# Discussion of wage setting for a particular scenario **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 26, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693 "2019-07-26T23:26:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/1 "2019-07-26T23:26:59Z")
In a Great Debates thread, Scylla makes the following statement: > [@Personal responsibility, or avoiding responsibility?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/120): > > The problem here is that I agree with your sentiment. I really do. It **should** work this way. Who would disagree with the basic concept of an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay? If someone goes out busts their ass for 8 hours doing a job, they should be earning enough to put food on the table, and a roof over their head. That is fair and just. > > I mean that. Saying “well tough shit, the world is not fair, life is not fair, deal with it!” Is callous, insensitive and most damning… it is easy. > > But it’s not. Sometimes an honest and full day’s work is just not worth much. Maybe it’s only worth $6/hr. If the minimum wage is $15, that work may not get done and nobody gets anything. Maybe $6 would have helped somebody who now gets nothing. You have taken away his choice, his chance. > > The fact is that some people, especially at the level of very basic unskilled labor come with issues and baggage that lower their $worth/hr. > > I know a landscaper who mows lawns near here, and he pays an hourly wage on a sliding scale based on how many days in a row somebody manages to show up and work a full day, because some of his employees are hungover and sleep in the truck all morning if they show up at all. Others work a couple of days and make enough money to make it through the rest of the week and don’t show up. He basically needs to stock his crew at 150% to count for no shows, and if they all show up he has to pay them all. He has other problems, too that lower the value of the workers who take his jobs. When he finds reliable people he usually gives them a crew and a truck and pays them very well. Even at this level he can’t find enough people who are capable of driving a truck, and responsibly running a crew of 3 other people and 4 lawnmowers to mow lawns on their own. Such a man, when he does find one gets an hourly wage AND a percentage of the earnings generated. He has been running this business the 25 years and he has two of four trucks going, because he can’t find anyone responsible to run the others, and we are talking around $1,000 week such a person could earn. > > Then too, business carries risk, and can run on temporary hard times where the choice might be to close or pay less. > > A farmer can break his back planting a field, but there is no guarantee that locusts won’t eat his crop generating a huge loss in which case his labor had a negative value, or that his crop will recoup his investment. It’s unfair, but it’s true. It’s difficult but not impossible to pass these risk on to one’s labor. The trade off is that if I work that farmer, I get paid regardless of his outcome. If he can’t meet minimum wage and can’t plant his crop, his crop, and my labor and the goods that they could provide are removed from the economy. > > So… it has very real negative consequences. [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21771881&postcount=119](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21771881&postcount=119) I don’t want to hijack the other thread, but find Scylla’s post interesting. Thus I’ve opened a new thread. My thoughts: 1. Your lawn mowing company owner friend is encountering market inefficiencies. Markets are not efficient. In aggregate, over the long term, markets appear to be efficient. However, this is not applicable to any single example. The specific inefficiency here is that it’s difficult to assess the quality and corresponding value of the resource being purchased - in this case the labour of the prospective employees. 2. Your lawn mowing company owner friend is attempting to purchase reliable employees. However, he’s not paying fair market value for reliable employees. Over the long term, with sufficient pay, he should be able to find reliable employees. However, by paying below fair market value wages, he’s accepting unreliable employees as a substitute for reliable employees. 3. If the fair market value for a reliable lawn mower is below the living wage in your local market, that is indeed a problem for your lawn mowing company owner friend if he’s required to pay a minimum wage that equates to a living wage. His only response is to raise prices, and if there’s insufficient demand for lawn mowing at the higher prices, he’ll go out of business. That’s a negative, but it’s not dissimilar to the negative that occurs when business with high production costs unrelated to labour costs end up being unsustainable. 4. Farming is a different societal/economic category than standard retail products such that it deserves special economic considerations and some relief from pure supply/demand pricing. Every country must maintain its food supply chain, or face destruction. Additionally, prices need to be set not based on market forces, but on what societies lowest wage earners can afford. For rich countries, that means providing subsidies to agricultural produces in order to maintain the food supply chain. A living wage for agricultural workers increases the amounts of those subsidies. However, it’s a very bad idea to risk the food supply chain collapsing due to market forces. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/2 "2019-07-27T07:39:40Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > 1. Your lawn mowing company owner friend is encountering market inefficiencies… The specific inefficiency here is that it’s difficult to assess the quality and corresponding value of the resource being purchased - in this case the labour of the prospective employees. The sliding pay scale Scylla describes seems a reasonably clever way of addressing those inefficiencies: The quality & value of employees is assessed by tracking how they show up and work, and paying them accordingly. “Your pay will correspond to the actual value of your work” actually seems rather efficient. > [@](#): > > 1. Your lawn mowing company owner friend is attempting to purchase reliable employees. However, he’s not paying fair market value for reliable employees. Reliable employees can make “around $1,000 week” (which I assume means per week). How is that unfair? ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/3 "2019-07-27T09:31:40Z")
> [@](#): > > 1. Your lawn mowing company owner friend is attempting to purchase reliable employees. However, he’s not paying fair market value for reliable employees. > [@Xema](#): > > Reliable employees can make “around $1,000 week” (which I assume means per week). How is that unfair? From the OP: “he has two of four trucks going, because he can’t find anyone responsible to run the others”. The lawn mowing company owner has a level of demand, but there’s insufficient supply in that market of local responsible lawn mowing employees willing to work at the owner’s price point. Presuming that such employees are not a scarce resource, they’re either working for other companies willing to pay more, or they’re working in other areas which pay more or are more enjoyable. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/4 "2019-07-28T15:13:28Z")
The dissent in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish contains the best argument against a minimum wage I have seen: > [@](#): > > "The law takes account of the necessities of only one party to the contract. It ignores the necessities of the employer by compelling him to pay not less than a certain sum, not only whether the employee is capable of earning it, but irrespective of the ability of his business to sustain the burden, generously leaving him, of course, the privilege of abandoning his business as an alternative for going on at a loss. Within the limits of the minimum sum, he is precluded, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, from adjusting compensation to the differing merits of his employees. It compels him to pay at least the sum fixed in any event, because the employee needs it, but requires no service of equivalent value from the employee. It therefore undertakes to solve but one-half of the problem. The other half is the establishment of a corresponding standard of efficiency, and this forms no part of the policy of the legislation, although in practice the former half without the latter must lead to ultimate failure, in accordance with the inexorable law that no one can continue indefinitely to take out more than he puts in without ultimately exhausting the supply. The law is not confined to the great and powerful employers but embraces those whose bargaining power may be as weak as that of the employee. It takes no account of periods of stress and business depression, of crippling losses, which may leave the employer himself without adequate means of livelihood. To the extent that the sum fixed exceeds the fair value of the services rendered, it amounts to a compulsory exaction from the employer for the support of a partially indigent person, for whose condition there rests upon him no peculiar responsibility, and therefore, in effect, arbitrarily shifts to his shoulders a burden which, if it belongs to anybody, belongs to society as a whole. > > “The feature of this statute which, perhaps more than any other, puts upon it the stamp of invalidity is that it 410_410 exacts from the employer an arbitrary payment for a purpose and upon a basis having no causal connection with his business, or the contract or the work the employee engages to do. The declared basis, as already pointed out, is not the value of the service rendered, but the extraneous circumstance that the employee needs to get a prescribed sum of money to insure her subsistence, health and morals. The ethical right of every worker, man or woman, to a living wage may be conceded. One of the declared and important purposes of trade organizations is to secure it. And with that principle and with every legitimate effort to realize it in fact, no one can quarrel; but the fallacy of the proposed method of attaining it is that it assumes that every employer is bound at all events to furnish it. The moral requirement implicit in every contract of employment, viz, that the amount to be paid and the service to be rendered shall bear to each other some relation of just equivalence, is completely ignored. The necessities of the employee are alone considered and these arise outside of the employment, are the same when there is no employment, and as great in one occupation as in another. Certainly the employer by paying a fair equivalent for the service rendered, though not sufficient to support the employee, has neither caused nor contributed to her poverty. On the contrary, to the extent of what he pays he has relieved it. In principle, there can be no difference between the case of selling labor and the case of selling goods. If one goes to the butcher, the baker or grocer to buy food, he is morally entitled to obtain the worth of his money but he is not entitled to more. If what he gets is worth what he pays he is not justified in demanding more simply because he needs more; and the shopkeeper, having dealt fairly and honestly in that transaction, is not concerned in any peculiar sense with the question of his customer’s necessities. Should a statute undertake to vest in a commission 411_411 power to determine the quantity of food necessary for individual support and require the shopkeeper, if he sell to the individual at all, to furnish that quantity at not more than a fixed maximum, it would undoubtedly fall before the constitutional test. The fallacy of any argument in support of the validity of such a statute would be quickly exposed. The argument in support of that now being considered is equally fallacious, though the weakness of it may not be so plain. A statute requiring an employer to pay in money, to pay at prescribed and regular intervals, to pay the value of the services rendered, even to pay with fair relation to the extent of the benefit obtained from the service, would be understandable. But a statute which prescribes payment without regard to any of these things and solely with relation to circumstances apart from the contract of employment, the business affected by it and the work done under it, is so clearly the product of a naked, arbitrary exercise of power that it cannot be allowed to stand under the Constitution of the United States.” In short, if a person needs $12/hr to live, but only has the market ability to earn $7/hr, then the worker has a $5/hr shortfall. That is certainly an issue that society needs to address as there is no reason that the employee should be starving. However, a minimum wage simply forces the employer to make up the shortfall, even though the employer did not cause the shortfall in the worker’s market power, nor does it take into account that the employer may be going bankrupt himself. It places the burden, which belongs to society to charitably give, entirely on the employer. That amounts to a regressive tax on an employer who may be rich or actually worse off than the worker. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/5 "2019-07-28T17:30:34Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > The sliding pay scale Scylla describes seems a reasonably clever way of addressing those inefficiencies: The quality & value of employees is assessed by tracking how they show up and work, and paying them accordingly. “Your pay will correspond to the actual value of your work” actually seems rather efficient. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the sliding scale doesn’t go down below the legal minimums. I hire people at a relatively low wage, and when I evaluate them for raises, reliability is one of the biggest factors I consider. I wouldn’t, and I don’t know if it is legal to, actually dynamically change their wage through the course of a payroll based on their attendance. As far as “value of the work”, that is actually unrelated to reliability. I have had employees who put out excellent work, the value of which is far greater than I pay them, because I also consider their reliability, and what it costs me to have unreliable employees. If you told someone that their pay would be based on the value of their work, then they would expect to get paid based on how much work they did, and how much work that was billed for, during the hours that they were working, as that would be what the value of the work is. The value of the employee, OTOH, needs to consider how much they can be depended on to accomplish the work that has been scheduled. > [@](#): > > Reliable employees can make “around $1,000 week” (which I assume means per week). How is that unfair? He did not say reliable employees, but rather, someone who could run the other truck, meaning that they would be in more of a manager, and 50k is not unreasonable for a management position. > [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > From the OP: “he has two of four trucks going, because he can’t find anyone responsible to run the others”. The lawn mowing company owner has a level of demand, but there’s insufficient supply in that market of local responsible lawn mowing employees willing to work at the owner’s price point. Presuming that such employees are not a scarce resource, they’re either working for other companies willing to pay more, or they’re working in other areas which pay more or are more enjoyable. Having worked in landscaping, and still know a number of people in it, the actual answer is that such employees are actually a scarce resource. There just are not all that many native born citizens that are willing to do that kind of work for any wage, much less what is generally offered. There is a developer I know that is willing to pay over $20 an hour for entry level construction workers, and yet, he cannot get enough labor to get his houses built on schedule. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/6 "2019-07-29T17:47:56Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > In a Great Debates thread, Scylla makes the following statement: > [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21771881&postcount=119](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21771881&postcount=119) > > I don’t want to hijack the other thread, but find Scylla’s post interesting. Thus I’ve opened a new thread. > > My thoughts: > > 1. Your lawn mowing company owner friend is encountering market inefficiencies. Markets are not efficient. In aggregate, over the long term, markets appear to be efficient. However, this is not applicable to any single example. The specific inefficiency here is that it’s difficult to assess the quality and corresponding value of the resource being purchased - in this case the labour of the prospective employees. > > 2. Your lawn mowing company owner friend is attempting to purchase reliable employees. However, he’s not paying fair market value for reliable employees. Over the long term, with sufficient pay, he should be able to find reliable employees. However, by paying below fair market value wages, he’s accepting unreliable employees as a substitute for reliable employees. > > 3. If the fair market value for a reliable lawn mower is below the living wage in your local market, that is indeed a problem for your lawn mowing company owner friend if he’s required to pay a minimum wage that equates to a living wage. His only response is to raise prices, and if there’s insufficient demand for lawn mowing at the higher prices, he’ll go out of business. That’s a negative, but it’s not dissimilar to the negative that occurs when business with high production costs unrelated to labour costs end up being unsustainable. > > 4. Farming is a different societal/economic category than standard retail products such that it deserves special economic considerations and some relief from pure supply/demand pricing. Every country must maintain its food supply chain, or face destruction. Additionally, prices need to be set not based on market forces, but on what societies lowest wage earners can afford. For rich countries, that means providing subsidies to agricultural produces in order to maintain the food supply chain. A living wage for agricultural workers increases the amounts of those subsidies. However, it’s a very bad idea to risk the food supply chain collapsing due to market forces. 3 is too dismissive. 4 is not true. Outside of an extended naval war there is no chance that any country with access to international trade will be starved out. Since the US is currently the only country able to wage an extended naval war, there is no danger of that happening. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/7 "2019-07-29T18:41:29Z")
Farming is in a separate category because it’s necessary to plan, every year, to produce more food than can be eaten that year. If overall farmers plan to grow just exactly the amount wanted, then in a bad year people will indeed starve to death; so it’s necessary for the society as a whole to produce in excess. The problem, from the farmers’ point of view, is that when there’s a good crop, others also often have a good crop, and there’s an overall excess; so prices are low. When there’s a bad crop, having less crop to sell might be expected to be offset by higher prices – but to the extent that food is indeed shipped around the world, the prices may stay low even when the yield in a particular area is low. So the farmers often can’t get a good price in either good years or bad. The problem, from the consumers’ point of view (and of course farmers are also consumers), is that if an excess isn’t produced overall nearly every year, then in some years there will be famine. Some food – grains in particular – can be stored for several years, and most other things can be processed into a storable form, and that helps some – both with keeping the food supply steady, and with stabilizing prices because one year’s excess can sometimes be sold for processing or storage; though such sales are often for less money. The ability to transport food from places that have extra to those that don’t have enough also helps, from the point of view of those eating, which is everybody; though it can harm the farmers as farmers, as above. But neither of those entirely removes the problem. Bad weather some places on the planet doesn’t guarantee good weather someplace else – in fact if it’s flooding in a number of areas there’s very likely to be drought simultaneously in other places, the same amount of rainfall may be moving around in different patterns. Relatively wealthy places and people are somewhat insulated from shortage problems, as when supplies are limited (and often when they aren’t) the product tends to go where the money is. But they’re not immune; and we’ve come closer, including quite recently, than most people realize. [Here’s a recent low point, from 2013](https://www.circleofblue.org/2013/world/global-grain-reserves-are-low-legacy-of-u-s-drought/): > [@](#): > > The data show that the current amount of grain held in storage is less than 20 percent of the amount consumed by the world in a year — a critical measure of the world’s capacity to feed itself known as the “stocks-to-use ratio” — and would last just 71 days. > > The comparatively low grain stocks this year follow the 2012 U.S. drought, and a decade-long pattern of smaller than expected harvests that are making 21st century world food markets more vulnerable to supply shocks. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/8 "2019-07-29T19:48:06Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > From the OP: “he has two of four trucks going, because he can’t find anyone responsible to run the others”. The lawn mowing company owner has a level of demand, but there’s insufficient supply in that market of local responsible lawn mowing employees willing to work at the owner’s price point. Presuming that such employees are not a scarce resource, they’re either working for other companies willing to pay more, or they’re working in other areas which pay more or are more enjoyable. It’s possible that the owner could raise wages so that his reliable employees made $62K per year instead of $52K, fire all the unreliable employees, and then attract enough reliable employees to keep all four trucks running. He would then have to raise his prices (or reduce his profit margin, but doing that would make little sense unless he was in business for his health). Thus the question becomes, is there enough demand for lawn mowing services to sustain four trucks with sixteen people all earning $62K per year. It is entirely possible that there is, and the business owner is missing out on profits. It’s also possible that there isn’t. The “living wage” argument doesn’t allow for the fact that there might not be untapped demand. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/9 "2019-07-29T21:09:48Z")
Once more with feeling, the concept of Competitive Wages; \*In times of high unemployment and an excess of workers, companies can hold down wages because **workers are competing for jobs**. In times of low unemployment and a shortage of workers, **companies are the ones competing for workers**. If they refuse to compete by paying ‘competitive wages’, then they find themselves lacking workers. \* If their business can’t afford to pay prevailing wages, then they’ll be out of luck in hiring people and the people they do get will be unreliable people who have trouble getting higher paying jobs. If that puts their company out of work because they can’t sell their product for the price needed to pay the wages, hey, that’s Market Capitalism. If there truly is a demand for their services or products, then the price will rise to reflect the realities of the market. And at the very bottom of Capitalism, if there is a market and you are unable to compete in it, you fail and someone else who can do better will step in and service that market. Capitalism is a competition. People who do a better job of servicing a market will prosper. Wages are only one part of that picture. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/10 "2019-07-29T22:16:52Z")
Lawn mowing is seasonal in most places, so even the guy getting $1000/week is still not making a living wage year round. My lawn guy would only work for me if I employed him year round, snow clearance in the winter, lawn mowing in the summer and not much in the early spring or late fall. Take it or leave it. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/11 "2019-07-29T23:01:29Z")
People are responsible for their own economic value. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2019, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/12 "2019-07-31T03:23:22Z")
The purpose of my example in the other thread was to show that there is a current labor shortage. There has been since 2018 when for the first time we had more jobs available than people seeking jobs to fill them. Spammers injections are well taken. Perhaps my friend is pricing below the marker, or he is a bad boss, or there is some other reason why he can’t run all his trucks. On the other side of the coin, this is a person I actually know as a running buddy, and he has been running a successful business for a long time and appears to know his business. ---
**Author:** ![ZurBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/71e660/32.png) [@ZurBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZurBob)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2019, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/13 "2019-07-31T05:15:53Z")
Just a point… Keep in mind that all these “lawn care specialists” and their overhead of paying for their laborers to mow grass, are competing with the after affects of when resident teen-agers would cut grass for beer money a few years ago. It’s no wonder they may find it difficult to pay their laborers a decent wage and still make a good profit. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2019, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/14 "2019-08-01T19:35:29Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Lawn mowing is seasonal in most places, so even the guy getting $1000/week is still not making a living wage year round. . > [@k9bfriender](#): > > someone who could run the other truck, meaning that they would be in more of a manager [. . .] the actual answer is that such employees are actually a scarce resource. . Yes to all of that. The employer in the example is looking for people who are both willing and able to do active physical work, often in unpleasant weather, and who are trained to do the specific physical work in question; who are also able to drive truck; and who are also both willing and able to supervise other people while not being themselves in charge of the business – they’re being handed both the stress of being boss and the stress of being bossed, and they have to have the supervisory skills as well as the skills to do the actual job. And the payment per week’s not the only issue, because the work’s most likely seasonal. A person who’s willing and able to do all the work involved may well prefer to set up in business for themselves. And a person who’s willing and able to do the supervisory work may prefer work that’s less physical; especially since they’re living in a society that downgrades and disrespects physical work. So such people are going to be in short supply. Getting them to stay in the job is going to involve paying them enough per year to make it worth their while; and even then they might prefer to move on to run their own businesses. Another question is the other work conditions of the job. Apparently the business owner would be expecting the reliable truck driver to be in charge of other people who are massively unreliable. What kind of control are the supervising drivers given over that situation? over their work schedule, which can be screwed up by such subordinate co-workers? Do they get yelled at or penalized, by the boss or by the people whose lawns are being worked on, if the job’s not done on time or done poorly because of the behavior of other workers who they can’t control? How much control if any do they have over their own hours of work? over the condition and repairs of the vehicles they drive, and of the lawnmowers and other equipment they use? Do they have the option of buying into the business if they stay long enough? et considerably cetera. > [@octopus](#): > > People are responsible for their own economic value. Could you explain what you mean by that? “Value” in the labor market seems to be set to a great degree by the purchasers thereof. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2019, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/15 "2019-08-02T03:44:16Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > The purpose of my example in the other thread was to show that there is a current labor shortage. There has been since 2018 when for the first time we had more jobs available than people seeking jobs to fill them. > > Spammers injections are well taken. Perhaps my friend is pricing below the marker, or he is a bad boss, or there is some other reason why he can’t run all his trucks. > > On the other side of the coin, this is a person I actually know as a running buddy, and he has been running a successful business for a long time and appears to know his business. How is his competition doing? If they can find workers, he is doing something wrong. More likely, the answer would be becoming more efficient. Perhaps he could schedule jobs to reduce travel time, which would let him get an extra job (and extra payment) in during a day, which means he pays less for the crew to travel. I worked in chip design, and there would be no way in hell to be able to hire enough people if we did it using 1980 technology. But we innovated. That’s why I love capitalism. Too bad capitalists who are losing because they don’t innovate seem to hate capitalism. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2019, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/16 "2019-08-02T03:49:53Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Having worked in landscaping, and still know a number of people in it, the actual answer is that such employees are actually a scarce resource. There just are not all that many native born citizens that are willing to do that kind of work for any wage, much less what is generally offered. There is a developer I know that is willing to pay over $20 an hour for entry level construction workers, and yet, he cannot get enough labor to get his houses built on schedule. Which means that Scylla’s friend should donate money to Democrats who will liberalize immigration policy. Kind of like when Alabama (or was it Mississippi?) cracked down on farm workers and the farmers had crops rotting in the fields. Before too long a landscaper who can push for robot mowers is going to wipe out all the landscapers using people. Isn’t here yet, but it is coming. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2019, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-of-wage-setting-for-a-particular-scenario/837693/17 "2019-08-02T08:01:37Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > However, a minimum wage simply forces the employer to make up the shortfall, even though the employer did not cause the shortfall in the worker’s market power, nor does it take into account that the employer may be going bankrupt himself. It places the burden, which belongs to society to charitably give, entirely on the employer. That amounts to a regressive tax on an employer who may be rich or actually worse off than the worker. There’s a problem that the US is NOT a charitable country to the poor, disadvantaged, or less capable. The answer in the US to “this person’s labor is not worth a living wage” is to imposed punitive conditions on receiving aid at all in order to pressure the person to work or work more or work harder… even if that person is _not capable_ for whatever reason. US society does not take responsibility for its own vulnerable and less capable citizens. One argument I’ve heard is that the person’s family should care for such a person, but I guess that just means folks who don’t have family are SOL.