Re: Oh my Gawd! Carly!

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:28:15 -0700 (PDT), James Arthur
<dagmargoodboat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Apr 28, 6:59 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:19:08 -0700 (PDT), MooseFET

<kensm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
James Arthur wrote:
Hmm, so the existence of any minmum wage--natural or enforced--means
that all wages are driven to that minimum, and we're all working for
it as we speak.

No that is not what I said. I suggested that the reason to have a
minimum wage was to prevent the majority of people from being force
into poverty.

But only a minority of people make the minimum wage, and many of them
are teens or part-timers, people with other sources of family income.

If someone makes min wage, they are inherently being paid more than
their market value. So pressures exist to replace them: with
automation, by contracting out to foreign countries, by using
illegals.

So, instead of working for below what some politician thinks they
deserve, they have no job at all.

Right. The premise is that all companies are evil and bent on
starving people into poverty, that they have the wage-setting power to
do it, and that only minimum wage laws prevent them from raping the
planet.

And, it follows, with their absolute wage-setting power, evil, and
generally sniveling, drooling, sinister nature, companies drive us all
down to that minimum, because they can.

Except they don't, and can't.

Companies have no such pricing power nor intention, nor is it in their
best interest to underpay. A low-paid worker is easily lost to
another employer offering more, and all the time and expense training
him is lost in the bargain. Only fools underpay.

In the long run, I think it's better to overpay than underpay.



The demographics of minimum-wage workers tell us that these are
overwhelmingly starter jobs, entry positions for untrained workers
which they quickly outgrow, then move to higher positions doing more
valuable work, for more pay. As employees acquire more skills and
become more productive, employers respond with raises because that's
in the *employer's* interest. Everyone wins.

As society gets more technical, and more low-tech jobs are exported,
there are people, born without certain skills, who will be left
behind. It's not in society's interest to let them be without the
material and personal benefits of employment, even if they are
marginally productive. But if employers are forced to pay more than
they are worth, everybody loses. So programs like the earned-income
tax credit make sense; income is redistributed from the more
productive to the less employable, but as a direct government subsidy,
a negative income tax. The employers aren't getting incrementally
whacked, so the disincentive to create entry-level jobs is reduced,
unlike minumum wage laws.

In other words, let the government make up the difference between
market wages and minimum, in the form of negative income tax. The
revenue source should be a national sales tax, which affects imports
as well as domestic products.


Too often would-be "liberals" are simply cynical, not liberal at all--
they see and assume the worst in all, trust no one, suspect everyone.

The problem with leftists is that they don't understand what works.
Because they generally don't think.

John

.

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