Minimum odds and ends
“All of which makes $15 an hour sound too high. Hardly. Over the last half-century, American workers have achieved productivity gains that can easily support a $15-an-hour minimum wage. In fact, if the minimum wage had kept pace over time with the average growth in productivity, it would be about $17 an hour. The problem is that the benefits of that growth have flowed increasingly to profits, shareholders and executives, not workers. The result has been bigger returns to capital, higher executive pay — and widening income inequality.
“Efforts by the states and the federal government to raise the minimum wage are an important way to counter that dynamic. But they must be seen as modest and partial steps in the direction of fair wages. Other steps include more progressive income taxes, enhanced rights to form unions without retaliation, and government job-creation programs, because a tighter labor market would force employers to compete for workers.”
Redefining the Minimum Wage : The Editorial Board, 11 November 2013, The New York Times
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This is a straight forward, common sense way to frame the issue: so of course it’ll be seen by some as “radical” and “socialist”. The New York Times might as well be 1960s-vintage Пра́вде.
Let’s Ask Forbes.com (note: not the website of a notorious liberal rag) for some opinion:
“Even if only half of minimum wage workers rely on those paychecks for their livelihood, that should be reason enough to ensure that they have a decent standard of living. It seems to me that employers who reap the rewards of that labor should be the ones who pay for it. The deadlocked Congress is unlikely to pass a minimum wage law. It’s a good thing that states and municipalities are moving to fill in the breach.” [11 November 2013]
The staff writers at Forbes are, of course, also making so-called eloquent arguments against a minimum wage, but I find even in their protests there are glimmers of real-world facts shining through the self-serving bullshit:
“It is true that average wages should rise in line with average productivity. For, what we all, on average, produce is what is available for us all, on average, to consume. What is produced must be what is consumed so therefore the two averages, production and consumption, must at least roughly match.” [source]
* The question is not just a matter of production matching consumption though, now is it? It’s whether the profits made on the sales of that production are distributed equitably: It’s wages vs corporate profit taking, not just production versus consumption.
“Related to that is a destructive idea about the role of law. The concept of a minimum wage is that it is a proper use of the force of law for the government to put the following choice before an employer: Either you give this worker a raise, or we will punish you. But that is no more a proper use of law than if a similar choice were put to a worker: Either you accept the employer’s terms, or we will punish you.” [source]
* except the worker has to work, and there are plenty of economic incentives to do so, and some people have to take whatever crap job they can get. The worker is going to work without a law requiring them to do so. The employer has no incentive to pay more: if anything the incentive would be to pay less — indeed, there is an incentive to spend money lobbying congress so they don’t have to pay what they do now, as is easily proven whenever Michelle Bachman opens her mouth to express ‘her’ opinion on the issue. There are also incentives to pollute the air and water, to sell spoiled meat, to make quack medicines out of poisons, and treat workers like serfs, chattel, or worse. It’s not that there is a law telling workers to “accept the employer’s terms”, rather that in the absence of law there is no choice. And when employers collude to keep all wages low, there’s not really a ‘free market’ for labor either. A recourse to the law, and the courts, seems like the only way to redress the balance.
Sadly, influencing the law-making process or seeking legal redress for legitimate grievances both cost a lot of money. More than folks can make flipping burgers. Seems like the system is set up this way by design.
“The real centrepoint of this story is that there simply is indeed a trade off between the price of labour and the amount of labour that people will want to employ. Raise that minimum wage too high (and what is ‘too high’ should be discussed) and there will indeed be more people without a job at all. This is just one of those things about economics, there are very rarely solutions, there are only trade offs. And those arguing for a uch [sic] higher minimum wage need to make the case for some people earning more money and others earning none.” [source]
Tell you what. We’ve tried crap wages for 30 years, and people are struggling. Let’s try it the other way for 30 years and see where our country is at in 2050.
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Update 8:35am 19 Nov 13: Please see this article for even more background on the issue
The 40 Year Slump : Harold Meyerson, 12 November 2013, American Prospect
