is minimum wage exploitation?

[MrDoobie]

We're edging closer and closer to a feudal system, where the government has no say in anything and poor peasants are going to have to go in to a life of servitude for the wealthy landowners.

And the government is made up of wealthy landowners.

As long as the human race has hierarchical social structure and a society that is based around the accumulation of material wealth, there will always have to be an exploited class and their exploiters.

Now who wants to form an anarcho-communist, Utopian state with me?

 

[magister343]

The minimum wage is exploitation, committed against a population ignorant of economic realities by politicians who care more about playing to their political base in order to get reelected rather than actually doing what is good for the country. (Ok, maybe that is not entire fair; many of those politicians are themselves just as ignorant.)

Any price floor (including the wage floor of the minimum wage) that is high enough to make a difference causes destructive market distortions. Minimum wage laws increase unemployment (particularly for those just entering the market) and also lead to inflation rather than actually improving things unless a significant portion of the workforce (such as undocumented immigrants working for cash under the table or inmates in private prisons) are not held to the same limits or if many products are imported from countries without such competitive disadvantages.



The real exploitation in the economy does not come from voluntary agreements between employers and employees, but from the monopolization of the natural resources that individuals would need to support themselves without needing to work on someone else's terms. John Locke was rather clear that his homesteading principle does not actually grant ownership of Land (in economics this term can apply to any resource not made by human labor), but only the improvements built on it. Securing tenure of land is very important to the creation of wealth, but when the resource is scarce (which can be determined by whether it has a positive market price) then doing requires either aggression against one's neighbors (usually outsourced to the State) or some sort of compensation. Gleaners' Rights are a good was of doing this in a primitive agricultural society, but a redistributory Land Value Tax is probably more feasible today.

"The living wage" is not a good idea. How much people need to get buy is not determined by low long they work. We ought to provide an unconditional Citizen's Dividend (funded by LVTs, mineral royalties, and pollution taxes, not by any taxes on anyone's labor) and then allow the poor to supplement this with any wages the free market can provide.

 

[acd]

And the government is made up of wealthy landowners.

As long as the human race has hierarchical social structure and a society that is based around the accumulation of material wealth, there will always have to be an exploited class and their exploiters.

Now who wants to form an anarcho-communist, Utopian state with me?

I'm in!

 

[alice144]

If you raise the minimum wage, there will be more unemployment.

I hear that argument a lot.
Probably, if mimimum wage jobs paid a living wage then people could work one job instead of two. When folks quit their second job, there will be more work available. I mean, theoretically. It seems like right now many people are over-employed, but still having a hard time making ends meet.

I just don't believe that most of these companies can't pay more than $8/hour when they make such large profits.

 

[Flavus Aquila]

I hear that argument a lot.
Probably, if mimimum wage jobs paid a living wage then people could work one job instead of two. When folks quit their second job, there will be more work available. I mean, theoretically. It seems like right now many people are over-employed, but still having a hard time making ends meet.

I just don't believe that most of these companies can't pay more than $8/hour when they make such large profits.

Not having lived/visited the US for a few years, I am guessing that minimum wage applies mostly to customer service orientated work, as well as janitorial and stock work.

Perhaps minimum wage, as it stands, could be kept for employment which benefit from tipping. However, other forms of customer service, such as check-out attendants could possibly benefit from some sort of sales-commission provision. Finally non-customer service minimum wages could possibly be indexed to some sort of productivity and profit bonuses. But increases in productivity always makes some workers redundant.


As for the vast profits of companies... if a company's profits are watered down to increases in pay investors will generally begin to move elsewhere, shrinking the overall size and scope for expansion.

If you want a company to pay more, you have to focus on making investors want their companies to pay more - which seems an impossible task. Even if government legislate it, investors will move their interests to foreign companies.

 

[MindYourHead]

I hear that argument a lot.
Probably, if mimimum wage jobs paid a living wage then people could work one job instead of two. When folks quit their second job, there will be more work available. I mean, theoretically. It seems like right now many people are over-employed, but still having a hard time making ends meet.

I just don't believe that most of these companies can't pay more than $8/hour when they make such large profits.

Who determines what a living wage is? That then becomes the minimum wage, which in turn will raise prices of goods?
Making the set living wage a zero net gain.
Water seeks it's own level. So will the marketplace.

 

[Skathac]

Only way to make more money by the logic of our country's current mindset is working to become an extremely vital cog within the machine, or the overall machine operator. Everything else is incidental and paid the least amount possible.

 

[the]

I've been seeing a $11.25 type campaign starting up on the internets re: min wage. I guess that is the national livable wage or whatever.

I think that I would like to see the government act much like a union would and protect me from the management, as it were. We can still have the regular unions for jobs that require skills and brains and they can bargain for more like they have been. I'm sure if I was management I would feel otherwise, but until then I will just look out for my own self interests. I mean self interest is the game we are all playing here in America.

I wish that we could get away from needing investors for businesses. Being able to just throw money at a business and get rich is kind of bullshit really.

 

[sprinkles]

I think it's simple to find a correlation with not only having a minimum wage, but what the minimum actually is.

Just look at them and then you tell me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

TLDR; some notable countries:
Australia pays the highest hourly at 16.45
Netherlands pays 10.87
United States pays 7.25
Iran pays 2.1
Kuwait pays 1.24
China pays 0.80
Haiti pays 0.60
Vietnam pays 0.23
Bangladesh pays 0.11
Cuba pays 0.05
And finally Sierra Leone pays three cents an hour, 0.03

You tell me.

 

[#@&5&49]

The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which is 13,920.00 a year before taxes. The US Department of Health and Human Services set the 2013 poverty threshold at 11,490.00. That means anyone living off a minimum wage job is probably eligible for public health programs that are paid for with tax dollars.

The average cost of health insurance in the US that covers 80% of medical bills is around 5,000.00 a year. More often than not a person paying a monthly health insurance premium is charged an additional 20% copay on top of what their health insurance pays when being treated for an illness. The copay alone can range anywhere from $20.00 to $20,000.00 or more.

A person making minimum wage and living at the poverty level with no health insurance and no monthly health insurance premiums can be treated for the same illness and charged nothing because they are eligible for public health programs that are paid for by the taxes of the people who are also paying monthly health insurance premiums.

:rant:

Who is being exploited in this situation.

 

[sprinkles]

The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which is 13,920.00 a year before taxes. The US Department of Health and Human Services set the 2013 poverty threshold at 11,490.00. That means anyone living off a minimum wage job is probably eligible for public health programs that are paid for with tax dollars.

The average cost of health insurance in the US that covers 80% of medical bills is around 5,000.00 a year. More often than not a person paying a monthly health insurance premium is charged an additional 20% copay on top of what their health insurance pays when being treated for an illness. The copay alone can range anywhere from $20.00 to $20,000.00 or more.

A person making minimum wage and living at the poverty level with no health insurance and no monthly health insurance premiums can be treated for the same illness and charged nothing because they are eligible for public health programs that are paid for by the taxes of the people who are also paying monthly health insurance premiums.

:rant:

Who is being exploited in this situation.

There's that, and also the concept of finite energy, which seems to not be well understood among potential employers.

A human body is like a machine which requires fuel and maintenance to operate. It's just like driving a truck from Michigan to Florida - it consumes fuel and this fuel is non negotiable. You can't bargain with the truck and have it work for you at half the fuel expense - the truck will quit, or 'die'.

Humans are the same way. They need food and sleep and medical care. Doing work consumes their energy and if this energy is not replenished, the human is unable to do the work properly and in most severe cases becomes sick or even dies.

If you cannot care for your workers by compensating their energy expenditure, then you are literally using them up, which could be considered exploitation of the human resource.

 

[Nixie]

There is also the idea that for an economy to grow and be healthy that the money must move. Business doesn't understand that by cutting salaries, they are tying the hands of the consumer who cannot afford to buy the goods and services they offer. There is this horrible underpinning of profit above all else--while the more socially conscious types will blather on about how wrong it is from this moral high horse--I look at it from a practical point of view--you have to spend money to make money. It is inefficient to remove a vast amount of the consumers from having the potential to be more consumer driven because as a business, you don't want to pay maybe $4 more an hour. However, in the short run, it makes sense. It would take time for an increased wage to start really stimulating the economy, but it would happen. Business is not adapting as they should in the advent of the global economy. While other countries might produce cheaper goods, loyalty will maintain a consumer base more strongly. However, when you consistently make it harder for that consumer base to afford your American goods, then what choice do they have but to flock to places that sell cheaper goods?

 

[sprinkles]

There is also the idea that for an economy to grow and be healthy that the money must move. Business doesn't understand that by cutting salaries, they are tying the hands of the consumer who cannot afford to buy the goods and services they offer. There is this horrible underpinning of profit above all else--while the more socially conscious types will blather on about how wrong it is from this moral high horse--I look at it from a practical point of view--you have to spend money to make money. It is inefficient to remove a vast amount of the consumers from having the potential to be more consumer driven because as a business, you don't want to pay maybe $4 more an hour. However, in the short run, it makes sense. It would take time for an increased wage to start really stimulating the economy, but it would happen. Business is not adapting as they should in the advent of the global economy. While other countries might produce cheaper goods, loyalty will maintain a consumer base more strongly. However, when you consistently make it harder for that consumer base to afford your American goods, then what choice do they have but to flock to places that sell cheaper goods?

And this is why in several successful countries that have no government minimum wage, a collective minimum is still bargained between the companies and employees. Having a wild west type employment market where there's no wage rules at all would probably be generally detrimental.

I don't understand why this isn't thought of more often, especially here in the US where most people know that exercise burns calories. It should follow that exercise is pretty much the same as work, and the amount of work you do correlates to your bodies required intake. If you're working for less than you can afford to take in then you're literally, physically, and unavoidably working at a loss which can't be mitigated.

You can't even mitigate this by working two or more jobs because lost energy can't be made up for like that. Once it is gone it is gone forever, especially if both jobs are at a loss.

 

[Gul Dukat]

Minimum wage was actually supposed to prevent exploitation, and I guess when you look at it from a 'things could be worse' perspective it's a good thing. On the other hand, considering it from a 'things could be much much better' perspective, it's not in any way a fair representation of how much effort someone puts into doing their job and people still get paid a lot more for doing a lot less-- probably because they know someone.

Considering the latest recession killed a lot of well-paying career-type jobs and replaced them with crap low-paying jobs, I think it's definitely time to move towards 'to each according to his contribution', and by that I don't mean using your wealth to hire other people to make money for you while you sit back, watch and occasionally worry that they're not doing it right.

 

[muir]

The entire system is built on exploitation

 

[Skarekrow]

Minimum wage was actually supposed to prevent exploitation, and I guess when you look at it from a 'things could be worse' perspective it's a good thing. On the other hand, considering it from a 'things could be much much better' perspective, it's not in any way a fair representation of how much effort someone puts into doing their job and people still get paid a lot more for doing a lot less-- probably because they know someone.

Considering the latest recession killed a lot of well-paying career-type jobs and replaced them with crap low-paying jobs, I think it's definitely time to move towards 'to each according to his contribution', and by that I don't mean using your wealth to hire other people to make money for you while you sit back, watch and occasionally worry that they're not doing it right.

I'm not disagreeing with you...I often scoff at the admin at my work who have luncheons three times a week and seemingly get paid to bullshit each other while the rest of us peons do the work. But who do you think will decide what is a fair wage for the work being done? Those same ass-clowns at the luncheon.
Where's the justice?

 

[rawr]

I agree with Gul on this one, at least in part.

In theory, minimum wage is supposed to prevent exploitation by setting a minimum expectation of salary so that companies don't further exploit workers to increase profits by undercutting employees. Same kind of idea as price ceilings and floors, in a sense.


As to whether it works or not, who knows. That being said, I'd rather be with a minimum wage than without one.

 

[Skarekrow]

I agree with Gul on this one, at least in part.

In theory, minimum wage is supposed to prevent exploitation by setting a minimum expectation of salary so that companies don't further exploit workers to increase profits by undercutting employees. Same kind of idea as price ceilings and floors, in a sense.


As to whether it works or not, who knows. That being said, I'd rather be with a minimum wage than without one.

My point was the folks at the top who make the decisions as to what is important and the pay that reflects that will continue to make that decision...I agree that minimum wage is important at this point in time in the US as there are a lot of folks who would exploit people even more by it being eliminated...but something has to give sooner or later and I don't think those folks with the power to decide whom should get paid what should be making that decision alone. Gul was expressing the need to have pay based on "each to his own contribution" which in a perfect world would mean those douchebags who trade oil futures and serve no actual purpose in society but to raise gas prices for us common people should and would be paid minimum wage in my own eyes....but then I don't have the power to decide on wages....those same people with the money would get to make that decision and it usually isn't unbiased. To me...a minimum wage is like the minimum speed limit....it shouldn't be under that level...but that doesn't mean I would drive that on the freeway. If you have too many people driving too slow on the freeway (economy) then those who want to or can go faster have to slow down and it doesn't function as efficiently as it should.
If minimum wages are raised then the economy will grow.​

 

[rawr]

My point was the folks at the top who make the decisions as to what is important and the pay that reflects that will continue to make that decision...I agree that minimum wage is important at this point in time in the US as there are a lot of folks who would exploit people even more by it being eliminated...but something has to give sooner or later and I don't thinks those folks with the power to decide whom should get paid what should be making that decision alone. Gul was expressing the need to have pay based on "each to his own contribution" which in the real would would mean those douchebags who trade oil futures and serve no actual purpose in society but to raise gas prices for us common people should and would be paid minimum wage in my own eyes....but then I don't have the power to decide on wages....those same people with the money would get to make that decision and it usually isn't unbiased. To me...a minimum wage is like the minimum speed limit....it shouldn't be under that level...but that doesn't mean I would drive that on the freeway. If you have too many people driving too slow on the freeway (economy) then those who want to or can go faster have to slow down and it doesn't function as efficiently as it should.​

while i see what you're saying, you're operating under an assumption that those in power/positions of authority are either incapable or will not make a decision that is beneficial for the "lower" workers. I won't venture to guess whether the latter is the case or not, only to say that i'm not so naive as to think it may not happen. However, i would refuse to think that it could be true across the board.

In a legal sense, should there be more checks and balances in regards to people having more of a representation when laws effect them? Absolutely.

 

[Skarekrow]

while i see what you're saying, you're operating under an assumption that those in power/positions of authority are either incapable or will not make a decision that is beneficial for the "lower" workers. I won't venture to guess whether the latter is the case or not, only to say that i'm not so naive as to think it may not happen. However, i would refuse to think that it could be true across the board.

In a legal sense, should there be more checks and balances in regards to people having more of a representation when laws effect them? Absolutely.

It would be nice to think that people would be far more altruistic than they are....I don't know, maybe my faith in humanity is lacking...lol.
Okay....here's an example....when I was a Paramedic, I was paid around $16.00 a hour (in CA mind you) to basically hold someone's life in the balance.
To me then and now that seemed unacceptable...I'm not knocking the job of a garbage man because I wouldn't want to do it, but they made more than I did.
To me that was as if society had deemed the life of you or your loved ones somehow less important than a sack of garbage. But what it really boiled down to was those at the top who paid the Ambulance company decided that is was less important than that trashcan. The money they paid out vs money paid in....what lined their pockets vs a basic human service. It's the same with teachers, and a whole slew of jobs across this country.
But who decides? Surely those of us on the front lines would all say that our jobs are worthy of more money....but it also shouldn't be solely in the hands of the company CEOs either. I think we should have industry pay standards...and minimum wages set to that...that would be a more fair practice...let's let the people of the US vote on a 1-10 scale of what industries should be paid what. Take that, and add it to supply and demand and come up with a more fair number.