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#1
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What should we as a society do for those people who do not have the desire
or the ability to move up? Employment is not a contract between a worker and "society", but rather between a worker and an employer. What society should do is prevent the unequal status of the applicant/supplicant desperate for work and the potential employer with the job from becoming an abusive situation. The lower the wages paid to an employee, the greater the dependence that employee will have on the public trough. Mini-wage sets a realistic standard that says, "you will pay at least this pittance, to offset at least some of the living expenses and keep your people out of the trough as much as possible." It shouldn't be the taxpayer's responsibility to provide virtually all the basic needs for a family just so an employer can get by with paying a predatory wage. What should we do when an honest hard working immigrant (either legal or illegal) wants to work picking produce or digging ditches. See above. Asking society to provde food, shelter, and other basic services to an employee so that you, the employer, can work that person on the double cheap is just plain wrong. It's just a surely a raid on the public treasury for the benefit of a private individual (the employer) as the stereotypical welfare woman cranking out 15 kids to stay on the dole most of her life. In construction and farming, 2 or 3 levels promotion is middle management. If we don't believe they can move up to middle management we just don't hire them? You don't oridnarily hire a lot of permanent workers in farming. When you have a crop to pick, you take all willing and capable hands. You don't worry about 30 days down the road, harvest will be over by then. When you do hire those willing and capable hands, it should be done legally and at a rate equal to or above the state minimum. In your car dealership when you hired a janitor, what jobs were you planning to promote him to? Janitors were outside contractors. I would imagine a beginning janitor would be able to work up to crew chief, or what not, before long- but I never direclty hired janitors. Menial laborers were typically "lot boys." Good ones could work up to slightly less menial jobs in the shop, take some technical classes and buy some tools, and eventually make a decent middle class income as a technician. Those proving unworthy of promotion typically didn't last long- chronic absenteeism, showing up to drunk to work, burning a phat one out behind the detail shop, etc. "Next!" What do we do for all these people who can not meet your requirements for employment. We don't do anything for them. No need. There are plenty of guys who believe that hiring as cheaply as possible is the only way to go, and they can't be too picky about what they get. The guys who don't want to pay anything and those who don't want to work very hard deserve each other, and they do seem to find one another more often than not. All we do is be sure that the employer doesn't take such extreme advantage of his superior economic power that his sick, starving, homeless workers create a huge drain on everybody else. An employer with a growing business is always in a position to provide opportunities to bright, energetic, talented people who will grow along with the business and make everybody in sight richer along the way. It isn't the employers responsibilty to waste those opportunities on the dull, the undermotivated, or the unqualified. The culls should go to the guys who run a business so badly that a worker isn't empowered to produce enough wealth for both himself and his employer. Ever notice that it is usually the same guys who call for the elimination of minimum wage laws who also call for an end to all public assistance for food, shelter, or medical care? You might ask some of them what should be done with the working poor..... "better they should die, and decrease the surplus population" Ebenezer Scrooge, "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens Anyone lacking a close up perspective might enjoy reading a book called "Nickled and Dimed, on Not Getting By in America." |
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#2
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Let me try this another way, let's assume you owned a construction company
who needed unskilled labor for short periods of time. Your needs would vary, from needing no unskilled labor to needing 50 short term unskilled employees. Do you think society/government should mandate that you keep these people on the payroll for the full 52 weeks and pay them a respectable income, even if their services is not needed? Society/government also mandates that we just increase the minimum wages so that all an employees earn a living wage. This living wage would pay for food, health care, clothes, transportation and all basic needs. Should we pay them $15/hr, $20 hr. $30/hr? What should we pay them? The income an individual needs to live on is less than a 6 person family, should we make the minimum wage based upon the number of people the person needs to support? How about the 16 yr old kid working at McDonalds, since he lives with his family, his needs are substantially less, should he earn enough the same amount as a 6 person family or should be provide a tiered system of minimum wage? What about the short term employees such as the produce pickers, should we insist that the company providing these services pay them for 52 weeks? Should we make sure we do not allow temporary work permits for Mexican's to work these short term jobs? If we allow the temp. workers to come in the US for the harvest season in the US, after the harvest is over they go back to Mexico. Should we pay these people enough to live comfortable in Mexico or the US? Remember, if we increase the money supply without a corresponding increase in productivity we end up with the kind of inflation we saw in the south during the civil war and Germany saw during WW2. Unfortunately, anytime you increase the money supply without an increase in production, you have more money chasing after the same amount of good and services and you will have inflation. My point is there is no easy solution. While the marketplace is a very brutal way to determine the value of goods and services, no one has found a better way to do it. Communism was an attempt to solve the problems you and many of us are concerned about, but it is a failed experiment. Socialism was tried by in Great Britain after the war. This was another attempt to correct these inequities in the marketplace. Their economy suffered as the result, causing many industries to fail, and a larger segment of the population to lose their jobs and end up on the dole. GB ended up dismantling much of their government corporations so society as a whole would benefit. I wish there was a better way to spread the wealth, but in the last 6000 years, society has never found a better way, even though many have tried. Economists would tell you that laws to have employers provide the safety net now provided by the government is the most inefficient way to provide these services. The average citizen would still be paying for these services by paying more for all goods and services. Instead of paying taxes to the government, we would be paying the tax to companies via higher prices. It would transfer the cost/tax from the government now provided this safety net, to the private sector. As crazy as it sounds, economists would tell you, the cheapest way to provide this safety net, is to give it to them. "Gould 0738" wrote in message ... What should we as a society do for those people who do not have the desire or the ability to move up? Employment is not a contract between a worker and "society", but rather between a worker and an employer. What society should do is prevent the unequal status of the applicant/supplicant desperate for work and the potential employer with the job from becoming an abusive situation. The lower the wages paid to an employee, the greater the dependence that employee will have on the public trough. Mini-wage sets a realistic standard that says, "you will pay at least this pittance, to offset at least some of the living expenses and keep your people out of the trough as much as possible." It shouldn't be the taxpayer's responsibility to provide virtually all the basic needs for a family just so an employer can get by with paying a predatory wage. What should we do when an honest hard working immigrant (either legal or illegal) wants to work picking produce or digging ditches. See above. Asking society to provde food, shelter, and other basic services to an employee so that you, the employer, can work that person on the double cheap is just plain wrong. It's just a surely a raid on the public treasury for the benefit of a private individual (the employer) as the stereotypical welfare woman cranking out 15 kids to stay on the dole most of her life. In construction and farming, 2 or 3 levels promotion is middle management. If we don't believe they can move up to middle management we just don't hire them? You don't oridnarily hire a lot of permanent workers in farming. When you have a crop to pick, you take all willing and capable hands. You don't worry about 30 days down the road, harvest will be over by then. When you do hire those willing and capable hands, it should be done legally and at a rate equal to or above the state minimum. In your car dealership when you hired a janitor, what jobs were you planning to promote him to? Janitors were outside contractors. I would imagine a beginning janitor would be able to work up to crew chief, or what not, before long- but I never direclty hired janitors. Menial laborers were typically "lot boys." Good ones could work up to slightly less menial jobs in the shop, take some technical classes and buy some tools, and eventually make a decent middle class income as a technician. Those proving unworthy of promotion typically didn't last long- chronic absenteeism, showing up to drunk to work, burning a phat one out behind the detail shop, etc. "Next!" What do we do for all these people who can not meet your requirements for employment. We don't do anything for them. No need. There are plenty of guys who believe that hiring as cheaply as possible is the only way to go, and they can't be too picky about what they get. The guys who don't want to pay anything and those who don't want to work very hard deserve each other, and they do seem to find one another more often than not. All we do is be sure that the employer doesn't take such extreme advantage of his superior economic power that his sick, starving, homeless workers create a huge drain on everybody else. An employer with a growing business is always in a position to provide opportunities to bright, energetic, talented people who will grow along with the business and make everybody in sight richer along the way. It isn't the employers responsibilty to waste those opportunities on the dull, the undermotivated, or the unqualified. The culls should go to the guys who run a business so badly that a worker isn't empowered to produce enough wealth for both himself and his employer. Ever notice that it is usually the same guys who call for the elimination of minimum wage laws who also call for an end to all public assistance for food, shelter, or medical care? You might ask some of them what should be done with the working poor..... "better they should die, and decrease the surplus population" Ebenezer Scrooge, "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens Anyone lacking a close up perspective might enjoy reading a book called "Nickled and Dimed, on Not Getting By in America." |
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#3
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Let me try this another way, let's assume you owned a construction company
who needed unskilled labor for short periods of time. Your needs would vary, from needing no unskilled labor to needing 50 short term unskilled employees. Do you think society/government should mandate that you keep these people on the payroll for the full 52 weeks and pay them a respectable income, even if their services is not needed? Of course not. Society/government also mandates that we just increase the minimum wages so that all an employees earn a living wage. You build the rest of your argument around this false premise, so there is little else to respond to. The government does not mandate that employers pay a "living wage", or enough to meet all the expenses any family could run up by having a dozen kids or living a lavish lifestyle. The purpose of a minimum wage is to assign at least that much responsibility for the survival and support of an employee, measured in dollars, to the employer rather than to the taxpayer-funded social safety net. |
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#4
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#5
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Chuck, do you think increasing the minimum wage will slow down the
illegal immigration across our southern border? Or, will it just become worse? If the situation is so bad, why do we get three million illegals a year? John H I believe an employer should follow all the applicable laws regarding hiring and employment, and that nobody should be expected to work for less than the legal minimum. The minimum wage is a state's right issue, (over and above the $5 something federal requirement), so nobody can say that across the board the miniwage has to be increased. An individual working 40 hours a week ought to be able to, in the spirit of fairness, live an an adequate shelter, enjoy adequate nutrition, and obtain the most fundamental basic necessities of life. Those necessities don't include a new car, (or maybe even any car) a 35" plasma TV, etc.Nobody realistically expects the people on the bottom rung to be awarded a luxurious lifestyle- but if a person is offering his life's energy to an employer it shouldn't fall to society at large to get that person off the street and fed at least a subsistence diet. Our $7 + miniwage around here might sound like a lot of money to somebody living where rents are still $350 a month- but it takes some creative arranging to stretch $14,000 a year in an economy where marginally liveable apartments are $700-1000 a month. Different states and local economies have different costs and pay scales. |
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#6
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