That’s a very wobbly guesstimate, though. Labor markets even without a legally mandated minimum wage are by no means close approximations to ideal free markets. So “market worth” is a very distorted concept in such real-life situations.
So if I understand your question correctly octopus, your question is why should the United States not have our workers competing in the race to the bottom? Factory workers in India and elsewhere are willing to live in lean-to shacks, scrounge for scraps from garbage dumps, while working for pennies doing low skilled factory work … what’s special about our workers that they cannot?
Beyond the other more moral and ethically based answers that I will leave others to give, there is the very simple one: because we’d lose the race to the bottom. Other parts of the world just have lots more people living desperate lives on the edge of starvation willing to work under any conditions just to survive than we do. We don’t have as many people willing to sell their underage daughters into slavery in order to have enough food to feed the other children either. Moreover the parts of the world that have entered that race are only in it for a fairly short time … see the economic path of China. Exploiting low skilled workers only last so long until standard of living rises and so do wages, leading to companies chasing the low pay elsewhere and even there companies turning to automation.
Ethical and moral issues aside, competing to be the most exploitable workforce would not bring significantly more factory jobs back. The worldwide demand for low skilled workers is decreasing as automation becomes competitive with even the lowest paid most exploited workers and the supply elsewhere is still high.
How is it moral to buy any good or service made under those conditions?
With regards to the US, I think we’d do just well in a race to the bottom. And it would probably be a net gain for the US especially if a basic income were implemented concurrently. Making some money and living somewhat productively is superior to earning 0 money and living unproductively.
I do not know a single person who advocates removal of all redistributive policies. Only the ones that have counterproductive unintended, at least with respect to stated goals, consequences.
It’s kind of silly on the one hand to insist that market forces set wages in all cases, and government mandated market distortions that squeeze one way just create bulges elsewhere. And then to insist that workers making minimum wage are getting paid more than they are worth.
If they’re getting paid more than they’re worth, why does the employer hire them? If they really were getting paid more than they’re worth, they’d be fired and replaced with more cost effective solutions.
If a McDonald’s worker is only worth $5 an hour, but the minimum wage is $8 an hour, then that worker never gets hired in the first place. It might be true that in the abscence of a minimum wage law the employer would offer $5 rather than $8. But every employee hired at that wage is someone worth hiring at $8, otherwise McDonalds wouldn’t hire them.
The laws of supply and demand can’t be repealed by government fiat, but neither are government regulations some improper interference with the workings of the marketplace. Government regulations just create a marketplace with slightly different inputs. We could repeal minimum wage laws across the country, and wages would never fall to levels paid in China and India, because it would make no economic sense for American workers to accept wages that low. You’re literally better off standing on a streetcorner panhandling and scrounging food from dumpsters.
No one I’ve noticed have made any claims about prices being fixed.
The gig economy is in part a result of a historically low minimum wage and high unemployment. There is an opportunity cost of working at a shit low paying job. If you can make more sporadically mowing lawns or dealing drugs than you do in a crap job, you will.
Guaranteed income is fine, but where is the money going to come from, especially if you’ve forced down wages and thus tax revenues? Want to increase the tax rate for the 1% who benefits? Enough to make up the difference?
Another issue is just where to get those types of graduates. Someone with a degree in english or art or history probably wont cut it even if they went to 4 years of college and $100,000 to get that degree.
And as we’ve been hashing out, the notion that “education” will prevent your job from being replaced by automated processes or outsourced is very naive. We’re on the cusp of a white collar job crisis. Yeah, it’s terrible when the factory replaces 100 machinists with 2 guys who monitor 100 automated lathes. But what happens when accountants and lawyers and doctors and journalists and engineers find their jobs at risk?
I think we can also ask just what type and level of factory are we talking about?
Most auto and motorcycle plants take parts produced in other areas, or even countries, and just assemble the final product. I cannot imagine an American factory where they get the raw ingredients (metal, rubber, plastic, etc…) and make them all. Consider all the parts in a car like frames, wiring, engine cooling systems, hoses, seats - thats alot of different parts.
Now a company could if their are limited parts and those could be made by machine. An example are LEGOS or plastic tubs.
I was trying to stay focused on the issue of the thread: will large numbers of factory jobs ever come back to the United States? Specifically I was trying to keep my contribution in the supply demand terms that you were framing it within.
Moving into morality … well let us look at the circumstance of NOT having international companies going into Asian markets and adding low skill manufacturing jobs at pay levels that would be considered highly exploitive in America, and the one in which they do.
In the former extreme poverty with no job options other than possibly garbage picker or beggar persists and the government does not have the money or incentive to raise education levels or working conditions in jobs that do exist.
In the latter: money is transferred to some degree from the world’s wealthiest economies to employing those low wage workers, raising their standard of living some; continued economic growth relies on raising the overall education of the workforce so the governments invest in doing so; international bad PR of conditions such as were documented at the Foxcomm plant and that led to the disaster with the building collapse in the clothing factory in Bangladesh leads to improved working conditions in the cheapest labor markets as a business cost of participating in the global marketplace; trade agreements insist on some minimal improved levels of pollution controls and working conditions; … so on.
To me the ethics favor globalization by a long shot.
You are confusing market value with affordability. I can afford $6000/month for rent or a mortgage. I’m damn sure not paying what I can afford. Wages are the exact same thing. I’m paying based on what the market determines the price ought to be. Not some arbitrary government fiat enacted for political gain.
If corn on the cob had a market price of 5¢/each but had a government mandated price of 25¢/each my purchase of corn won’t change. But the government mandated price is still a distortion and still has negative effects on consumers of corn. Furthermore, I’ll seek if possible black market suppliers of this corn. Just like labor. If minimum wage goes up to $20/hour and I can pay a sole proprietor $8/hour I’ll do that.
And you all on the left love to ignore all the factories that have left. Love to ignore the companies that enact tax inversions. And ignore service jobs that are offshored or performed by illegal immigrants under the table. But hey that burger flipper is getting $15! Until the burger robot is perfected and we can add that burger flipper to the welfare brigades.
It’s here.
A novel experiment that above.
There have been a number of raids on factories because undocumented workers are there, by the way.
Consider how few people it takes to make lots of burgers and fries. Fast food places are already very automated. You think McDonalds won’t buy hamburger flipping robots no matter what the minimum wage is? No sick days, no benefits (such as they are) no Social Security, no absenteeism. Unless you want to pay Vietnam wages and have your burger flippers living ten to a room that is.
If left to the free market wages would leave people 10 to a tent why does anyone make more than minimum wage now?
This doesn’t really belong in this thread but the answer is that allowing companies to exploit workers just to stay competitive with exploited workers in other countries is sheer insanity. If you work all day at a job that job should pay you enough to live on, one cent less than that and you are exploiting your workers. “Other countries do it” is not an excuse, and the answer is to punish companies who take advantage of this rather than allowing them to exploit americans for profit.
You can’t stop companies from moving. You can’t stop foreign trade. You sure as hell don’t want to stop illegal immigration. So tell me, how are the bottom 30% or so of Americans in terms of market value going to compete in the world? Just get a hand out for a vote?
I don’t know what the solution is but allowing companies to exploit workers with less that livable wages is simply out of the question. The problem is not our workers being paid too much, it never has been, it’s other countries allowing the injustice you are clamoring for. We have very little influence over the real problem, but we do have some.
Right. How do you act as a consumer? Do you purchase all your goods and services strictly from suppliers who pay the whole supply a chain a “living wage?” If not your actions belie your words.
No, that’s a silly tactic of evading the issue by pretending that serious policy positions don’t count unless they’re followed on the individual level with rigorous consistency.
In real life as opposed to debating “gotcha” tricks, there are lots of public policies that a sincere person can honestly support on a social level, without rigidly following them on an individual level, especially if the individual impact would be statistically negligible or even harmful.
For instance, I might sincerely believe that for public safety maximum federal highway speeds should be legally mandated as 55 mph, as was temporarily done back in the 70’s and 80’s. But even if I honestly believed that we as a society ought to do that, it would not be a good idea for me to adopt an individual stance that I personally will never drive faster than 55 mph under any circumstances. Not only will it accomplish absolutely nothing at all in the aggregate, but it will introduce safety risks of its own by interfering with the flow of traffic that’s moving considerably faster than 55.
To take another example, it’s not hypocritical for naturism/nudism enthusiasts who support expanding clothing-optional public spaces to refrain from walking around naked in those spaces while such behavior is still legally and socially prohibited.
Likewise, it’s not hypocritical for, say, libertarians who object in principle to government taxes to pay their taxes anyway, to avoid breaking the law as it currently stands. And it’s also not hypocritical for people who support legislating tax increases to refrain in the meantime from paying the government more taxes than they legally owe at present.
You can legitimately promote changing a particular law or custom without taking a rigid vow that you will never ever comply with it while it’s still in force. Requiring that people who support a particular policy position must act at all times as though that policy is already enacted, in order to have their ideas taken seriously, is not a rational approach to debate.
Your analogy fails. It’s not breaking the law to put your money where you mouth is and pay the price for goods and services supplied by those earning a “living wage.” So unlike a libertarian paying taxes or a nudist being clothed jail isn’t the consequence for following one’s conscience. Supporters of counterproductive economic policy just like to feel and speak virtuously while having no intention of acting in concordance with their own stated views.
If I have a strong belief and there is a legal alternative than instead of acting like a hypocrit I follow my strong belief even if has negative ramifications in other areas. That’s not a “gotcha.” That’s called having and living by principles.
The environmentalist who buys a Tesla and rides a bike is respectable. The environmentalist who nags the public while living in a 20,000 square ft mansion and traveling via private jet is not.