Minimum wages and why there should not be one....

Minimum wages is a Government default.....There should be no minimum wage...Why?...think about it!...you cannot legislate a persons ability,thats why gasoline is 5.00 and eggs are 5.00 a carton...Water seeks its own level, just like work ability...if you only pay someone 1.00 hr, they can only pay 25 cents a gallon for gas...wage increase only make consumables higher...

 

How about mandatory accounting/finance in the schools? That could have been done since Sputnik.

 

Minimum wages are just one of a dozen Band-Aids on the cancer of privilege. They have to do something, and justice is the one option they will never countenance.

 

And how do you define justice? Is it equal outcomes for all regardless of how much talent someone has or how hard someone works at a job to get the education to be qualified for a job? Are there no rewards for hard work? If their aren't, then pretty soon you are living in a third word style country.

 

Benefits commensurate with contributions and costs commensurate with deprivations.

Certainly not. But just outcomes do not depend on talent or education or qualifications. Only a contribution justly earns a reward.

How hard you work is irrelevant: parasites often work hard at getting something for nothing. It's how much you contribute that determines how much you have earned.

 

The the next question is, how do you measure contribution?

 

If a job isn't enough of a contribution to allow people to live outside of poverty, then that job shouldn't get done.

Besides, when people can't live on their wages, we subsidize the work with our tax dollars.

Why should we tax ourselves to subsidize work that isn't enough of a contribution to warrant a living wage???

 

?? Most companies don't actually care about serving low income customers. As good capitalists, their objective is maximizing profit.

It's not that often that they would need to price their products for low income earners in order to meet that objective.

Do you really think gas companies give a rat's ass whether low income earners can afford gas?

 

A job does not necessarily involve making a contribution at all. Consider patent trolls. Many government workers whose jobs are mainly to deny permissions are not making a contribution. Mercenaries like Blackwater's thugs rarely make a contribution.

That's not an efficient system.

I don't think we should.

 

You can make the philosophical and ideological argument, based on principle, that there should not be a minimum wage.

But something to point out, in reality it is not very obtrusive at all so long as the level is set low enough.

So from a pragmatic point of view, the real pertinent question is not whether there should be any minimum wage but whether it should be above some low level amount.

 

Like so much else that government does, the minimum wage is a Band-Aid solution. It tries to paper over the symptoms instead of addressing the problem.

 

Our measure of contribution has to be based on capitalism. And, that's what decides that Blackwater is a contribution. That's what decides that patent trolls are a contribution.

If we don't like that, then we have to add to our regulation of capitalism.

But, it has nothing to do with minimum wage.

 

Why? Capitalism says that when a landowner holds valuable land vacant for decades and then pockets millions in profits on it, he has made a commensurate contribution. But as a matter of objective physical fact, he has not. He has merely stolen wealth and prevented others from making contributions. Why would we base a measure of contribution on an indisputably incorrect measure of contribution?

So it's objectively wrong.

No, we have to somehow find a willingness to know the fact that capitalism is causing the problem, and regulation is a Band-Aid that will not cure the cancer.

If you don't understand why capitalism is the common cause of the problems.

 

Yes, there are issues with free market capitalism.

So, what should we move to?

 

I think there needs to be a bottom but making it federal instead of a local thing is dumb. The cost of living is different everywhere and allowing for different minimum wages allows cities to adjust for cost of living. Make it federal and that will just sink businesses.

Lastly, raising minimum wage periodically does help because of the delay in the market to adjust. Eventually inflation cancels the min wage gains but that isn't a reason to avoid doing it.

 

The "issue" is that there is no such thing, and never can be.

Justice. It's not rocket science.

 

What is it that you believe doesn't exist? Your sentence doesn't make that clear enough.

"Justice" is not a method of economics or of government.

Of course, it IS an attribute that we would want.

As for the issue of compensation, I don't believe that it is "justice" to have billionaires taking profit off of these who can't make enough to live on. We are all in this together. None of us are discardable.

 

What we all need to keep in mind is the fact that mimimum wage law DO NOT raise wages. What they really do is make it illegal to hire low wage people.

Handicapped, entry level, and menial work are all outlawed and are replaced w/ 100% fit overworked high pressure workers and/or automation.

 

Free market capitalism.

Sure it is, if you make it the priority. Start with justice as your priority and follow it wherever it leads, and you will have a description of both an economic and a political system.

Is it? Socialists and capitalists don't want justice. That is the one point they are agreed on.

Justice is not defined by how much one gets but by how one gets it.

 

The low wages for jobs such as wait staff, cleaners, etc., is set by the market for that labor.

We've had periods in recent history where those with college degrees were taking on these jobs. They didn't get paid more on the grounds that they were grossly overqualified. We saw this in large numbers after the Bush crash, a period where manufacturing rapidly recovered, but corporations had spent their time working on ways to be successful with FAR fewer employees - meaning that employment recovered far slower thatn would be guessed by looking at output.

I agree that we do have issues regarding people who have less ability to be employed.

My brother who is part of a foundation that works with those who are minimally communicative, autistic, etc., and through their training become employable by high tech companies that have jobs in quality assurance, inspections, etc. He finds that these people blossom when in those environments and get social support from their coworkers in those companies.

That's a challenge. However, let's be careful about how we divide the various problems with employment, living wage, etc.

 

There is no question that we depend on free market capitalism.

The fact that such a system REQUIRES regulation does not deny that.

Again, you haven't suggested an alternative.

Communism, Socialism, Capitalism - all these are ideas on how we can have a productive system while delivering justice. Obviously, we can agree that at least a couple of those were failed attempts, but they were attempts born of striving for equality and justice by some definition.

As for justice, I'd point out that our commitment to justice isn't sufficient to treat our own citizens equally, when we absolutely COULD do that. We don't believe people have an equal right to vote - we have a whole political party that works against that idea. And, we have high ranking officials who support white supremacy - which is diametrically opposed to justice. Now, as the LGBTQ community starts being noticed we see the range of anti-justice being supported.

So, I'm interested in your idea of a new system - even if it is somehow based on "justice".

 

No, I already proved that we do not, because free market capitalism does not and cannot exist. The system we currently have is finance capitalism, which has nothing to do with free markets.

There is no such system, and never can be.

The only system capable of delivering justice is the geoist system. If justice is your priority, and you want modern civilization, there is no other possible alternative.

No, they are not, as none of them comes close to delivering justice. All three are based on the same objectively false premise -- that there is no fundamental difference between owning the fruits of one's labor and owning other people's rights to liberty -- and all three consequently deliver injustice in carload lots.

Equality of outcome or condition is not justice.

Equal treatment of those who do not merit equal treatment is not justice.

There are lots of valid reasons people don't all have an equal right to vote: age, mental infirmity, habitual criminality, etc.

And other high-ranking officials support treating whites worse than non-whites.

Is men competing against women in women's sports justice?

The geoist system is very simple: you own what you produce, and you pay just compensation for what you take from others.

 

Individuals live at whatever level they personally choose. Some will live beyond their means, some won't.

No one but the individual can dictate what that level 'should be', especially not Govt. If you earn minimum wage but rent a private residence in an expensive city, you have chosen to struggle. Someone else on the same wage - in the same job - could commute into the city from their 'shared with family' home in a much cheaper area, and thus never struggle.

 

Yes. Nobody is proposing that.

 

As I can detect, Georgism is a system of taxation, not a replacement for free market capitalism. So, your claims about free market capitalism are a misunderstanding of Georgism. Georgism is essentially the idea that we can remove income tax and replace it with property tax. He pitched this as benefitting those on low income!!

There are many cities in the USA that raise revenue by tax on property - some almost exclusively so. I don't know of ANY of these cases being considered progressive. Such taxes are not making it more likely that a low income individual can find an apartment within their means.

My experience in Seattle (where there is no state or local income tax) is that property tax is one of the factors in driving those living on low income or fixed incomes (retirees, etc.) out of the city. Plus, with property tax being the primary revenue it means that every increased expense in our increasingly expensive economy and every desired city improvement (education, drugs, crime - everything) runs into the fact that raising revenue means increasingly driving these people away.

Also, high property tax means that the margin for building apartments that would accommodate low income residents is just too low. So, a housing crisis takes place.

This experiment with Georgism (involving low income, fixed income, etc.) IS a disaster for these people - NOT the benefit that George claimed. These people have no income tax, but ARE affected by property tax - EXACTLY what George planned. And, it is a DISASTER for them, totally UNLIKE George claimed.