Minimum Wage: What's the Other Argument?

[EgonSpengler]

Tell that to all the jobseekers out there who routinely bash businesses for not hiring them. There is definitely an entitlement mentality among jobseekers that makes them think they are entitled to gainful employment at a living wage, and businesses are somehow violating their rights by not giving them one. It's an absolutely ridiculous mindset to have.

I kind of agree with you. Or, at least, I see where you're coming from. Every time a politician (it's almost always politicians) refer to private companies as "job creators" I want to bang my head on my desk.

I think there's a division between society and the individual in the US that rears its head in all sorts of ways, and this is one of them. Essentially, every business owner wants to exist in a sea of well-employed customers without having to pay any employees themselves. Our system rewards companies who can cut costs, and of course employees are a massive cost. And, just as obviously, someone else's employee is your potential customer. Every company would "win" if they could be the only one employing nobody while every other company was putting money into the pockets of their customers, so they can then buy your products. As a system, that's kind of perverse. I'm not sure if Rube Goldberg or M.C. Escher is the better visual metaphor. Maybe a mixture of both?

 

[luiz]

I kind of agree with you. Or, at least, I see where you're coming from. Every time a politician (it's almost always politicians) refer to private companies as "job creators" I want to bang my head on my desk.

I think there's a division between society and the individual in the US that rears its head in all sorts of ways, and this is one of them. Essentially, every business owner wants to exist in a sea of well-employed customers without having to pay any employees themselves. Our system rewards companies who can cut costs, and of course employees are a massive cost. And, just as obviously, someone else's employee is your potential customer. Every company would "win" if they could be the only one employing nobody while every other company was putting money into the pockets of their customers, so they can then buy your products. As a system, that's kind of perverse. I'm not sure if Rube Goldberg or M.C. Escher is the better visual metaphor. Maybe a mixture of both?

It's not perverse, and it's the way it's always been, way before "our system". Nobody wants to incur in greater costs than necessary. The good thing is, by only using the people who are strictly necessary to get a job done, we free resources to be optimally allocated. When the US became independent it needed about 70% of the population working in the fields just to feed itslef. Now it only needs about 5%, and curiously the other 65% did not become unemployed - rather they found far more productive activities.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Nobody wants to incur in greater costs than necessary. The good thing is, by only using the people who are strictly necessary to get a job done, we free resources to be optimally allocated. When the US became independent it needed about 70% of the population working in the fields just to feed itslef. Now it only needs about 5%, and curiously the other 65% did not become unemployed - rather they found far more productive activities.

Sure, absolutely. I just get a little itchy whenever efficiency and productivity are cited as goals or positive outcomes in and of themselves. To me, those are means to an end. and unfortunately, we Americans have a history of forgetting that people are the point here (it is after all baked right into one of the words we Americans like to throw around willy-nilly - "democracy"). There have literally been bloody fights in the streets over civil rights and workers' rights and immigrants' rights. Heck, we even fought a full-blown war once. I don't expect that to happen again, but only because we work to keep it from happening. If we get careless or take things for granted, anything's possible.

Anyway, minimum wage: I think a valid question to ask ourselves is, "Should it be possible for a person who works a full-time job to be unable to meet their basic needs?" It certainly isn't the only question to ask ourselves, and it raises further questions, such as "What are basic needs, anyway?" But to me, the answer to that preliminary question is, "If it's worth employing someone to do something, then that person should be paid enough to eat, house themselves, and get education and medical care." It may be that any job that genuinely can't provide a person those things should just be eliminated from our society.

Part of the problem is in how many things are tied to a person's income. Military protection isn't. Fire response and emergency services aren't (although some people think they should be - remember the "let him die" moment when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about health insurance?). Some of us like to believe that criminal justice and law enforcement protection isn't tied to your income, but I think that's been exposed as a lie by now (the federal government is now filing a lawsuit against the City of Ferguson in their efforts to get them to shape the f up).

So individual employers are expected to provide their employees with a whole lot. Too much, really. For instance, we have this stupid system of tying health care to our employment that I think no other country in the world has. It's kind of an accident of history; I don't think anybody really meant for it to work out this way, but here we are. I know that small businesses and non-profits like colleges and, ironically, hospitals are massively burdened by having to provide their employees with health insurance. Clearing up that boondoggle would probably help clear up the minimum wage debate a great deal, but of course it's a real doozy.

 

[BvBPL]

All of which were improvements that made the operation of the business better for both customers and the owners.

Did it?

People screw up all the time getting on (and off) j-bar lifts. It isn't infrequent to screw up getting on a t-bar lift either. Even chair lifts can necessitate some occasional problems from the user. An attendant should hop out and help someone who's fallen down getting on a lift. Without an attendent, there are possible safety issues and certainly delays for other riders.

 

[Dachs]

Did it?

People screw up all the time getting on (and off) j-bar lifts. It isn't infrequent to screw up getting on a t-bar lift either. Even chair lifts can necessitate some occasional problems from the user. An attendant should hop out and help someone who's fallen down getting on a lift. Without an attendent, there are possible safety issues and certainly delays for other riders.

Not the same attendant. In my experience, the RFID gates replace the people who checked the lift tags, not the people who assisted people getting on/off lifts. You wouldn't be able to eliminate the latter personnel for exactly the reason you said: safety and efficiency.

 

[BvBPL]

Ah. I mostly ski on smaller mountains where the chair attendant and ticket checker function are served by the same person.

I'm uncertain if automating the ticket checker function would actually improve the process for the customer, but at least I can appreciate that there are fewer safety and delay problems with that system.

 

[Zelig]

A lot of mountains around here only have ticket checkers at the base lifts, up the mountain they only have chair attendants... I don't see how you could practically combine the two of them... a lift attendant would only be able to do a very cursory glance of tickets.

I love the RFID gates - my mitts have pockets in the back where I can put the pass, so I just wave my hand in front of the gate for it to open, rather waiting for the checker and then twisting my body and flipping my ticket around to make the barcode readable.

 

[Commodore]

Not the same attendant. In my experience, the RFID gates replace the people who checked the lift tags, not the people who assisted people getting on/off lifts. You wouldn't be able to eliminate the latter personnel for exactly the reason you said: safety and efficiency.

At least until robotics become advanced enough and intelligent enough so you could have a robot out there to help people on and off the lifts.

 

[El_Machinae]

If Clinton wanted to help poor people she wouldn't have lobbied to keep the Haitian minimum wage low

Very intelligent people disagree about the minimum wage. Threading the needle between multiplier effects and job destruction isn't easy.

 

[W|M]

Said very intelligent people don't starve to death

 

[El_Machinae]

No, they don't. Neither do you, and apparently you know better than everyone else.

 

[Commodore]

Very intelligent people disagree about the minimum wage. Threading the needle between multiplier effects and job destruction isn't easy.

Without going too far into the subject, I'll say I basically agree with this. Just look at what's happening here in the US as the prospect of a $15/hour minimum wage looms closer. Companies that currently have hourly employees are scrambling to find ways to automate as many jobs as they possibly can to avoid having to give their employees a wage. After all, minimum wage laws don't apply to robots, computers, and software. So on the surface a $15 minimum wage sounds great to workers making less than that right now, but what they fail to see is that they are advocating, indirectly, for the destruction of their own jobs.

 

[metalhead]

There is no evidence Hillary was involved in the Haitian minimum wage fight, and Haiti passed a minimum wage increase in 2009 while she was Secretary of State.

Not to mention, it is quite hyperbolic to say that the embassy arguing for keeping the minimum wage low is not quite the same thing as "letting Haitians starve to death."

 

[W|M]

There is no evidence Hillary was involved in the Haitian minimum wage fight, and Haiti passed a minimum wage increase in 2009 while she was Secretary of State.

Not to mention, it is quite hyperbolic to say that the embassy arguing for keeping the minimum wage low is not quite the same thing as "letting Haitians starve to death."

From your own source:

Camp said, "In 2009 ... Hillary Clinton was at the State Dept working with U.S. corporations to pressure Haiti not to raise the minimum wage to 61 cents an hour from 24 cents."

Leaked cables show that the U.S. Embassy in Haiti opposed the minimum wage hike that the Haitian parliament passed in 2009, and discussed the issue with business groups.

I'd like to see you survive on 27 cents per hour

 

[Bootstoots]

Yeah, the $15 minimum wage is probably a bad idea outside of especially high-price cities. It would be much better to strengthen the welfare state in a variety of ways that redistribute funds in non-stupid ways (e.g. direct cash transfers that taper off gradually with higher income) rather than give companies an even stronger incentive to hire as few American workers as possible. For some reason, direct redistribution is less popular than having a high minimum wage.

I'm glad some places are gradually raising their minimum wage to that level, though. It's one of those rare cases where we have a fairly decent economic experiment, and I'd look forward to seeing the results.

 

[metalhead]

I'd like to see you survive on 27 cents per hour

I don't live in Haiti. Neither do you, and I doubt you're particularly well-versed in what daily life is like for Haitians. I feel like it's a failure of education that people don't grasp a simple concept like "cost of living."

Consider a counter-point:

"I have no idea what would happen if Haiti did have a $5-a-day minimum wage," Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money said in 2011. "But I do think it's reasonable to assume that some factories would close and far fewer new ones would be built. Far fewer Haitians would be allowed to take that first tentative step on to the ladder of industrial development."

Your position on this seems like it hasn't been well thought out, at all.

Also, there is no evidence tying Hillary Clinton to the effort of Haitian embassy officials opposing the minimum wage. That's the whole point - were the embassy officials acting at her direction? We have leaked documents, none of which say this happened. So you're inventing a link that simply doesn't exist.

 

[Tahuti]

I don't live in Haiti. Neither do you, and I doubt you're particularly well-versed in what daily life is like for Haitians. I feel like it's a failure of education that people don't grasp a simple concept like "cost of living."

I'd certainly don't want to live there in it's current state.

"Cost of living" is a concept that tells only part of the tale. Instead of trying to categorise countries by how expensive it is live there, maybe we should try to understand what an average American can buy in Haiti and an average Haitian can by in the US and why this is.

The masses in America, or any "Western nation" for that matter, are sedated despite the indiscriminate surveillance perpetrated against them by their "own" governments, by their purchasing power over people in the Third World. They feel threatened when people in third world countries realise that their economic servitude becomes comparitively milder when they live in the West.

At one point, those who support populists like Trump, Wilders and Le Pen must realise even still: That their position in society is not because of immigration, rather, because of (ignorance) of their own domination.

 

[W|M]

Yeah, the $15 minimum wage is probably a bad idea outside of especially high-price cities. It would be much better to strengthen the welfare state in a variety of ways that redistribute funds in non-stupid ways (e.g. direct cash transfers that taper off gradually with higher income) rather than give companies an even stronger incentive to hire as few American workers as possible. For some reason, direct redistribution is less popular than having a high minimum wage.

I'm glad some places are gradually raising their minimum wage to that level, though. It's one of those rare cases where we have a fairly decent economic experiment, and I'd look forward to seeing the results.

It's not like companies like hiring American workers as it is, and a better solution would be to destroy capitalism

I don't live in Haiti. Neither do you, and I doubt you're particularly well-versed in what daily life is like for Haitians. I feel like it's a failure of education that people don't grasp a simple concept like "cost of living."

Cost of living in Haiti is not 27 times lower than cost of living in the US; Denying that people in Haiti live in extreme poverty denies reality

Consider a counter-point:

"I have no idea what would happen if Haiti did have a $5-a-day minimum wage," Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money said in 2011. "But I do think it's reasonable to assume that some factories would close and far fewer new ones would be built. Far fewer Haitians would be allowed to take that first tentative step on to the ladder of industrial development."

Since when are exploitative minimum wage jobs part of a ladder? Nobody who works minimum wage becomes rich, especially in poor countries. It doesn't matter if you have a job if that job pays you peanuts for long hours and you're close to starvation anyway.

 

[metalhead]

Nobody who works minimum wage becomes rich, especially in poor countries. It doesn't matter if you have a job if that job pays you peanuts for long hours and you're close to starvation anyway.

Whoa, hold on, you said they were "starving to death," not "close to starvation." That's a pretty big goalpost move. I'm not saying Haitian workers (and people in general) don't need or deserve a higher standard of living, but you said they were starving to death. Poor people in the U.S. often don't have enough to eat and probably fit the definition of "close to starvation." So I think laying blame for that in Haiti or anywhere else at the feet of Hillary Clinton is utterly ridiculous.

 

[Archbob]

I went to Haiti 2 years ago for a missions trip. Even at current minimum wage laws, the unemployment is staggering. Around Pignon, which is where we more, more people than not did not have a full-time job. Its better in the capital bit raising min wage I doubt will help.