Returns. If you imagine operating a McDonald's all by yourself, you'd have a very tough time of it. Hire an employee and you can serve a lot more Big Macs and make a lot more money. Hire a second employee and your revenue goes up again, but it doesn't help as much as the first one helped -- the return on adding more of the input diminishes. Each employee you add helps less than the last. That's why your demand curve for labor -- the highest price per worker-hour you'd willingly pay for N worker-hours -- goes down as N goes up. The equilibrium price lands wherever on that curve the Nth worker increases your revenue and your labor expense by about the same amount.

So if somebody (typically either a government or a union) stops you from getting labor for the equilibrium price, but doesn't make you take on workers who cost you more than the extra work helps you, then your N will simply drop, down to whatever number of workers are few enough for the marginal value of the Nth worker to match the higher price. When you have fewer workers, the return on the labor input doesn't diminish as much; and when the Nth worker adds more to the employer's income, that makes the market value labor more. So the wage increase is achieved not by making the employer pay any worker more than that worker's work is worth to the employer, but by reducing the number of jobs.

So a minimum wage isn't social support. What it is is a de facto compulsory labor union. Like a labor union, it works by restricting supply. Like a labor union, it's a big win for the union members with jobs. Like a labor union, it's a big lose for the members without jobs.

In the end, the physical environment can only support a certain level of industrial activity. The strongest argument for a command economy is that we need to restrain our industrial effects on the world's ecosystems in order to survive. You can be as opinionated as hell about what you think a person should have to do to get paid and demand industrial output of him, but if that demand you make on him is multiplied by seven billion, can the earth sustain that? It is not so much a matter of supporting moochers because industry itself is a moocher in the physical environment.

From so many right wing posters here, I hear a rigid dictation that a man must do a certain amount of productive work to make a living wage, without any consideration for what following their advice would do to both the environment and the impacted portions of our society. We simply have to admit our destructive industrial potentials and the responsibilities such potentials burden all of society with.

So we all go back and live in caves? Shun the industrial world because we may do harm to the environment. We must all return to our hunter gatherer days or we are all doomed!

 

[Canard DuJour]

Paying someone less than $15 may cause them economic or physical pain.

You paid me less than $15. My eyelid hurts. Therefore you caused me physical pain. Is that your reasoning?

Oh come off it!

More like : I'm paid so little I need two jobs, don't get home in time to help my kid with her homework and am tired and irritable in what little time I have with her mom/dad. You're not harming me so much as the rules we're playing by are. Other economies play by different rules to mutual benefit. Your preferring advantage over me is harm by your definition.

 

[Toni]

Yeah, SSDI isn't enough for most people. I simply brought it up as a measure of how many would become disabled.

I honestly get your point but having lived the reality and having had friends go through a great deal of financial hardship while raising very young families, my observation is that you are grossly ignorant about the reality of these situations.

One of the biggest causes of poverty is having kids too young. Once you've made that mistake there usually isn't much of a way out.

Few people would think that starting your family when you are in your 30's is 'too young.' My friends were all in their mid to late 30's when they lost their husbands. Neither had a child before age 30. All (husbands and wives) had finished college and were in professional careers. For women, starting a family much later than their 30's is not a good option.

What you are just not grasping is that people who are well educated, hard working professionals are usually devastated economically as well as emotionally, physically, etc. by the loss of a spouse. Especially if there are children and not a lot of (usually inherited) wealth to cushion things.

The former co-worker whose husband died in an accident was not 'too young' when she had kids, either. But working class, with no family support. One of the friends above had the support of her own family but not her husband's.

Other people who were economically devastated when they lost spouses: My grandparents. Who had married in their late 20s-early 30's during good economic times--and then the crash which hurt nearly everybody. For my grandparents, who were doing ok enough before the depression, things got far, far, far worse when they became widowed. During that oh, so golden time of no government interference that you worship. My grandparents worked hard until they were nearly 80 years old and physically unable to continue. So get off it, Loren.

It took my parents and aunts and uncles an entire generation to climb out of that black pit, economically.


Sure, my parents had kids young. If my parents had delayed parenthood by 8-10 years, they would have had children who were 8-10 years younger when my mother had her brain injury. So, kids in elementary school and a toddler. How would that have been better?