I wasn’t sure if this belonged on the “What constitutes a living wage” thread or if it was a new topic, so I’m putting it here.
I know of a significant number of people who just don’t have the IQ/intelligence/mental capacity to learn do anything other than menial labor. This is not a disability that can be overcome by hard work, study, initiative, or anything else.
So they are stuck in a low paying job, making less than a living wage, with no hope of ever bettering their life. In other words, poor.
usually very hard working poor.
I’m sure most of us know at least one or two people in this position. The janitor where we work, the guy who works almost full time at Mickey D’s, or maybe assembles gadgets in a small factory.
So, is this just tough shit, or should these folks be paid a living wage?
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
Hmmm…interesting question, Mangeorge. I’m leaning toward being in favor of the government giving employers who employ people with diminished capacity for learning complex job skills tax breaks in order to be able to afford to pay them a higher, “living wage”. Trouble with that is, you would have to come up with some kind of objective definition of diminished capacity. And of course, there would be abuses of the system by employers who would seek out people with diminished intellectual capacity and pay them the minimum amount of money they could get away with in order to receive the tax break…
The trouble with Sir Launcelot is by the time he comes riding up, you’ve already married King Arthur.
Dumb question. Because employers would simply pay minimum and let the taxpayers make up the difference, thereby becoming the true beneficiaries.
Peace,
mangeorge
People should make a wage based upon the service they can provide. I am against the minimum wage and any other artificial fiscal means of market control.
People with low IQs are far from useless. Most of the dumb folks I know are actually really good at some things, but preposterously poor at everything else. The trick is finding an employer willing to pay you for your talent of drooling continuosly while simultaneously drinking Budweiser, talking on the phone, receiving oral sex from a fat chick and signing your name to little peices of paper. Who would be retarded enough to hire someone like that, though?
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
I don’t think there is any simple solution for this.
Sake, you know this, and you are being purposely full of shit, but the person you described is lazy. He may or may not have a low IQ.
I deal with mentally retarded people in my job. They have various IQ levels, the ones in approx. the 75 range often can work, and hold down jobs. One guy I know works very hard, and is very focused and diligent about earning money. Another guy has about the same IQ, but he has a different personality. He cannot keep a job too long because he is too busy talking and bragging, and also masturbating in the bathroom. Different personalities, approx. same IQ.
An IQ of 75 is pretty low, and I know we are not talking about that. I think that there is more to how much a person earns, how far they can go in the world, than IQ. So that makes it even harder to quantify who is really working up to their potential, and who can do no better.
Yosemitebabe:
[quoteSake, you know this, and you are being purposely full of shit, but the person you described is lazy. He may or may not have a low IQ.[/quote]
The person Sake was describing is President.
Pam, as a retired business owner, let me just say that your idea, though very altruistic, is totally unworkable. It would just put alot of workers on the street. Employers cannot pay high wages to those who cannot produce enough for the company to warrant the high wage. And many in that category do not or cannot work full-time hours.
You may have noticed that engineers, neurosurgeons, and high-producing sales people, etc., get paid more than retail clerks or mall sweepers. There is a good reason.
What you advocate is communism, where all get paid the same. Huh, you say? Well, think about it. You can’t pay those who produce the most and those who produce the least the same way. To pay the low-IQ, undereducated and untrained a higher wage, you’d have to pay the high-IQ, highly educated, highly trained, or high producers much less.
Truth be known, this would be a better place if all got paid according to their results or production. If you have a bad problem with a company changing you wrongly, and you complain to the clerk you get on the phone, over and over and over, and still the problem is not resolved, you may get angry. But realize, that clerk gets the same paycheck every payday, whether she helps solve your problem or not. Imagine how much more helpful she would be if the amount in her paycheck reflected how good a job she did!
We should be clearer about what constitutes a living wage. You can make enough to avoid starving to death and freezing to death, have basic medical care, and still have a really piss-poor quality of life. The problem with the group of people we’re discussing (i.e., those terminally stuck in the lowest income brackets by circumstantial reasons) is that there are usually a battery of problems / bad ideas accompanying them. Smoking is absolutely indefensible among the poor from a financial perspective, but in some sense, it’s all they’ve got, since movies and vacations are beyond their grasp.
In other words, is a living wage what a diligent, conscientious person can live on? Or is it what someone can live on if they have about the same financial management skills or just common sense as the rest of us? Keep in mind that the same reasons that keep person X in minimum-wage-land often preclude the kind of financial management that would help them elevate themselves.
A practical living wage will definitely be higher than a theoretical living wage. Which one are you talking about?
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
“You may have noticed that engineers, neurosurgeons, and high-producing sales people, etc., get paid more than retail clerks or mall sweepers. There is a good reason.”
Relates to this;
“I do think that anyone who works at anything should be paid a living wage – enough for basic food, shelter, and medical care”
AuntiePam’s post said nothing about “where all get paid the same”.
And then you offer a solution, “To pay the low-IQ, undereducated and untrained a higher wage, you’d have to pay the high-IQ, highly educated, highly trained, or high producers much less.” Good. Or, charge a fair price for your products/services. There is no job more “productive” than bolting part “A” to part"B". That is, after all, exactly where the money comes from.
I’ve said this before. If you can’t pay your least employees a livable wage, and pay the others a competitive wage, you don’t have a viable company. Why pass the blame for shortcomings of the managers and executives down to the employees?
Someone elsewhere on this forum said “If you can’t make enough money at your job, get one where you can or start your own business”. Well, I say, If you can’t run a business, get a job.
BTW; The “you” in this tirade refers to all those who whine about employees demanding too much, not to Sage in particular.
Peace,
mangeorge
What?!? What?!? Did any of you take Sake’s comment seriously? Really?
For the record, I was far from flaming Sake. He was being a little smart-alecky (see how I cleaned that up here) and I was just commenting on that. I should have said “Full of it” and left off the “sh” at the beginning of it since it seemed to offend some sensibilites. Sheesh.
But I really can’t think that any of your took Sake seriously - do you realy think his comment about people with low IQs has merit? That they all behave like that? (Maybe this description fits the President, though - nebuli, you are right about that!)
Maybe it’s just too early in the day for me to get the joke. Or for the rest of us…
Yes, what would constitute “a living wage”? Pam said, “basic food, shelter and medical care”. What is basic? What about transportation? And clothing. Shelter must include utilities. And the infernal miscellaneous! Medical costs for someone with medical problems which is often the case with those at the lower rungs of employability, can be very high! And Dental care? And should the “living wage” be for just one, the employee? What if (s)he is the head-of-household for a family of 3, 4 or 5?
Yes, what is “a living wage”? With an answer to this question, we may be able to figure this out.
