Oh dear. I guess I forgot that the world owes me everything I want for free. The vast majority of Americans would not consider it freedom to have their wealth taken from them and redistributed so that others could engage in leisurely pursuits. Wealth isn’t created by society in a bucket and divided up by government–rather, it is earned by those create it.
And even if this is what you truly believe, capitalism is still preferable to communism on a practical basis. The Soviets tried just what you imagine, and it led to death and poverty for millions. America’s poor still live better than the poor in almost every nation in the world, including states with far more redistributive systems.
Unlikely, although someone seems to bring that up in every thread we have about the MW. There aren’t that many people making MW, and the difference between what the MW is and what the average those folks would make without it probably isn’t all that much. The entire amount paid to people making MW is ~ 0.5% of our $17T economy.
Why would you object to restitution of stolen wealth?
It really is.
What a nonsense, substance-free assertion.
Do you have any critical thinking skills at all? I mean, let’s say someone tried to build a house, but they did it on flooded swampland, didn’t bother to put in a solid foundation, and had an unsupervised team of high schoolers build it based on plans drawn up in an elementary-school art class. When that house collapses two months later, would say, “Well, we tried building a house and obviously we saw how that’s a bad idea, so let’s avoid building more houses!”?
In this case, they tried to build communism, but because of their ineptitude they ended up creating the ultimate capitalist society, where the dominant mode of production was still wage labor.
Can you quote the parts that address that? I’m not making an argument for or against the MW, just noting that the effect it has on the overall economy is tiny. Claims that it helps the economy are about on par with those that claim it hurts the economy. Changes may hurt or help certain individuals, but the overall economy? Unlikely.
Probably not - in many areas of the US you have got to have a certificate of occupancy for it to be legal to live on your property, which requires a source of water, a septic system of some descript and a structure deemed to be livable according to local, county, state or federal code depending. There is a huge deal going on right now with the tiny house movement where they are not meeting the minimum size required for human habitation, in many regions the residence is needing to be tied into the electrical grid, if the local has a sewer system, it needs to be tied into the sewer system. There is also an issue with people living in RVs or tiny houses that are built on trailers and not on foundations.
One could in most well watered regions manage on 100 mixed acres with 25 acres of wood lot, in a structure built to proper code, with a well drilled to a dependable water source, with a potable inbound water tank, gray water settling tank and a composting toilet, with solar panels and a battery bank with a proper bit of electrical mess between the house and the grid like one has with a generac type generator that kicks on and off with the grid load. You would use the outgoing grey water to water plants, and do a combination of growing your own food, and with proper licensing hunt and fish for protein in proper season, and keep rabbits and chickens [best for turning scraps into meat with rabbit pelts as a possible item to sell to a tannery.]
Please note that you would have to scrounge at least enough cash money to pay the annual property taxes, vehicle taxes, insurance and fees, property insurance, fuel for the vehicle, chain saw and any other homesteading equipment. Call it probably somewhere in the region of $5 000 to $12 000 per year. You might be able to do it if you had some additional solar power generation ability in an area where the electric company is required to buy any generated power off of you at a reasonable cost.
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See, here’s the thing: I’ve lived it, so it’s not at all academic and tangential for me. I lived for three years on $1200 per month for a family of three and a half (50% custody of my daughter), plus food pantries and charity assistance for utilities, and it didn’t feel at all academic or tangential. It felt hard. Really hard. It did not feel like we were awash in luxuries. We cut out cable, cut internet, had government funded dumb phones with 60 minutes a month, never ate out, never *went *out except to school or when invited somewhere for dinner, 'cause, free food… I didn’t buy textbooks, I either got them from friends who’d had the classes previously, or I read in the school library, or I didn’t do the reading and just tried to keep up without it. I even stole toilet paper from public restrooms. Ain’t proud of it, but I did it, 'cause kids gotta wipe. The good people of the SDMB rallied and sent me Christmas gifts for my kids one year; I stashed two thirds of the very generous packages I received for birthdays and the second year of Christmas and birthdays so I wouldn’t have to ask for that sort of help again.
So when you tell me that I should have been able to survive on $120 per month, it just sounds absolutely clueless and out of touch with what real people struggle with.
How do I do that with $4 per day? Are you going to sell me your land for $4 installment payments? Shit, even a cheap 3 season tent for 4 people costs $70, on sale, outside of camping season - how do I buy that when I only have $4 a day? And how do I pay for the gas and the vehicle to get there? Will the bus take me to that land for $4? How do I get my kids to the doctor when they’re sick? How do I get them to school? How do I get *me *to school, so I can eventually get a job that pays more than minimum wage?
You see $4 a day as an average that someone who has a reservoir of cash may spend *after *they’ve bought everything needed to support such a lifestyle, like land and a tent or a houseboat. There is no reservoir of cash for someone who is literally living paycheck to paycheck.
Yes, and in fact the entire amount paid out to MW workers is a drop in the bucket when compared to the entire economy.
I’m not a huge fan of the MW, but no way we’re getting rid of it. I wish we’d just set the MW once, and then peg it to inflation so we don’t have to argue about it so much. Everyone could plan and we could get on with our business. Of course, that would be too easy…
Unsourced assertions? Well, you’ve got plenty of them too. Like all of them.
So people are wrong when they don’t think the world owes them everything. Got it. Also, I forgot that when I earn money by engaging in consensual transactions with other free actors, I actually stole from them.
Well, to extend the analogy, that would mean you shouldn’t build houses on terrible foundations. Like communism. When you try something, and it results in more deaths than anything else in human history, that’s a good sign you shouldn’t try it again.
Also, “communism failed because it was actually really capitalist”? That’s a new level of cognitive dissonance.
I don’t think you quite understand what “sources” are if you think calling for them is appropriate for any of the claims I made. You can’t “source” a speculative or normative claim, pretty much by definition–you can only defend its reasonableness or lack thereof.
Basically, yes.
There’s nothing the least bit “consensual” about capitalist transactions.
Actually, it’s a sign that you need to fix what’s wrong before you try again.
No, the attempt to build communism failed because it created a capitalist society. Because it was–a failed attempt to build communism, that never actually did create communism but merely replicated capitalist relations of production with the state as a monopoly capitalist.
It’s like you go out of your way to avoid having coherent, reality-based thoughts.
There ARE situations where you can legally pay someone less than minimum wage. I’ve even taken advantage of some of them myself.
There are unpaid internships, apprenticeships, training wages… you need to consult someone familiar with the legal details to do this but there are mechanisms for that.
Of course, you’ll probably wind up with mostly high school or college age kids, people who won’t stick around long, or the disabled… which doesn’t rule out them being good employees, of course. But there’ll be some chaff among the wheat.
If you can not manage to provide yourself with the minimum wage as a business owner you have the option of seeking employment with another business that can, in fact, pay you minimum wage or better.
Just as I, as an employee, have no guarantee my current employer will stay in business or continue to employ me indefinitely you, as business owner, have no guarantee of staying in business. If my employer fails or lets me go I must seek other work. If your business can not support you then you should seek some other form of employment.
What sort of minimum wage job has an employment contract? I’ve only seen employment contracts for executive level positions.
Oh, please, are you for real?
First of all, private charity can legally discriminate by criteria as diverse as whether or not you have children, what religion you are, and so on. So while some demographics are likely to benefit greatly others will be left out in the cold.
Secondly, in many places in the US the ONLY “welfare” a childless adult can obtain is food stamps. That’s IT. No housing support, no medical care, nada. Even where housing support is “available” quite often it effectively isn’t - around here the waiting list for Section 8 housing 8-10 years… and there is a waiting list to get on the waiting list! So… where the F do you live for a decade while you’re waiting for assistance?
That’s assuming said person has no disqualifying medical condition that prevents them from selling their blood - like HIV or hepatitis history, history of jaudice for any reason, hemachromatosis (that’s a hereditary condition), and so forth. In which case, no, they can’t sell their blood for a living.
WTF?
Seriously?
Where do you live that you don’t need heat in the winter? In my area you DIE if you don’t have heat for several months of the year (in fact, you can look up the Chicago area “deaths due to cold” stat if you want to - a certain number of people do freeze to death around here).
Farm you own food? Chop your own wood? If you are physically capable of doing so - not everyone is. I could, but I also have enough skills to earn more than the current minimum so I opt for that. My spouse, however, is physically disabled and can NOT farm food or chop wood.
$4 a day? That’s $120/month - that won’t rent a shed for you around here, much less heat in the winter. IF you could procure free housing yeah, maybe - but I don’t know anyone who gets free housing around here. Even on Section 8 you’re paying something like 1/3 of your income (or $40 in this scenario, leaving you $80 for food, clothing, soap, deodorant, grooming items, transportation, heat, etc.)
In this area you are required to have a minimum floor space in a permanent residence in order to legally inhabit a place - pitching a tent on your property and trying to live in that isn’t going to be tolerated. Nevermind the prospect of simply staying alive in a freakin’ tent through several months of Chicago-area winter. Good luck with that. Even the Natives built something more substantial than a tent for the winter around here. Then there are property taxes. Which you have to pay in some form of money. Chop wood? Do you have a permit for that? Hunt? All the various licenses will cost money. Guns/bow/traps/whatever cost money (although in Alaska residents are allowed to use food stamp money towards hunting gear - but only in Alaska). You need more than just a pot - you need butchering tools as well. And then there’s water - where will you get it? If you get water what about a toilet? Septic systems are permitted around here but it is thousands of dollars to get one installed and then need to be periodically serviced. What about a shower and the resulting greywater?
This is aside from, you know, actually constructing a residence, even a hovel, that will get you through the winter around here plus the essential fixture of a wood stove for heat/cooking if you don’t have electrical power. Neither alternative is free.
As noted - you’re considering the cost AFTER you have obtained every material good required for the lifestyle… and you’re assuming none of it ever needs replacing.
In other words, this is all theory to you, you have no practical understanding of such a lifestyle and it’s long term needs.
Minimum wage laws have no resemblance to what you’re saying. They don’t say you get anything for free. What the law says is that if you work forty hours a week you have a right to get paid at least two hundred and ninety dollars. You earned that money from your work.
The people who don’t think they shouldn’t have to pay minimum wage? They apparently think people owe them work. But you are not a feudal baron and the people around you are not your serfs. You don’t get their work for free. Work isn’t created by society in a bucket and divided up by government - rather, it goes to the people who pay for it.
For me, one of the major issues about the minimum wage is one I don’t think I’ve seen addressed yet in this thread.
Suppose you’re a business with a need for some unskilled workers, and you can get about $10 an hour worth of value out of them. There are a bunch of people in your town willing to work for as little as $1 an hour. What are you likely to offer as a wage for your jobs? Probably $1 an hour. Certainly nothing approaching $10 an hour, the actual value you get out of them, but also very very unlikely to be a split-the-difference $4 or $5. Because, generally speaking, you have the power.
So, there may be some businesses in town who have $1 workers who are only getting $2 worth of value out of them. Or even $1.01, I guess (lets assume we’ve rolled up all the costs of ‘having a worker’ into their wage - doesn’t make a difference to the underlying argument). We actually can’t tell, as outsiders to the businesses involved, how much profit each is making from their unskilled workers. If asked, all businesses will say “gee, we’re right at the line. We couldn’t POSSIBLY afford to pay our workers one red cent more, or we’d go under.”
Now, the government comes along and mandates a $5 minimum wage. Companies in the second case will need to lay off workers or go bust. That’s bad. Companies in the first case, however, will just raise the wages and keep on making a profit, albeit a reduced one. That’s good.
How do we tell who’s in the first case and who’s in the second case? Empirically. Raise actual minimum wages. And it’s my understanding that when this has been done, very few jobs have actually been lost. So there’s not many companies in the second case, and lots and lots in the first case who could quite well afford higher wages.
You might say “well, we’ve still created an evil, though - a little evil, granted, but still an evil - by stuffing up the business model of a very few businesses that couldn’t cope.” Yes. But at the same time we’ve corrected an evil - a much bigger one - of the vast majority of businesses which were really exploiting the hell out of their workers by paying them a fifth or less of the value they were getting out of them. And maybe it was even against their will - they had to do it because all the other businesses were.
The point is, there’s really no limit to how much value a business might be getting out of their unskilled workers. The actual wage of the workers will stay at the “how little can we get away with” floor, even if the value being provided from them is quite high. If we could think of a method to ensure that what’s being paid to the workers is an equitable distribution between “what can be got away with” and “what value they’re actually providing” things might be different, but generally we can’t.
I support the minimum wage despite agreeing with the economic arguments on the subject from the right. The reason is that in most companies that pay minimum wage, there is no realistic way to negotiate. You can’t walk into a Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, or Wal-mart and give them your salary expectations. Most of those companies take those decisions out of the hands of managers. If you ask him for a raise, 90% of the time, he can’t help you. That’s all decided in HR by formulas. Since companies unfairly fix pay, the government mandating a minimum wage is a reasonable counterbalance to that.
A better approach would be to require that the people who do the supervising also decide the wages of the employees who work under them. The person in HR doesn’t care if you lose your best employee. But if your best employee comes to you and says, “Hey, I got a better offer at Bob’s Burgers, can you match it?” you’re sure as hell going to want to match it if you can make the numbers work. Putting pay decisions in the hands of HR departments is anticompetitive by design.
One other argument I have no use for: “If you can’t pay your people decent you shouldn’t even be in business.” Pure balderdash that demonstrates no empathy for the struggling business owner. Most first attempts at starting a business fail, just as most people have a shit first job. Often, these two situations intersect: the struggling business owner who doesn’t really have a good handle on what it takes to run a business yet hires the kid who doesn’t really have a good handle on how to be a productive worker yet. The economy needs both of those types. There are other businesses, that while successful, are in such competitive industries and require so much labor that it’s impossible to pay very well. Retail is just like that. THe profit margins tend to be low, you need a lot of people for facing the customers, and so you’re pretty much stuck paying a low wage. The argument that a business that can’t pay $15 an hour or whatever shouldn’t even be in business is a good way to get most of your malls and shopping centers and supermarkets closed. And then where would unskilled workers get a job?
I’d also note that labor is not special. All labor is is being in the business of selling your services. The government treats labor as special because duh, most voters are laborers. MAny fewer are true independent professional contractors or business owners. So labor gets special treatment. The owner of the video store might be almost starving because his business is becoming obsolete, but he’s supposed to still pay his workers a minimum wage. He doesn’t matter, apparently. And I notice that workers with obsolete skills get all sorts of sympathy when technology puts them out of work, but a business owner in the same situation is often just told, “You should have paid attention to the trends.”, as if business owners are supposed to be inherently smarter than everyone else.
How did they manage it when my grandfather was in the workforce? When a salesman could support a family and a house in the 'burbs? I’m sure some of it was simply a lower standard of living, but does that really explain all of it?
A salesman usually gets a commission and those types deal in higher margin items. Today, salesman still make good money if they are good at their jobs. And back in your grandfather’s day, working at Sears Roebuck for 30 years as a cashier didn’t get you much further then than it does now.
Another factor was simply less competition. In the old days, the US consumer market was a captive market. If you wanted a TV, you got an American TV. If you wanted a car, you got an American car. Imports tended to be limited to luxury items, they weren’t associated with cheap stuff like they are today. So companies could charge more and thus pay more in many industries. In a global market, there’s more competition, and when there’s more competition, the consumers tend to capture the surplus rather than workers and owners.