What is minimally acceptable?

[Malintent]

On the topic of minimum wage, I am curious about people's thoughts on entitlement.

How many people is 1 minimum wage supposed to support?
What does it mean to be supported?

One person, living on 5th avenue, NY, with 1 car, 1 parking space, 1 cell phone, and healthy eating habits will spend a minimum of $1,000,000 PER MONTH on these "basic" provisions. 40 hours a week (yea, right), 160 hours per month... that's a required wage of $6,250 PER HOUR.. JUST TO SURVIVE... never mind improving one's self, handling emergencies, investing for retirement, etc..

One person, living in a cardboard box, with no car, no parking space, no phone, and minimal preferences for nourishment will spend as much as $0 per month on these "basic" provisions. 40 hours a week (well, of course), 160 hours per month... (carry the zero)... that's a required wage of $0 per hour... JUST TO SURVIVE... never mind improving one's self, handling emergencies, investing for retirement, etc..

A family of 8, living in an average home, with 2 cars, no parking expenses, 8 cell phones, and a fast-food-exclusive diet will spend at least $25,000 per month on these "basic" provisions. 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month.. that's a required wage of over $150 PER HOUR... JUST TO SURVIVE.. never mind improving one's self, handling emergencies, investing for retirement, etc..


Should minimum wage be $0, $150, or $6,250?? How can we tell?

What does "minimum" mean, with respect to wage?

In our Capitalist society, what economic status is "guaranteed"?

 

[fromderinside]

Well we, in US, have a written social contract. Leaders have professed that it is of, by, and for the people. It also states

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

So here we are with average citizen annual wage above $22 k. 67% of families are home owners, and minimum wage running from about $5.50 to $15 per hour depending where they are located it would seem minimum means wage and housing responsibilities for citizens for everyone. By the range of minimum wages it seems that food and housing are variable.

I'm on board with continuing that.

Argue ably we should be doing more since lower incomes lead to lower expectations and outcomes. Apparently we take "welfare" and "pursuit of happiness" with a grain of salt since we can't even get everybody covered for medical coverage.

I'm on board with that too.

For me minimum includes those elements in our social contract.

Unless we improve social outcomes there eventually will be no minimum since competition models, which we employ, provide for exclusion of some for the gain of many.

I'm an everybody's in kind of guy meaning I'm favoring a limited competition market model.

 

[Business]

It is difficult to say what is minimally acceptable, but to present a visual correlation you would likely presume that a young adult fresh out of school would be your typical minimum wage worker. So, how much money does an 18 year old need to keep him alive while he attends college?

 

[DBT]

A minimum wage rate should meet cost living expenditure, rent for a modest flat, food, clothing, a bit of entertainment, with something left over for savings and emergencies. A full time worker (38-40 hours per week) should not be living in poverty in a rich nation.

 

[untermensche]

In our Capitalist society, what economic status is "guaranteed"?

What a nauseating phrase.

It is not "our" capitalist society.

It is a society where we are forced to endure the immorality of modern capitalism.

Capitalism is an imposition. Nothing anybody ever voted on.

It is a system that is only a tiny step forward from feudalism and slavery.

A top down authoritarian system where the fewer and fewer haves live as larger and larger parasites off the labor of the every present have nots.

Nothing about the system is fair or just.

So trying to determine something like a "just" minimum wage is a difficult quest.

All the minimum wage represents is the idea that theft is inherent to the system. Not paying people in any relation to the value of their labor is inherent to the system.

A market wage is really just another way of saying the lowest possible wage in current circumstances.

Reliance on it is motivation to make and keep current circumstances as bad as possible for most.

 

[Malintent]

It is difficult to say what is minimally acceptable, but to present a visual correlation you would likely presume that a young adult fresh out of school would be your typical minimum wage worker. So, how much money does an 18 year old need to keep him alive while he attends college?

Is "keeping an 18 year old alive" the measure of a "fair wage"? $5 per day for 1 McDonalds meal deal and access to a dumpster to sleep in?

 

[Malintent]

A minimum wage rate should meet cost living expenditure, rent for a modest flat, food, clothing, a bit of entertainment, with something left over for savings and emergencies. A full time worker (38-40 hours per week) should not be living in poverty in a rich nation.

I agree. What is a modest flat, and who decides that? What is the minimally acceptable cost of food (better quality with better nutrition or lower quality full of chemicals)? What if they are supporting young children... too bad or do we pay for a kid too... or 2 kids... 5 kids?

To refocus the topic... we all agree a person should be able to "live" on minimum wage. The question is about whose idea of "living" are we going with... how many kids should that pay for and what kind of living conditions and financial freedom should we expect that to support?

 

[Malintent]

In our Capitalist society, what economic status is "guaranteed"?

What a nauseating phrase.

It is not "our" capitalist society.

It is a society where we are forced to endure the immorality of modern capitalism.

Capitalism is an imposition. Nothing anybody ever voted on.

It is a system that is only a tiny step forward from feudalism and slavery.

A top down authoritarian system where the fewer and fewer haves live as larger and larger parasites off the labor of the every present have nots.

Nothing about the system is fair or just.

So trying to determine something like a "just" minimum wage is a difficult quest.

All the minimum wage represents is the idea that theft is inherent to the system. Not paying people in any relation to the value of their labor is inherent to the system.

A market wage is really just another way of saying the lowest possible wage in current circumstances.

Reliance on it is motivation to make and keep current circumstances as bad as possible for most.

well, look at it this way, if you want... to be able to move from "pure capitalism", to a model more closely resembling socialism, or even just a modified capitalism with social guarantees (like this minimum "living wage" I am discussing with ya'll). Don't we need to figure out a fair and sustainable amount of resources that should be provisioned to each individual or family?

 

[bigfield]

A minimum wage rate should meet cost living expenditure, rent for a modest flat, food, clothing, a bit of entertainment, with something left over for savings and emergencies. A full time worker (38-40 hours per week) should not be living in poverty in a rich nation.

To express that more generally: the minimum wage should be enough to prevent destitution, at least in the absence of abnormal financial pressures such as drug and gambling addictions, unplanned debts etc.

The rubric will also change in the near future. The full-time workweek is slowly being made obsolete by automation: eventually people will need to live off of fewer working hours since they simply won't be able to get 38 hours of work. Not only will it be impossible to full a FT job but it will be difficult to get 38 hours in multiple part-time jobs due to saturation in a shrinking jobs market.

So while 38-40 hours a week is reasonable in 2017, it may cease to be in the near future.

 

[Malintent]

I appreciate all the participation. I would like to get to a methodology for a society to calculate what a fair wage is. "not destitution" is too subjective... "living" is also too subjective... what one person considers acceptable versus another person's expectations / demands.

GNP / Population = living annual wage? A kind of national profit-sharing?

average price of a gallon of milk * 52 + interest rate * (average price of home)? A cost-of-living based approach?

number of years of experience needed for job * average cost of college education /100 ? A work effort based approach?

Obviously it wouldn't be something so simplistic (or stupid - I am no economist).

What does it mean to be fair, when it comes to deciding what a person's work effort is worth and how it should be compensated?

 

[fromderinside]

OK I have a mechanism;  Decision Theory. Its well formed and it makes verifiable predictions given the presumptions of unknowns are sound. However, so far anyone in the economic realm who has used it has twisted those beyond recognition - not that correcting that would make everything all warm and cuddly again -I suspect the same would be here too since what you ask is personal and subjective, in other words unpredictable..

Unfortunately:

A general criticism of decision theory based on a fixed universe of possibilities is that it considers the "known unknowns", not the "unknown unknowns": it focuses on expected variations, not on unforeseen events, which some argue (as in black swan theory) have outsized impact and must be considered – significant events may be "outside model". This line of argument, called the ludic fallacy, is that there are inevitable imperfections in modeling the real world by particular models, and that unquestioning reliance on models blinds one to their limits.

So even if we proposed living wage that was strongly tied to existing metrics with good future predictive structure it would ultimately become another case of the butterfly effect causing havoc somewhere else. Remember, multiple well defined linear variables combined lead to chaos.

 

[Malintent]

Are you saying that a methodology is unknowable? There already exists a thing called the minimum wage, and it is in use today. I am looking for opinions on a methodology for calculating if that existing value is too high or too low or just right... and what that corrected value might be.

Let's back up and start from the beginning.

Should there be a minimum wage, or should companies be able to offer whatever they want, or nothing, for work? Consider monopolies and what that would do to their workforce.

If there should be a minimum wage, should it be universally global, national, or regional? should geography be a factor? what about population density versus available labor force?

for whatever scope a minimum wage applies, how does one calculate (or justify) the amount? What should it be generally based upon? That is, what ARE the variables that should be considered?

 

[fromderinside]

No. I'm saying no one methodology is workable.

Scenario: People shouldn't have to starve. OK. We'll feed them or give them money so they can eat. Yeah, but some will just not work so they can get money. OK we'll add a Work requirement Yeah, but some don't work because they're disabled. OK we'll establish a welfare system that determines whether people are not working because they are incapable of so doing. OK, but some people object to being monitored just because they are poor. OK so we'll make the program voluntary. OK but some people don't volunteer no matter what their need. OK so we'll put those we find starving on the dole and help them get more useful. .......

Or we can determine what is a working wage .... see above for model for how this might wring out.

 

[untermensche]

What a nauseating phrase.

It is not "our" capitalist society.

It is a society where we are forced to endure the immorality of modern capitalism.

Capitalism is an imposition. Nothing anybody ever voted on.

It is a system that is only a tiny step forward from feudalism and slavery.

A top down authoritarian system where the fewer and fewer haves live as larger and larger parasites off the labor of the every present have nots.

Nothing about the system is fair or just.

So trying to determine something like a "just" minimum wage is a difficult quest.

All the minimum wage represents is the idea that theft is inherent to the system. Not paying people in any relation to the value of their labor is inherent to the system.

A market wage is really just another way of saying the lowest possible wage in current circumstances.

Reliance on it is motivation to make and keep current circumstances as bad as possible for most.

well, look at it this way, if you want... to be able to move from "pure capitalism", to a model more closely resembling socialism, or even just a modified capitalism with social guarantees (like this minimum "living wage" I am discussing with ya'll). Don't we need to figure out a fair and sustainable amount of resources that should be provisioned to each individual or family?

The solution is easy.

Implementing the solution is extremely difficult.

The solution is to move from a system where wages are determined by market forces to a system where wages are based on overall earnings of the company.

A move from top down control to horizontal democratic control.

This is not utopia, but it spreads wealth without force. At least no more force than presently exists to prevent outright slavery.

If there is immorality that is causing extreme harm, like top down dictatorial control in the workplace, then sane societies outlaw the immorality.

Then once you spread wealth as far as possible you need to have as strong a system of social services as possible.

These solutions are easy.

Getting present day humans raised in a different kind of system to instantly convert is impossible.

But with focus and education humans could move to such a system in a generation.

But people who cared about society would have to be running the government.

All we ever get are people that care about big business. Because they are hand selected and put there by big business.

 

[fromderinside]

Read my last post. Apply it's process to your plan. See the problem?

 

[untermensche]

Read my last post. Apply it's process to your plan. See the problem?

Basically you're saying that humans will behave the same no matter what system they are in.

I don't agree.

German's in general do not behave as Americans.

Humans are products of their environments and take on the norms of their environments.

In the US it is normal to blame the poor for their poverty.

In other societies the causes are addressed and people are helped not scapegoated.

 

[Bomb#20]

A minimum wage rate should meet cost living expenditure, rent for a modest flat, food, clothing, a bit of entertainment, with something left over for savings and emergencies. A full time worker (38-40 hours per week) should not be living in poverty in a rich nation.

I agree. What is a modest flat, and who decides that? What is the minimally acceptable cost of food (better quality with better nutrition or lower quality full of chemicals)? What if they are supporting young children... too bad or do we pay for a kid too... or 2 kids... 5 kids?

To refocus the topic... we all agree a person should be able to "live" on minimum wage. The question is about whose idea of "living" are we going with... how many kids should that pay for and what kind of living conditions and financial freedom should we expect that to support?

I appreciate all the participation. I would like to get to a methodology for a society to calculate what a fair wage is. "not destitution" is too subjective... "living" is also too subjective... what one person considers acceptable versus another person's expectations / demands.

GNP / Population = living annual wage? A kind of national profit-sharing?

average price of a gallon of milk * 52 + interest rate * (average price of home)? A cost-of-living based approach?

number of years of experience needed for job * average cost of college education /100 ? A work effort based approach?

Obviously it wouldn't be something so simplistic (or stupid - I am no economist).

What does it mean to be fair, when it comes to deciding what a person's work effort is worth and how it should be compensated?

You appear to be trying to decide what's fair based on guaranteeing some to-be-defined standard of living to an employee, some minimum increment an employer must improve an employee's quality of life by. Do you also want to try to be fair to employers? Is there any corresponding minimally acceptable amount for an employee to increase an employer's quality of life by? If so, what would you propose to do about people who don't have the ability to make an employer better off by that increment? Alternately, if what you're proposing is to have somebody employ a person even though having him as an employee doesn't do her any good, do you have any method in mind for motivating employers to hire employees they don't benefit from?

 

[Malintent]

You appear to be trying to decide what's fair based on guaranteeing some to-be-defined standard of living to an employee

yes. That is how I started us off

...some minimum increment an employer must improve an employee's quality of life by.

Yes, that is a valid aspect, IF increasing quality of life is a part of what we would like to call "minimally acceptable"

Do you also want to try to be fair to employers?

I suppose we would have to be... It's not the focus of this discussion, but an important aspect, I agree.

Is there any corresponding minimally acceptable amount for an employee to increase an employer's quality of life by?

Not in my opinion... if by "employer" you mean the business itself. That is more of a Performance Management issue between employer and employee. The "employer", as an individual manager or business owner, is identical to the worker (employee), in this respect, in my opinion.

If so, what would you propose to do about people who don't have the ability to make an employer better off by that increment?

well, not so, in my opinion, but if an employer is not benefiting from their employee, then they need to fire them and hire a "better" employee, or look more carefully at their business processes and increase efficiency.

Alternately, if what you're proposing is to have somebody employ a person even though having him as an employee doesn't do her any good, do you have any method in mind for motivating employers to hire employees they don't benefit from?

No, not at all the intent. this discussion is not about dictating how businesses should run, but about HOW one would assess a minimum wage as appropriate (and what "appropriate" in this context means.

Thank you.

 

[fromderinside]

Read my last post. Apply it's process to your plan. See the problem?

Basically you're saying that humans will behave the same no matter what system they are in.

I don't agree.

German's in general do not behave as Americans.

Humans are products of their environments and take on the norms of their environments.

In the US it is normal to blame the poor for their poverty.

In other societies the causes are addressed and people are helped not scapegoated.

Not at all. True, I am saying there is one system that covers all, but, that system is very flexible in it's elements. Better, what I just called system is a process. Processes are often environmentally adaptable. So much for German American, chines differences. What we're talking about here is finding some singular way to describe minimally acceptable re income or access to live sustaining material.

I took the problem in two steps. First is there a methodology that will get us there. That methodology is based on signal human behaviors like greed and difference. Then that method must accommodate different conditions which gets us to a suite of giving or support methods that makes life more than survival for every population in every environment.

Then I considered the effects of system longevity in any environment and came to the conclusion that the systems should be reconstructed perhaps every generation and we'd still have not arrived at even individual consensus leading to the conclusion there is no system that will accomplish the requirements of the OP.

 

[rousseau]

A minimum wage rate should meet cost living expenditure, rent for a modest flat, food, clothing, a bit of entertainment, with something left over for savings and emergencies. A full time worker (38-40 hours per week) should not be living in poverty in a rich nation.

Pretty much this.

When you create a nation state with a social contract that citizens are born into and have no choice but to be a part of, I would argue that you have a moral imperative to provide for all of them. Whether that actually happens in practice is something else entirely.

At that point you're basically arguing over what constitutes the poverty line. For instance, should people making minimum wage or on welfare be able to afford a family? Is having a family a natural right, or only basic sustenance?

At the end of the day these questions only matter insofar as there is a legal body to enforce the answers.