Re: RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE TO $120 AN HOUR!!

From: Volker Hetzer (volker.hetzer_at_ieee.org)
Date: 06/11/04 

Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 13:32:07 +0200

"Bill Bonde ( ``I could have nailed the St. Helena goat's pelt to the deck'' )" <stderr2@backpacker.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:40C75096.4B1566DC@backpacker.com...
>
>
> Volker Hetzer wrote:
> >
> > "Bill Bonde ( ``I could have nailed the St. Helena goat's pelt to the deck'' )" <stderr2@backpacker.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> > news:40C741C8.84713E8B@backpacker.com...
> > > Why don't you let the market set the wages?
> > I guess it comes down to the players not being equally strong.
> >
> How strong is a small businessman who might want to pay someone to sweep
> up but can't see paying a high wage for that?
Typically he rents the sweeper from someone more powerful.

>
>
>
> > Basically, on one side you have a bunch of poorly educated people swallowing
> > all that unions-are-bad-stuff, playing alone, while on the other you
> > have educated, psychologically and rethorically trained people who have no
> > problem coordinating with each other.
> >
> I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that businesses have some
> deal worked out to pay people low wages?
You don't have "to work out a deal" for this. You just look at how much
others pay and try to get lower.

>
>
>
> > Asking the guys you voted for for a wage increase is simply another way of
> > banding together to increase leverage and buy some intelligent people to do
> > the arguing for the poors.
> >
> But you are arguing for government running the economy again. That's
> been shown not to provide for "the poors" as well as capitalism. Look at
> the Soviet Union.
It did indeed provide for the poor and better than capitalism (me coming from
east germany having lived under essentially the same system) but that's not
the point here and I agree that it has had a lot of other important flaws that
rightly brought it down.
But the government is part of society and the society runs the economy. It
influences the market in many ways, like by enforcing safety standards, and (see
below) minimum living standards according to the societies wishes as expressed
by votes.
This in addition to the market mechanism working according to the societies
wishes as expressed by its buying/selling behavior.

> > The other thing is how different socies think the universal declaration of human rights
> > should be enforced and how much they are willing to pay for it. This value
> > automatically dictates a lower bound for the minimum wage because no one needs
> > to work for less.
> >
> If people have the human right to food, water and basic shelter, then
> find ways to provide that human right, but don't pretend that that
> should be forced on the market.
But there is no way to separate this. If your society agrees that no one
must starve then you either force them to work or you give them free
food which, of course has a monetary value. So, this is a force on the market
either by driving wages down (forced labour) or up (no one needs to work
as long as he doesn't want more than what he can get for free) depending on
your solution.

Volker

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