Minimum Wage: What's the Other Argument?

Because you're not renting a person in toto, you're renting a person to do a specific job, as defined in their terms and conditions, job description and so on. It's the job you're buying, not the person; the person is a means to completing the job. The specific job is the functional aspect of, well, a job. Person A says "I need these shelves stacked", person B says "yeah I'll do that if you pay me X", person A says "sure". No part of that involves exchanging actual human beings... At no point does person B get sold or rented to person A. I mean, in a renting situation, who exactly is the owner that the employer is renting from? If I rent a house, I rent from the person who owns the house. Who owns person B? Who is person A supposed to be renting person B from? Person B? Where is this even going?

I really don't understand how this analogy holds. It sounds like a bunch of words with no meaning to me. Sure you can claim we're all slaves and we sell our bodies to employers every day, and you might make some hay with that politically on your blog or zine or whatever, but I can't see that being a substantial, actual thing that's happening in real life.
 
When you've worked jobs that have a line in the description that reads: "Other duties as required," for example every admin assistant and most handymen: really, they're buying your time, social skills, and adaptability. If the task is simple and repetitive enough, there is now or soon will be, a machine/robot for that.
 
When you've worked jobs that have a line in the description that reads: "Other duties as required," for example every admin assistant and most handymen: really, they're buying your time, social skills, and adaptability.
Yeah, they are expecting that you'll use your time, social skills and adaptability to fulfil whatever other duties might be required for this particular job as handyman or admin assistant. In exchange for that, you get some money. I don't see how this involves person A buying or renting person B.

Honestly, this really sounds like when people say that you need to "sell yourself" on your CV, or when Tara Banks tells models to "smile with your eyes" on America's Next Top Model. It's just a poetic way of describing something, not a literal thing where you're actually selling yourself, or your eyes are literally growing a mouth and smiling at people.

If the task is simple and repetitive enough, there is now or soon will be, a machine/robot for that.
I've never argued against that, in fact I think this is probably desirable, especially in professions that are not particularly nice to work in. If this is a statement in support of another point, rather than a point on it's own, I don't see how it's connected. If that's the case then could you elaborate?
 
Yeah, they are expecting that you'll use your time, social skills and adaptability to fulfil whatever other duties might be required for this particular job as handyman or admin assistant. In exchange for that, you get some money. I don't see how this involves person A buying or renting person B.

In a lot of jobs it's not really that simple, though - it becomes far more 'be on hand all day and do what I tell you', especially when you're working in a small team. Your job description might be 'sales assistant', but you might also be the go-to cleaner up of spilt drinks, the person who fixes the manager's computer when it breaks, or asked to do any number of things as the need pops up. In which case you're certainly selling your time rather than any particular 'job' per se.
 
Because you're not renting a person in toto, you're renting a person to do a specific job, as defined in their terms and conditions, job description and so on. It's the job you're buying, not the person; the person is a means to completing the job. The specific job is the functional aspect of, well, a job. Person A says "I need these shelves stacked", person B says "yeah I'll do that if you pay me X", person A says "sure". No part of that involves exchanging actual human beings... At no point does person B get sold or rented to person A. I mean, in a renting situation, who exactly is the owner that the employer is renting from? If I rent a house, I rent from the person who owns the house. Who owns person B? Who is person A supposed to be renting person B from? Person B? Where is this even going?

Same can be said when you're renting any other tool. If I rent a bobcat to tear out my lawn. I'm renting the bobcat to perform that specific job. I'm still saying "I'm renting a bobcat". Doesn't change the fact that I think of the bobcat as the thing that I'm renting, even if it's for some specific purpose.
 
In a lot of jobs it's not really that simple, though - it becomes far more 'be on hand all day and do what I tell you', especially when you're working in a small team. Your job description might be 'sales assistant', but you might also be the go-to cleaner up of spilt drinks, the person who fixes the manager's computer when it breaks, or asked to do any number of things as the need pops up. In which case you're certainly selling your time rather than any particular 'job' per se.

Sure, but I still don't see how that entails person A buying or renting person B. Again, who is the owner of person B that person A is renting from?

In any case, you could in theory list out every single thing that you have ever done and ever will do as part of your job. Are any of those things, individually, a human being? Are all of those things, collectively, a human being? If not, then congratulations, you've separated a human being from the job that they do.
 
Same can be said when you're renting any other tool. If I rent a bobcat to tear out my lawn. I'm renting the bobcat to perform that specific job. I'm still saying "I'm renting a bobcat". Doesn't change the fact that I think of the bobcat as the thing that I'm renting, even if it's for some specific purpose.
I don't know what a bobcat is, but I assume it has an owner. Who owns person B? Who is person A renting person B from?
 
I've never argued against that, in fact I think this is probably desirable, especially in professions that are not particularly nice to work in. If this is a statement in support of another point, rather than a point on it's own, I don't see how it's connected. If that's the case then could you elaborate?

I guess I'm saying that if you need 34,000 seeds an acre planted 1 1/2 inches deep in 30 inch rows, you buy or rent a planter. If you need that planter moved you buy or rent a tractor. If you need that tractor driven precisely, you now or eventually will, drive that tractor with a GPS linked computer. Now, if you need erratic problem identification, erratic random maintenance to the equipment, assessment of soil conditions, an emergency correction driver to back up the GPS, and real time updates provided to you, contracted service providers, and your wife? Now what you need is an actual person. So you'll pay the hired man because what you need for those 8 to 16 hours is 8 to 16 hours of human attention. The adaptability is what makes the person necessary and is what makes my father value that time at about 15 dollars an hour.
 
I guess I'm saying that if you need 34,000 seeds an acre planted 1 1/2 inches deep in 30 inch rows, you buy or rent a planter. If you need that planter moved you buy or rent a tractor. If you need that tractor driven precisely, you now or eventually will, drive that tractor with a GPS linked computer. Now, if you need erratic problem identification, erratic random maintenance to the equipment, assessment of soil conditions, an emergency correction driver to back up the GPS, and real time updates provided to you, contracted service providers, and your wife? Now what you need is an actual person. So you'll pay the hired man because what you need for those 8 to 16 hours is 8 to 16 hours of human attention. The adaptability is what makes the person necessary and is what makes my father value that time at about 15 dollars an hour.
I don't disagree with any of that, but I don't see how that entails renting person B. I don't see how this constitutes the person being no more than the job that they do. I mean, that just seems like a really soulless way of viewing humanity in general...
 
I don't disagree with any of that, but I don't see how that entails renting person B. I don't see how this constitutes the person being no more than the job that they do. I mean, that just seems like a really soulless way of viewing humanity in general...

Well, obviously there are moral differences between being careless with a rented tool and careless with an employee. But from a cost/return? The backhoe and the hired man go through the same evaluation. Will it produce more value to me per hour than it will cost me? I mean, I might hire Harry because he's my friend and he needs 15 bucks an hour for a day, but that's really not a business decision at that point.
 
I don't disagree with any of that, but I don't see how that entails renting person B. I don't see how this constitutes the person being no more than the job that they do. I mean, that just seems like a really soulless way of viewing humanity in general...
Well, yeah, that's the point: capitalism is fundamentally inhumane. There's no way of filtering out the labour from the rest of the worker, so even if what you want is the labour, what you get is the whole person. The sale of labour independent of the sale of the body is a legal fiction, and while we might find it comforting, it doesn't describe the practical reality.
 
Well, yeah, that's the point: capitalism is fundamentally inhumane. There's no way of filtering out the labour from the rest of the worker, so even if what you want is the labour, what you get is the whole person. The sale of labour independent of the sale of the body is a legal fiction, and while we might find it comforting, it doesn't describe the practical reality.

There are degrees of completeness of of the hiring though. Mowing a lawn exchanges physical location and some degree of mental capacity, but leaves the employee much of their brain to think about whatever they want to think about. Thinning corn, which requires both physical location and counting at a high rate of speed occupies both body and mind. And generally pays less even though the sale of selftime is more complete. I suppose you could work a comparison to lots of other stuff in here from time-flexible socially-flexible creative work, to answering phones from home, to sex industry.
 
Not really. There is also the value of labor argument. Why does a cashier deserve $15/hour when their labor isn't worth nearly that amount and when they could just as easily be replaced by any marginally functional human being or by a machine?

I like this idea of 'deserve'. I mean, I don't like it, but I find it interesting.

Usually we deserve something when we earn it. Like "you jumped through hoops X,Y, and Z and now you get your prize". But this doesn't work in labour markets, since no one guarantees that there's a prize waiting for you after you jump through hoops.

Now, if I were assigning jobs (assuming people are qualified), I'd probably want to apportion them based on need. If someone needs a job more than someone else, I'd like them to get that job!

This is where pricing gets weird. You can signal your need by dropping the price you'll demand to do the service or sell the good. So, in some ways we want the jobs to go to the people who're willing to charge the least to get the job.

But this in no way suggests that they deserve the low pay that they were willing to work for. We want people to make more money than they need. This pushes demand-side growth, but even more importantly what's the friggen point of having economic policy??? Some people don't want to meddle with economies because they 'prefer' for the natural forces to dominate. But a reasonable portion of those people think 'this actually works best for everyone in the longrun'. Some people are die-hard principalists, and still hate meddling if it prevents disaster.

The problem with this discussion is that 'deserve' is not in the proper context.
 
At its most basic form, the value of one's labor is determined by how easily they can be replaced. Since just about any human being with a pulse can be a cashier, that means they are easily replaceable and thus, not worth as much to the company. An aerospace engineer on the other hand, requires much more than just a pulse to do their job so they are not as easily replaced as a cashier at Walmart, which makes their labor much more valuable to the company.

Also, while the cashier may have the same needs as anyone else in the economy, that does not mean they should be paid according to the cost of those needs. The value of one's labor should be the only factor when determining one's wage.

And what makes one's labor worth more than another person's? Well I discussed one reason above with the 'replaceability' factor. Another reason would be the level of education one must achieve before being able to do the job. A person must invest a lot more time and effort into being a doctor or a welder than they do to be able to ring someone up at the grocery store. The amount of responsibility one must take on is another factor. Do you see where I'm going with this or should I continue? There are many factors that determine how valuable one's labor is, and contrary to popular belief, not everyone is an essential member of society.

I do follow your argument. And I've encountered it before.

And yet - call me a hopeless romantic, if you will - I do fondly imagine that everyone is in fact an essential member of society.

I've not met anyone yet who I think we could do without. Unless we can do without any particular individual whatsoever, however well qualified. But as no one is indispensable and we all retire and die eventually, it might be truer to say we can, and must, do without everyone after a while.
 
The value of your labour is not the value of how easily you're replaced. It's the value of your output. Your value is what people would pay for your services, before it's no longer worth it.

The difference between what you charge and what you deliver is the consumer surplus. But the amount of consumer surplus is zero sum with the producer's surplus.

That said, consumer surplus is what generates investable profits. The profit difference between the cost of supplying the good and the value of the good creates new wealth that can either be consumed as luxury, to pay amortized expenses, or to create new growth. But the labourer also has a consumer surplus, since they need to eat (etc.) in order to provide their service.
 
At its most basic form, the value of one's labor is determined by how easily they can be replaced. Since just about any human being with a pulse can be a cashier, that means they are easily replaceable and thus, not worth as much to the company. An aerospace engineer on the other hand, requires much more than just a pulse to do their job so they are not as easily replaced as a cashier at Walmart, which makes their labor much more valuable to the company.

Also, while the cashier may have the same needs as anyone else in the economy, that does not mean they should be paid according to the cost of those needs. The value of one's labor should be the only factor when determining one's wage.

And what makes one's labor worth more than another person's? Well I discussed one reason above with the 'replaceability' factor. Another reason would be the level of education one must achieve before being able to do the job. A person must invest a lot more time and effort into being a doctor or a welder than they do to be able to ring someone up at the grocery store. The amount of responsibility one must take on is another factor. Do you see where I'm going with this or should I continue? There are many factors that determine how valuable one's labor is, and contrary to popular belief, not everyone is an essential member of society.

While this argument makes sense, and it has been used successfully however many times, it contains a false premise.

If you want to hire an aerospace engineer, which was your counterexample, you can do a little background investigation of your candidate and say that the candidate is or isn't likely to make an aerospace engineer.

Cashier's aren't easily replaced. You can't just grab "anyone with a pulse" and have a cashier, but you do just grab anyone with a pulse and hope for the best.

You try one person, and you find out that they are too sticky in the fingers to make a good cashier...at significant cost.

You try another and you find that they are too inattentive. I once gave a guy his change...twice. It was a $131.67 tab and he paid with two one hundred dollar bills, so a $68.33 error on my part. I seldom made errors and the situation was extreme. But with a new hire you don't know, and you don't know how expensive their errors will be in the course of finding out that they aren't a cashier.

You try another and it takes them three days to find out that they aren't a cashier. They figure it out abruptly when one of your more obnoxious customers is in front of them and they recognize that for them the abuse isn't worth the wage. The lawsuit from the customer who got the socking in the head that they deserve is your problem.

You try a fourth guy hoping they are a cashier, but they may be any one of the previous three, just with a different face. The hiring process is time and labor, and the continuing repetitions are eating into everything.

Now, let's look at it from the other side. I'm an aerospace engineer. Conveniently, I live in Palmdale California, and a fair number of aerospace companies have facilities here. Like a couple dozen. There are hundreds just a two hour commute away in Los Angeles. So if I'm a suddenly unemployed Aerospace Engineer I might be able to get another job without having to move. I might even be able to get one without having to work a thousand dollars a month in transportation costs into my new budget if I get luck and find something local.

On the other hand, if I am a cashier there are forty six (yes I just counted them) places that might hire me that are within walking distance. Hundreds, or maybe thousands (didn't count those) within the city limits.

The cashier has far greater opportunity to replace their employer, and their employer faces a much harder task finding a suitable replacement. So, by the basic mechanisms of capitalism, the cashier should be getting paid more than the aerospace engineer. What makes things work the way they do is that we as a society devalue people in "common" jobs so that we don't actually have to pay them their actual human value.

Because at the end of the day, each person has had twenty four hours, and if you have bought eight of those valuable hours from them, be it to have them run a cash register or a CAD program, they deserve sufficient compensation to enjoy the other sixteen.
 
Well, obviously there are moral differences between being careless with a rented tool and careless with an employee. But from a cost/return? The backhoe and the hired man go through the same evaluation. Will it produce more value to me per hour than it will cost me? I mean, I might hire Harry because he's my friend and he needs 15 bucks an hour for a day, but that's really not a business decision at that point.

Well, yeah, that's the point: capitalism is fundamentally inhumane. There's no way of filtering out the labour from the rest of the worker, so even if what you want is the labour, what you get is the whole person. The sale of labour independent of the sale of the body is a legal fiction, and while we might find it comforting, it doesn't describe the practical reality.

There are degrees of completeness of of the hiring though. Mowing a lawn exchanges physical location and some degree of mental capacity, but leaves the employee much of their brain to think about whatever they want to think about. Thinning corn, which requires both physical location and counting at a high rate of speed occupies both body and mind. And generally pays less even though the sale of selftime is more complete. I suppose you could work a comparison to lots of other stuff in here from time-flexible socially-flexible creative work, to answering phones from home, to sex industry.

Guys, none of this makes any sense. Seriously. If you are literally, actually buying someone when you hire them (or renting them or whatever), then you should be able to answer the following questions:

1) If person A buys person B to do some job, who is person A buying person B from?
2) If I buy a newspaper from newsagent N, who am I buying? The newsagent? The person who wrote the newspaper? The person who made the paper on which it was printed? All of the above?
3) If I produce a spreadsheet for work and I show it to my boss, what part of my body or mind am I showing them?

I mean, I suppose in some way, I am figuratively showing some part of my mind to my boss. But in another, more accurate way, I am showing my boss something that my body and mind has created. You say it's hard to filter the worker from the work, but it's pretty easy if you ask me. Here is me, and here is my work. Behold!

Sometimes, a spreadsheet is just a spreadsheet...
 
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