I was speaking from the position of an ethical business owner. Any employee should make a living wage, full stop. In my opinion, if a persons skills are so small, or their contribution so minor that it does not equate to paying them a living wage then they must be viewed as either non essential (unneeded eliminate position entirely) or, luxury: (useful, but ultimately could be eliminated by spreading work around).
There is difference in how you dispense with the position. Non-essentials could be replaced with machines, or people who must depend on state assistance for living and thus do not need to be paid a higher rate to be self sufficient. Luxury positions are ones that an owner must truly balance his benefit against the pay rate of retaining a full time employee at a living wage rate. If I don’t want to pay it, let them form their own business for their services and contract with me a periodic service. For example, the Aquariaist position was essential for 6 months of the year, and became a luxury for the other six. My choices were to retain them at full rate and have them continually available to me, cut their hours in off season and risk losing them, or move them to a contract rate in which I saved money but still retained their services in the busy season while limiting them to basic periodic (weekly) service in the off season.
Of course not. Any solid business is run with a built in safety net for such occasions.
Sort of, but the comparison isn’t really accurate. In the widget world you are engaged in direct production. Employee’s time can be directly tied to widget goods. However, if your widget has a very limited application and you have only made commitments for 500, then that would be correct. You only NEED to make 500 widgets. If your demand (of any type) rises then you need more employees. Having a surplus of widgets isn’t good if you cannot sell them, nor does it make sense to have more employees then you need to make your production goals. Essential/luxury comparisons are more useful in jobs where the services are less tangible.
The key there is “to break even”. That person would be essential; at least until whatever is going wrong is fixed if the problem is temporary in nature.
It is more useful in the service sector. Like I noted above, production models are easier to look at.
Strangely his argument is really pretty rational. That is exactly what would happen if every employer were required to pay a ‘living wage’, whatever that means.
In the immortal words of Calvin Coolidge,
“When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.”
Presumably the next step would be to pay them a living wage for being umemployed as it would be exploitative to let the person take the job for a $1 less than the prescribed amount.
ITT: simplistic suggestions, from total ignorance of real world problems people have.
I assume you have a cite handy that someone getting “shit pay” is in always in a position for “getting more skills” to be a realistic option. Otherwise please retract.
On second thought my past post was hypocritical in that it was simplistic.
Here’s my experience and understanding on getting more skills. I grew up poor, lived poor, and now am not poor with a promising future.
I grew up in a poor family. Not saying others didn’t have it much worse, but the majority did have it much better. Sometimes the bills would add up and food was limited to potatoes, sometimes less than that. I’d get free lunch in school so there was that, further when food stamps became an option when got those.
I’d like to stop right here and point out this is a very important point. Poor people rely on social services a lot more than people with living wages for life necessities. Take home point: People who pay crap wages make your taxes higher. People have to eat. You, the tax payer, paid for my appendectomy when I was 15 because my mom’s employer did not provide health insurance, nor a wage compatible with acquiring it separately.
Eventually I became an adult. However growing up poor, well there was a saying I heard growing up “the poor have poor ways”. That saying is very true in that both the poor have methods to deal with problems inherent in poverty, and that they stay poor because of what they know. I started out in a hole that I didn’t know how to climb out of.
Here is another point poverty is generational. You learn from your parents, and you’re supported by your parents. If your parents are poor they won’t be able to give as much support or options as rich parents, further you’ll learn what they know.
Also it didn’t help matters my short term memory is kind of hazy. Complicated fast paced things would just sort of confuse me. My long term memory is sharp. I remember things people long term things people long ago forgot.
However if a customer’s order has made it to long term memory, well that was too slow.
As a result an opportunity to “use a job as a spring board to better things” didn’t show up. I looked like clueless klutz, because in that environment I was one. I tried factory but I couldn’t move quick enough.
When I was 25 I had enough. Lived with my grandfather and went back to school. I was extremely fortunate that at this point in life I didn’t have a family to support, nor massive debt, and that I had external support. Anyone of these not being true could have torpedoed me. This was when so many were upside down in their mortgage and unemployed in early 2009, with kids.
Further on this very forum I learned something very important: “college is where you learn how to learn”. I wish I could remember which doper first said that. I took those words to heart and learned everything I could about my subjects, going so far as to answer questions, including true/false questions, with cited reasoning why the book answer was wrong, or just if the book answer, if it was correct.
Had I not approached college with that attitude, as so many others did. I think things might have went very different.
Further I took the bike a lot because of car trouble. 25 miles round trip. If my body hadn’t healthy enough to support that, no class for me.
Somewhere in a parallel universe a poster known as The Tao’s Forgiveness lived my life, except they didn’t read that thread, and became just another face in the crowd. *
My dedication to being factually correct, if stubborn, made quite an impression on my computer teacher. This lead him to arrange an interview, and recommendation as an assistant working on the school website. When my boss quit I had already graduated, and was working transfer classes for a 4 year degree. I didn’t think I had a shot at the job at all, but when I saw the requirements were only “bachelors degree preferred” I decided to apply. Luckily I’m pretty smart with computers. This combined with working hard made quite an impression on my boss. She gave me a recommendation, and that combined with letters from all my teachers at that school got me the job.
I’m now working a job that pays above a living wage. I feel so rich compared to where I was. It’s like I was in a giant corkscrew, and someone had been tightening it my whole life, and suddenly it broke and all that pressure fell away. I feel so light and optimistic.
Further it’s flexible enough to support continuing my education, and I’ll be continuing it. Dr. Tao sounds nice, que no?
So the point being, I did go out and get better skills, but getting those skills, and where they took me were both a function of hard-work, and a function of luck.
I do not think the unlucky should be consigned to a life of “shit pay”.
Further looking at society, if everyone went out and got better skills, well the value of skills falls, and there would be highly skilled people scrubbing toilets for minimum wage.
We call this degree inflation.
*If me and that poster ever come in contact, both universes will be destroyed. It was on Star Trek so it must be true.
I’m not so ignorant of real world problems associated with poverty as you seem to think. I’ve practiced law for about 16 years now. A little over 10 of those years have been spent in poverty law. First collecting child support for the welfare department, and currently in a grossly understaffed legal aid program.
That said, I applaud your success. You’ve done exactly what it takes to escape from poverty. You’re absolutely right that it takes a lot of hard work and some degree of luck to do what you’ve done. Not everyone can do it…but everyone has the same opportunity to try, which is my point.
My 15 year old son wants a part time job to earn a bit of spending money. He has no special skills or training. Why should he be paid a ‘living wage’? He doesn’t need to buy a place to live, food or any of the things one needs to live. He is perfectly content getting minimum wage and working his way up to better pay as he gets more skills.
This was an excellent post by way of stark honesty. I’m going to disagree with some of your premises by looking at them at a different angle.
At this point, I’d say that you should have been younger (born at a later date). Without going into a huge argument over anecdotal examples we should be able to agree that we are, as a society, capable of controlling our reproduction. The working poor are responsible for creating this public debt. Nothing of what you said changes except perspective. Parents are responsible for the debts they incur and that includes children. From a general point of view it is up to adults to prepare financially for the advent of becoming parents. As a society we give tax breaks for more children which encourages bad planning. Unless there is a population growth problem maybe we should rethink this approach.
I have stated repeatedly that poverty is mostly a social problem and is not directly related to money. My great depression parents were certainly poorer than you were by any monetary standard. The difference was their parents. They were “boat people” and their work ethic drove their children to do well in school. My grandparents insisted that my parents do well in school including speaking a language that they struggled with. This was the blueprint of success for their generation.
I’m not saying that wealthy parents don’t bring something to the table. Certainly they do. But it is their social structure first and foremost that produces a higher level of success with their children. If that is rejected by a child then that child is more likely to fail.
Here you’re describing everybody on the planet. We each have a mix of skills that lend themselves to some jobs and not others.
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I have no memory at all but I have mechanical skills that translate well in computer related jobs. I see everything in a mechanical sense and can solve a problem by reverse engineering it. I look at the desired outcome of an object or process and back through it until it breaks down into natural modules of problems to solve. But with a bad memory I would seriously struggle with classes like anatomy so I will never work in the medical field.
I agree that your success was based on more than one element . I also agree that you could have been torpedoed by any one of these events. However, in the case of those who lost everything in this recent recession there is a certain amount of planning that would have reduced the number of people who were financially ruined. I survived 3 ½ years of unemployment in part because of my financial planning. I saw the housing bubble 20 years ago and paid the house off. Recessions are frequent enough to also demand a certain level of rainy planning. Luckily, I had enough money in reserve to handle the multiple unexpected bills that came up. All of this was because of what my parents taught me. While they may have been poor in their youth and their parents may have been poor they were not socially poor. Their mindset encouraged success which in this case means the desire to be self reliant.
I actually had this conversation with someone at work this week. Not only are you expected to learn how to learn in college but the degree is considered a license to learn. That applies to most disciplines that require a certification. A college degree is looked on by employers as proof that the person has learned how to learn as well as what was learned.
Life is not fair. Statistically we all get a share of good luck and bad luck. The unlucky are those who were trained as children not to learn. As a society, we accommodate them as poor adults. If you acknowledge that social poverty breeds more social poverty then we, as a society, subsidize the behavior. Instead of taxing the labor hours of the poor directly (the only way possible) we forgive the debt and transfer the wealth of others without any expectations. There are no demands of the poor. As a democratic society that means people are free to fail.
If we ran out of people to clean toilets then either the wage of said job would go up or we would see more self cleaning toilets. The idea of degree inflation exists mostly during temporary downturns in the economy. As for parallel worlds, I’m hoping my other self got the woman he loved instead of finding out she is riding out a loveless marriage for the sake of her children.
So, are you no longer saying that “Either a job is necessary or it is not.” I can’t tell from your reply. I was just asking a yes or no question since you made an absolute statement.
And I’d like to stop right there, too, because there is such an obvious flaw in your reasoning that I’m finding it hard to believe you missed it.
You are assuming that an employer has only two choices: pay “crap wages” or pay a “living wage”. One other choice is to pay no wages at all-- ie, don’t offer the job in the first place.
You also have to realize that the price of the goods and services you buy are based on how much money people are willing to pay for them. If everyone suddenly has more money, everything will suddenly cost more. You will be chasing the “living wage” forever since prices will rise to make yesterday’s “living wage” today’s “crap wages”. Or you’ll just make the market drive for more automation and fewer jobs.
And there will always be people like that, such as the mentally handicapped. They can be given subsidized jobs, unless you think they should starve. But most people can do enough work to cover a living wage, though employers might have to be a bit smarter than they are now. Sociopaths who won’t show up for any job, or who refuse to do $11 of work - fire 'em.
His skills or circumstances have nothing to do with the discussion. What those in favor of a living wage advocate, is that the base rate for any non contract, non exempted status, job shall be enough to afford minimal self sufficiency. His skills, yours, or mine have no objective worth. Their value is determined by the market. Most likely such a system would eliminate in the short term, such positions held by dependent minors in favor of unskilled, or lowly skilled adults. He would have to find exempted, or contractual/ private work to make his fun money. That is not a bad thing. The job market should be primarily open to those that need to provide for themselves, not dependents, whether they be minors or wards of the state due to disabilities. A living wage would be a good way to begin eliminating abuse of minors, illegals, and other groups that are traditionally underpaid for physical labor.
Yes, imagine the gall of some 15-year-old wanting to work part time. Why doesn’t he just make his parents to give him a nice, fat allowance?
But leaving that issue behind, you seem to be distinguishing between “exempted” and “contractural/private” work as opposed to “jobs”. If “jobs” need to be paid a “living wage” then I’ll just convert everything to contract work. I don’t know what you mean by “exempted” or “private” work.
We have long made provisions for teens to work. Their hours and the kind of work has been limited. Regulations have attempted to keep them safe and keep them from working so much it, harms schoolwork.
Contractual jobs are those services provided by self employed people who set their own rates that are usually not hourly. Exempted positions are things like serving or bussing in restaurants where tipping is the bulk of income. Private work is things like mowing lawns for the neighbors, paid in cash, under the table.
Sarcasm aside, I would rather see unemployed adults in low level positions earning a living wage then part time teens who earn less and thus set the rate at the lowest common denominator, usually federally mandated minimum. In reality this discussion is about raising minimum to a liveable standard, nothing more.
So, like I said, I’ll just make all my jobs “contract” and sidestep the whole living wage thing.
So, you are suggesting making it illegal for a teenager to work?
OK, so tell us how it works. Tell us how you set the wage and how you deal with the inflation that will result. And the automation, elimination of jobs, or just driving the jobs out of the country.
I suppose if they keep grasping and looking they can find an example that they think will make sense.
If a kid wants to work in his family’s restaurant to help keep it open, wouldn’t that prove a living wage is unreasonable? There must be some reason that a company should be allowed to pay peanuts to workers. If we justify it once, then it is justified everywhere,
That’s a bit rich coming from someone who wants a legal price floor.
You want to exempt contract work so that contract work doesn’t have to pay the equivalent of a living wage.
Your point earlier is that "if a persons skills are so small, or their contribution so minor that it does not equate to paying them a living wage then they must be viewed as either non essential (unneeded eliminate position entirely) or, luxury: (useful, but ultimately could be eliminated by spreading work around).
Whether it’s done through an employment contract or a contractor doesn’t matter, in both cases, the individual has skills/contribution which don’t warrant a living income. Why is it ok for a contractor to work at a task when his skills/contribution don’t warrant a living income but not an employee? In both cases, it isn’t worth it.
Also, you make a distinction between non-essential and luxury goods. Yet earlier you said : “There is no category of goods in between essential and luxury with perhaps the lone exception of food and clothing goods which are both.”
If there is no category aside from essential and luxury, there should therefore be no distinction between non-essential and luxury. There are only 2 categories, remember? If you draw a distinction between non-essential and luxury, that gives us 3 categories: essential, non-essential and luxury.
I don’t want anything. We already have it and the world didn’t end nor did our dollar suddenly inflate to bizarre proportions. Increasing it 30% won’t end the world either.
COntract work is exempted because it is performed on the individual’s terms rather than the employer’s . A contractor can charge say, 100$ a month to wax the floors. At 25.00 a visit on a large place, he may not be making the minimum, but he makes it up in volume on the little jobs that don’t take so long. If he wants to do that, he should be able to. The difference is that a dedicated janitor at the same facility spends all his time at one place and cannot increase his check, so it should be set a minimum that is liveable.
Lastly, there is no distinction, but food and clothing are intangibles impossible to quantify. There is no basic human chow, or standard generic base set of clothing. Thus they are both a necessity and can be luxury depending on number, type and quality.