There are at least two errors in this summary, one trivial, the other fundamental. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find these errors.
So. What is so precious about that, or any other arbitrary level?
If the starting point was $0, do you think that there would be no bargaining? Or that skills, experience, need and aptitude would cease being important? By removing the MW you actually increase bargaining, which is a good thing for individuals.
No beginning wage is permanent. What’s different if you have a MW as opposed to not?
The real heart of the difference is that with the MW, an employer can use the MW as a starting point and then add on more money as he has to. Without a MW the bargaining still happens, but without an arbitrary bar. But this gets away form the question in the OP. Whatever price an employer is currently willing to pay to get a job done, why can’t an individual make himself more attractive by lowering what he would charge. This happens all the time in the world once you get past the MW.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. If a company needs 20 workers to do a job, but bad times make playing for them untenable, then all he can do is cut workers and hope the reduced number can still get the job done. Without a MW, he can reduce all wages and not fire anyone. How is your scenario better for the economy or the workers, some of whom will be let go?
As you may have heard, the Depression is over and laws have rendered the abuses you allude to a moot problem.
If there was no MW, how in the world is an employee making $$35,000 prevented from bargaining his way to a higher wage? That makes no sense.
And as I’m sure you know, Ford raised his wages way above the average because it benefited his company by giving him better workers and a steady stream off them. So, thanks for bringing him up. He could have paid people way less—hell even $0 if someone was willing—but he didn’t. That is proof positive that a MW is not necessary top get employers to pay people a penny an hour. And if we didn’t have the MW now, we’d have a bunch more examples.
I’m not opposed to government intervention generally. I just think that the MW is not helpful. I believe that without it more people would be making more money more quickly. It also strips people of one of the greatest tools they have, regardless of the job or where they are on the economic scale: initiative. If someone has the initiative to work harder for less money in order to improve his lot, who the hell are you—or anyone—to stand in his way?
[QUOTE=magellan01]
So. What is so precious about that, or any other arbitrary level?
[/QUOTE]
Why don’t you look up the state of labour (particularly manual or otherwise easily interchangeable labour) prior to its introduction, and get back to us ?
No, you don’t. You only remove the lower bar of bargaining and opens up even-less-than-current-less-than-living-wage. Which can only be bad for individuals. Now the bargaining simply happens strictly above a threshold. The ability of individuals to bargain, or their incentives to do so haven’t changed one bit.
Because it’s a cutthroat race to the bottom among the poorest of the poor that ends in widespread, Dickensian poverty, depression, alcoholism and crime - and even then there’s always someone just that little more desperate that you, willing to work just that little longer, for just that little less gain. Again, bone up on your labour history.
Which, BTW, is also very bad for the service provider in the long run, pretty much like slavery. Ask me if the long term profitability of slavery hampered its spread one iota.
Indeed (well, many of them anyway). Laws like the minimum wage.
It’s rather unfortunate that the actual evidence surrounding the minimum wage does not support this idea. Rather, it points in the other direction.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
What is the “Commie!” version of Godwin’s Law called?
[/QUOTE]
Comrade Godwin’s Historical Inevitability, naturally.
(what the hell is going on with the quote function, anyway ?)
Czarcasm, I’m giving you a warning for this. It is explicitly against the rules of Great Debates to imply that another poster is achieving any form of sexual gratification from their posts/beliefs. Please don’t do it again.
I suppose I should respond to the rest of your post, but the irony content of this line exceeds a year’s worth of RDA. I can’t get past it. Sheer perfection. It epitomizes all the conservative arguments against “liberal” economics and politics. You’ve swallowed your tail and disappeared into a point space. Magnificence.
Fair ruling. Sorry.
As an economist?
At the Heartland Institute.
Can you provide a cite that removing the MW would result in less bargaining? I can’t see how that could be true.
Easier than answering the questions I asked of you, I guess. Can’t say I really blame you. You make a lot of assumptions. Not used to having to defend them, huh?
Also, keep in mind that there are companies that are illegally paying $0 for work right now, with the promise of “maybe you’ll get paid later”, and there’s no bargaining - because that promise of maybe getting paid really is the difference between eating or not for some people.
You’ve given me insight into the fundamental flaw of the right’s argument.
First, abuses not happening because of government regulation does not imply that they won’t happen again once government regulation is lifted. The banking system meltdown is an excellent example. Racism still exists even if people can’t officially act on it.
But here is the flaw. MW workers are basically commodities. In terms of filling a fast food job, you can get a high percentage of people off the street who can do it. Skilled workers like you and me are not commodities. We have a lot more bargaining power.
As we all know, commodity products are subjected to severe market pricing pressure. Companies for the most part would rather not have their products become commodities.
The right’s answer to MW is in part to tell workers to stop being commodities - but not all workers can do that. Sure, you can find anecdotal evidence about the gung-ho fast food worker who eventually owns the store, but those people move out of the population by definition, and are a small part of it. You can’t make a generic cellphone be worth more than other generic cellphones these days by painting it silver.
We don’t care if the prices of DVD players plunge - companies who know how to make them at a profit win, those who don’t get out of the market. But letting the prices of workers plunge means they can’t eat. Workers are not DVD players. If you care about them being able to live, then you need a MW which permits it.
It is to the benefit of companies to delay payment as long as possible. Individuals have little clout in this area. I know from experience that production companies with union contracts pay a lot faster than companies hiring non-union actors.
You really don’t understand the problem here?
Person A: Look! A Bad Thing is happening! I think we can fix it by passing a Law.
Person B: I agree!
Law is passed, Bad Thing goes away.
Persons A&B: Whew! Glad we fixed that!
Fast forward years and years…
magellan01: We don’t need Law anymore! It’s too restrictive!
SDMB: But Law was passed to stop/prevent Bad Thing. We need Law.
magellan01: But Bad Thing isn’t happening and hasn’t happened in years! So Law is unnecessary now!
SDMB: If we repeal Law, what’s to stop Bad Thing from happening again?
Used to be, corporate entities will cold and inhumane, and viewed workers as resources of a human type, but we are long past that now. Nowadays, corporations are solid citizens with a vibrant social awareness and an acute sense of their own obligations to the public at large. I know this because of commercials telling me what a swell place to work Wal Mart is, and how BP just loves, loves, loves sea birds, fish, and that whole ecology thing. Love it to death!
This is a good post.
It’s not against the rules to actually achieve sexual gratification from my posts/beliefs, is it?
I find your posts highly alluring, but prefer to maintain a Freudian repression which reduces the overall effect of this arousal. Your posts excite me…but then I go somewhere and attain full gratification from my coffee cup, as a substitute…
(Okay, maybe not… But I do like your posts!)