Considering how much they’ve stolen from us, who are the thieves here? There’s an old IWW song that goes “We have fed you all a thousand years, and a dozen more besides…”
No, that’s what they want us to think. Don’t be a scissorbill, Mr. Block.
The thieves would be the people stealing property, as some sort of collective punishment for the transgressions of other people with the vague commonality of being owners of capital.
Well, I’ve worked at a number of firms, and management skill isn’t a myth, and management isn’t something everyone can do well.
Feel free to prove me wrong: start a self-managed firm with no managers, and if management is truly unnecessary, it’ll outcompete all the firms that are spending money hiring managers. Or, point to someone else who’s done that.
Not if property is theft. The transgressions involve extracting surplus value (often by cutting costs by rendering conditions inhumane and dangerous) from the blood, sweat, and tears of those without the same level of privilege.
So have I, and you’re quite right. That’s why it’s necessary to devolve power to those who actually do the work and know what’s required, rather than leaving it in the hands of an out-of-touch privileged elite.
The link under “workers’ self management” shows just that. Beyond that, it shows you just how threatening those with power and privilege find this kind of thing, and how they react with such violence and vehemence.
Taking back what’s rightfully yours isn’t theft. In fact, it’s the opposite of theft: it’s restitution. You’d know this if you didn’t hate freedom and individual liberty so much.
Is being completely detached from reality a badge of pride for you?
Property isn’t theft, though, and punishing law-abiding people engaged in voluntary commerce for not adhering to your particular theory of value is monstrous. It’s no different from taking the property of every non-Christian, and divvying it up amongst the Christians. It’s not theft if Christians are supposed to be supreme.
Yet when I wrote that management was a skill, and that firms needed people with that skill in order to succeed, you replied “No, that’s what they want you to think.”
Now I don’t know what you think, because in the above you appear to be arguing that management is indeed a necessary skill, and not something everyone can do well or something that isn’t needed.
Is it that workers, not owners, should select their managers, or that managers aren’t needed, or what?
Hey, kudos to the Mondragon Corporation. Why would devolving the choice of management of a firm be threatening to the firm’s owner? If letting the workers decide who managed them made the firm function better, they’d implement it in a heartbeart, out of self-interest. You may be conflating management and ownership here, as you’ve discussed both fairly interchangeably.
Put some content in your posts, and I’ll reply to them. This is just snarky glurge.
Let’s keep the personal comments to a minimum, please.
Basic Income for all adults. If everyone gets it, better sense of fairness (no “THOSE people on welfare”)-It’s not rewarding one group of people at the expense of others. Would eliminate the need for a lot of programs. The U.S. has a pretty big welfare state, but it seems to me that the patchwork delivery in the form of so many programs probably creates a lot of inefficiencies and room to cut. No need for handing out food stamps, housing vouchers (or direct “Here’s an apt. Here’s some govt cheese.”), and maintaining all the overhead involved. Just cut the “check” to cover basic needs. A lot of possibilities- could be like a universal EITC or a tax rebate/prebate, stand-alone or part of broader tax reform simplification.
This idea has been backed by some conservatives and libertarians. I don’t really have any idea why it should be opposed by leftists. So, it COULD have broad political appeal- though I sense it has no chance in hell.
Assumptions: I think disincentive effects would be small, but highly feared and exaggerated. Some people wouldn’t work, of course. Frankly, I think the attachment to “jobs” is pretty strange- so I might have a hard time “getting” opposition. Some jobs probably need to be eliminated, and there’s never going to be a time that the jobs needed perfectly match up with the workforce that’s available. I think most people would want to work for something to do and to have more than just the minimum lifestyle. People could choose to work low wage jobs for extra money, and not have to worry so much about trying to survive on minimum wage with screwy hours and schedules. Perhaps the wages would still be low, but if less people need to submit to crazy schemes like 24/7 availability to work 6 hours a week for $8.hr, then employers will have to make working more attractive in other ways. People who are passionate about certain fields or have specific skills that are hard to fit in typical jobs would be more free to pursue fulfilling careers and entrepreneurial pursuits. Start a business or go back to school. I guess this part assumes that society benefits from individuals seeking to maximize their “potential” in whatever field is a “good fit” rather than having a couple million excess fast food workers and people being paid minimum wage to push a broom where none is needed.
Like John Mace, I believe that not all jobs deserve to make a Living Wage. Living Wage representing an income where an emancipated adult can live individually with no assistance from the government of any kind. Many people take jobs for reasons other than “need to pay the rent, food and all bills by myself”. Second incomes, part time jobs for teens, jobs for retirees, they do not always need to fulfill a Living Wage.
I think a blended approach is the way to go. A reasonable MW, one that ensures laborers are compensated for their time. Government assistance, so that those who are unable to make ends meet can get help. A teen living with his parents isn’t going to qualify for Food Stamps. You get to discriminate amongst those who really need a Living Wage to get by, and those who are working for Pin Money.
MW is also important because even if a low wage laborer isn’t making MW, his wage may be defined by the MW.
Agreed. I also read an argument one time that seemed to make very good sense. Let’s say that a Living Wage is $10/hr. Suppose there is a guy out there that only has the skills to produce $8/hr at the fair market value of his wage. He will be unable to support himself left to his own device and will need help from someone, somebody, or the government in order to survive.
So who should help him survive? Why should it automatically default to the person who decides to use the services he provides at a fair market rate? If anything this hurts this man additionally because a business owner will not want to hire this man who provides $8/hr in services. He will skip over him and hire a man who provides the legal minimum hourly wage in services leaving the other man out of luck. Instead of $8/hr, he makes $0/hr.
Further, it is simply the fairness in allocation of a burden. If I hire the $8/hr guy at an arms length transaction that is fair for both of us, why do I take the additional burden of his charity care as well? We will always have citizens unable to provide for themselves, but that should be a shared burden, not one that I should be forced by federal law to take upon myself simply because I engaged in a free transaction.
As John Mace said, I can pass those costs onto my customers, but that is regressive. Those same poor people who are working for minimum wage will also be paying my increased costs, necessitating a higher wage for them to survive.
Minimum wage laws operate under the same basic assumption that most populist “good ideas” stem from: That all business owners are swimming in money and that social ills can be solved by tapping into this secret fund that the local merchants are wasting on cocaine and prostitutes. It simply isn’t there.
“Working without wages will eliminate corruption, increase productivity, and in itself will form a tremendous source of revenues.”
- Pol Pot
We have disability for the disabled.
No one is forcing you to hire the guy. If it’s not a good deal for you then don’t enter into it.
If people are willing to pay higher prices then why not raise your prices now? If that doesn’t work now then why would people be willing to pay higher prices just because your costs went up?
And yet we periodically raise the minimum wage without causing economic crisis. The money comes from somewhere.
I am in support of this, as soon as it is feasible. Until we make work truly optional, we are still living in barbarism.
For my suggestions, increase workers’ rights. If we outlawed things like “at will” employment and made it easier for unions to form and strike then employers wouldn’t be able to keep wages as low. Free trade policies are terrible for workers. It would be much better for them if we had a dynamic tariff policy where taxes on imports were adjusted to compensate for the advantages of manufacturing in places without environmental, worker safety, and wage standards. End government outsourcing. Having governments go back to providing stable long term employment with pensions (even for some low skill workers) would have a beneficial effect on the job market.
Some things are even more esoteric. Intellectual property is almost entirely about protecting profits. Lets cut down those monopolies to much shorter periods of time and we can all benefit from the increased competition. Someone already mentioned cutting farm subsidies. It would be more cost effective to just subsidize family farmers (and not large agribusinesses) after they sell their crops and thus make it cheaper to buy food worldwide. Sprawl costs us money by leaving us with a ridiculously inefficient transportation system. Get rid of the homeowners deduction and instead subsidize low and middle income multifamily buildings inside cities and towns.
Really there are a lot of things we might do but we are not likely to because there is money to be made leaving things the way they are now.
I’m not talking about the disabled. I’m talking about able-bodied people who do not have the skill set to command a “living” wage on the open market.
And I probably won’t. So where does that leave the $8/hr guy? Out of a job. Instead of $8/hr he makes $0/hr. Instead of society paying him $2/hr to bring him up to a living wage, the taxpayers pay $10/hr.
It’s not just my prices, but everyone’s prices. People also compensate by switching to cheaper alternatives or simply doing without certain items. This also affects the poor more than the rich or upper middle class.
Just because the system doesn’t collapse sending us to the dark ages doesn’t make it the optimal choice. Econ 101 tells you that it introduces market inefficiencies that definitely come from somewhere: no jobs for the less skilled and decreased purchasing power for the poor and middle class. Do you contend that the rich are less richer due to minimum wage laws? If not, where does the money come from?
We could get rid of employment-linked minimum wage and instead have a non-means-tested basic income funded from general taxes… This would obviate the noted problem of labor market inefficiency (if you want to offer your labor for $whatever an hour, you can go strike that deal with anyone willing to take it), while still addressing the concerns stimulating the desire for “living wages”.
[Of course, many workers, no longer so starved for necessities, will then feel freed to negotiate higher prices for their labor, or even to drop out of the toil market entirely. If you are of the perspective that any deviation from pure Libertariana is a distortion from the One True Baseline, then you can always wring your hands over that.]
[Just to clarify, the “you” in my last sentence was a generic “you”, not in reference to any poster in particular]