the minimum wage: reality check

Is an idea a real thing?

Can you fill a jar with it?

 

No. It's not.

 

So you're a Trumper huh?

 

No. I'm not.

But you neglected to answer the question.

Do you think that "labor" is a thing in the physical world, such that you could fill a jar with it or weigh it?

 

Both goods and services are provided for by human labor and goods and services have an equivalent monetary value. It is therefore the equivalent monetary value that the person has a right to based upon their labor. That monetary equivalent must be equal to their "support" with at least a minimal amount of "comfort" under the natural laws of property.

 

No one is claiming that the labor itself is tangible but that which is produced be it goods or services by labor belongs to the person(s) that expended the labor. If I load a truck with boxes then that labor has value based upon the loading of the truck. If it didn't have any value then there's no reason to load the truck nor would anyone want me to load the truck for them. If someone wants me to load the truck then they have to compensate me for my time loading the truck and the minimum compensation required is based the percentage of my time necessary for me to provide for my support and comfort.

Basically we've established 40 hours per week as a full work week so every hour of labor must provide, at a bare minimum, 1/40th of cost of living for the week.

 

Nope. If I labor at playing the fiddle for eight hours, this doesn't give me the right to anyone else's money. And it certainly doesn't entitle me to money to provide for my support and comfort.

 

I have a friend who is a singer. She gets paid to sing at weddings. When she sings at a wedding, what thing does the produce that belongs to her? What is the product of her labor?

There is no labor. There is only your body acting to put boxes on a truck. To say "that labor has value" is incorrect and metaphorical. This kind of metaphorical thinking leads one to the conclusion that labor can be "stolen" or "taken". It can't, because it doesn't exist.

Yes, someone can offer to give you money if you use your body to put boxes on a truck. If they offer to pay you less than you desire, then you can choose not to take their offer.

 

Says who?

 

The idiotic claim here is that unless something has mass it is not real.

Pure nonsense.

Ideas are real whether you wish to admit it or not.

Labor is definitely real

You're making a stupid argument

 

Labor is simply actions one undertakes with one's body.

Neither labor nor ideas are a thing in the physical world. They do not physically exist.

 

Lots of things don't physically exist. The money in your bank doesn't physically exist, nor the behavior you use to earn it.

If you want to go that route, it's fine. But you're not living in the real world if you do.

 

So they don't have mass. That means they don't exist and don't have value?

You're absurd.

 

Okay, back up, guys. Shiva_TD said this:

And I pointed out that labor doesn't exist in the physical world. Labor is an action we perform with our bodies. It's not a physical thing.

Are either of you saying that you think that labor is a thing that exists in the physical world? If not, then we agree.

 

the gibberish of special pleading, dear? why complain about others.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/labor

for when a dictionary really is good enough to explain the concept without getting, encyclopaedic.

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Thank you for admitting, illegals are not the problem.

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Labor is an input to production. Persons usually contract for wages to accomplish specific tasks for a Firm.

 

That is why we have a representative republic.

I don't feel any sense of Entitlement to a War on Drugs; yet, we cannot seem to get rid of it.

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It would, if Labor had an Actual Right to Work, in alleged, Right to Work States.

 

The point is that capital management is purposeful, by businesses, so they can have huge profits. And that won't ever change without government intervention.

 

government intervention is "routine" since 1929.

 

Government also sponsored racism. Is it right when Government does a thing despite it not having any grounds to do it?

Astute audiences have listened to the pro and con of setting minimum wages.

Asked to vote first and then following the debate, they changed sides. It was amazing to see an audience flip flop over the debate.

Before the debate, they were for minimum wage laws. After the debate, they totally changed their minds.

Watch it play out

https://www.c-span.org/video/?320449-7/panel-discussion-minimum-wage

 

How many people do you employ at $15 an hour? I'm guessing none.

 

How about ALL of my emplyees

 

Yes, because without it business would pay us in potatoes.

And without it, they will absolutely increase prices to avoid profit cuts if we increase the minimum wage to 15.

 

We have supreme laws of the land, for a reason. Any failure to faithfully execute our own laws, is simply that.

Social services cost x amount. Thus, a rationale for a minimum wage that competes favorably with the cost of social services (x); to draw labor to markets.

The issue of unemployment should be solved using currently underutilized, existing legal and physical infrastructure in our republic, that supports the concept of employment at will.

Employment is at the will of either party, not just the will of the employer for any public good or public service.

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i can't afford to pay myself, fifteen dollars an hour, yet.

 

The left's idea of a fair wage is as antiquated as the right's notion that marriage is between one man and one woman. The rational choice is that if one cannot survive on minimum wage then they should actually acquire more marketable skills/experience. It is irrational to suggest we should continue to erode the purchasing power of the dollar rewarding the least valuable workers. If the MW is raised to $15 per hour the welfare table will just be recalculated and we have gotten nowhere.

 

The main problem in retail and food service is not wage, but rather hours, and by extension the total possible income of these employees.

Most retail & food service companies do not usually give full-time (30 or more hours/ week) to any non-management employees. This is partly thanks to Obamacare, which mandates companies to provide benefits to full-time employees. It is also partly due to companies using personnel management software that continually re-estimates how many manhours are required on different days at different times. The result is that there are no reliable shifts for people to be assigned to. This week an employee may work 20 hours on 3 different mornings, and the next week be scheduled for 10 hours on two different evenings. Companies therefore demand that employees be available for all shifts (have "open availability"), and then do not give them consistent schedules. The result of this policy is that employees cannot have more than one job because they do not know which hours they can commit to work for the second (or third, or fourth) job.

The upshot of all of this is that people generally cannot work over 30 hours, and many companies, including Target, only give 10-20 hour weeks to many employees. This makes the minimum wage raise useless to these employees. Even at $15/hour that would only be $150-$300 dollars per week. Worse yet, it would force many businesses to close or almost double their prices, raise the nationwide cost of living, and thereby screw everybody, ESPECIALLY those the raise is supposed to help.

If we really want to improve the ability of people to make a living, the most likely way to approach the income problem for retail and food-service workers is to address corporate scheduling policies. If employees have schedules within consistent blocks of time every week, then they can cobble together multiple jobs to get the 40-80 hours required to make a living on a minimum wage job.

At that point, small raises in the minimum wage can actually benefit these workers, without forcing employers to reduce the total number of hours to give to employees, raise prices, go out of business, etc.. Otherwise, the large hikes in minimum wage just make the situation worse for these people. I was working in restaurants when the minimum wage went from $3.35/hour to $5.00/hour, and then to $6.50/hour. Within a year of each raise, prices were up by enough that my standard of living was actually lower than before the wage hike. What saved me was working three jobs totaling 70 hours week.

Consider:
10 hours at $7.25/hour = $72.50/week
20 hours at $7.25/hour = $145/week
10 hours at $15/hour = $150/week
20 hours at $10/hour = $200/week
40 hours at $7.25/hour = $290/week
20 hours at $15/hour = $300/week
20 hours at $20/hour = $400/week
60 hours at $7.25/hour = $435/week
20 hours at $25/hour = $500/week
80 hours at $7.25/hour = $580/week
20 hours at $30/hour = $600/week

Under current scheduling systems, people have to be paid $30/hour, which is what low-level engineers and people with master’s degrees in other fields make, in order to make what they could were the rules regarding employee availability to change, but the minimum wage were to stay the same.