25% of workers in the electronics industry in Malaysia are “forced labor”, i.e., slaves.
Apparently a matter of contention with the TPP is that Malaysia is opposed to laws against human trafficking, i.e., the slave trade, and the White House is supporting Malaysia.
Please forgive my lack of understanding, but how exactly does a minimum wage give an employee an out?
Well… yea… a little.
I submit that a legally mandated minimum wage only empowers this leverage. An employer only need to prove that it satisfies an arbitrary wage requirement.
In the same way that any social norm gives you a way out.
Instead of a salary negotiation, the minimum wage gives an employer/employee a working number that does not favor the employee.
We’ve already shown here that minimum wage is insufficient for a humane and prudent standard of living.
Yet you keep saying that if there were no minimum wage, somehow things would get better, even though we know for a fact that corporations will CERTAINLY pay less and enhance their profitability if they can.
You make no sense.
The only case I can see for getting rid of minimum wage would be replacing it with something empirically better. Like a basic income.
You can talk a blue streak about how minimum wage is arbitrary, but the fact is, if it didn’t exist, then there’d be no bottom to how badly a corporation could mistreat its slaves.
Nor would there be any top.
Cant you see? A legally mandated minimum wage is the legal, absolute minimum that your hypothetical evil corporation has to pay. A hypothetical prospective employee understands this and is hobbled but this number becomes a ‘standard’.
In the absence of such a legally mandated number then it become a matter of negotiation.
There already is no top. If there were a top, then CEOs probably wouldn’t be making hundreds to thousands times more than their least-paid employees while working less.
It already is a negotiation. Today it goes like this:
HR manager: “I can pay you minimum wage.” ($9.75/hr for the sake of argument. I live in Washington State)
Prospective employee: “How about $12/hr and I’ll forgo your health insurance plan?”
HR manager: “There’s 60 other people who can do the job for 9.75/hr, and won’t ask me to do extra paperwork to prevent automatic enrollment in the health insurance plan. I’ll hire someone else instead.”
Now let’s see how it goes with no minimum wage:
HR manager: “I can pay you nothing. But you will get 2 free meals a day.”
Prospective employee: “I’d rather get paid in money.”
HR manager: “There’s 60 other people willing to work for literal peanuts. Get out of my office.”
Your idea that a corporation will negotiate depends on a it valuing an individual’s talent and ability. How delusional. No corporation values any employees lower than the C-level. If they did, our middle class wouldn’t be shrinking at a neck breaking pace.
Why would it change? How would allowing companies to pay less than they do now give a prospective employee more power? I can see only downsides for the less powerful party (the employee, in case you’re confused), and upsides for the more powerful party.
Please explain what mechanism would compel a corporation to pay the same or better if they’re no longer forced to pay people anything? It’s not like someone searching for a minimum wage job has leverage in the first place. How would eliminating minimum wage in itself empower an employee? What would that change do to give an employee an advantage negotiating that they don’t already have now?
If you can’t answer that, then you’re entirely arguing on faith. Much like like the people who already fucked over our economy. I’d rather use logic and evidence since that works better than chance.
By bringing on the revolution all the sooner?
Back in the 60’s a full time minimum wage worker could afford a small home and a new car every 5 years in most places. Source: talking to old people.
Your point seems to be that people need more bootstraps, not that our society is too expensive for many people. If only people would learn a “skilled trade”, they could get better employment, ignoring the possible barriers to entry for numerous people. Plus, what happens when those skilled jobs become a flooded market - well, then you have a “buyer’s Market” and the wages for those jobs are going to tank.
Likewise, you seem to consider “unskilled” labor isn’t necessary labor in our society, which it is… Ever watch Mike Rowe’s program Dirty Jobs? While some of those jobs are indeed “skilled” labor, many aren’t. But they are honorable work that, as he puts it, “make civilized life possible for the rest of us.”
Many who work minimum wage are not teenagers making pocket money or saving for school. There (with teenagers, I mean) it’s easy to say “live in a crap hole apartment” (which is some cities, no longer exist at an affordable rate - see for example:http://www.worstroom.com/) or get a room mate. They don’t have kids to support so they don’t need to work 80 hours a week just to get the basics. But many of the people working minimum wage jobs have much less options because they are grown adults.
Being able to live with some dignity shouldn’t be dictated by how much money you have. Everyone should get a chance to live with dignity, no matter what their skill level.
And the second a non-unionized worker attempts to negotiate, in this current labor market, what do you think will happen? The employer has a line out the door of people looking for some work. They’ll shit-can the guy attempting to negotiate and go the next person on the list.
Then employers would have to face market prices
Except for unskilled labor it’s a buyers market.
And since I pay attention to tech news I see more and more of a lot of both unskilled and skilled labor getting ready to be replaced by robots. Minimum wage for the next generation of humans is going to have to shift to minimum guaranteed income as we all can’t be employed serving each other lattes and salads. Heck I think we are already starting to see this.
Mind you I think it is good that robots will do this work but it is going to be a major PITA for western protestant work ethic types when there is no more busy work for everyone.
I was going to ask you to explain how this provides the employee with any benefit, but you’ve studiously avoided responding to several other people who have asked the same question, so I won’t waste any more of your time soliciting a response from you on a topic you’re clearly evading.
Hey, I was reading an LA-local blog the other day where the writer was ranting that “The Rent’s Too Damn High!” by comparing current Santa Monica apartment prices to the amount that the characters in Three’s Company supposedly paid for their pad.
Because, apparently, an offhand reference to a fictional apartment in a TV sitcom was the best historical documentation they could find.
Without, like, you know, doing a bunch of work and stuff.
Sitcom apartments tend to be cheaper just because each room only includes three walls.
They’re not even real humans. And among those, are those who are not even real Americans, and they should be rounded up, shot and shipped home, because they are the ones ruining it for the true Americans.
Sure. I’m no policymaker, but I think that Warrens ideas on lowering student loan rates is a great start. Sanders has been talking about making college free, something I certainly support. Hell, even the president publicly flirts with the same ideas when he’s pandering to his base.
90 hours/week comes off as hyperbole, and this study makes some dubious assumptions deriving these kinds of figures. For example, I know from personal experience that living in places like SF or NY means spending a lot more than 30% of your income on housing. College towns, however, tend to be much more affordable by comparison, and they also happen to be where I’m suggesting low income people cluster to for an education.
Anyway make a rebuttal if you’d like, discussion is what this site is here for.
If you want to earn money, you have to do something that most people either cant do, or dont want to do. Your tv show example falls in the latter category, and theres a really good chance that the people working those jobs make more than you probably think.
The problem is that giving everyone more money doesn’t mean that they can all now afford a 1 bedroom apartment, it just means that a 1 bedroom apartment is now more expensive. The way to lower the cost of housing is to increase the supply, and thats where the focus ought to be. I read somewhere that we have more foreclosed homes sitting empty in the US than we have homeless people. Seems to me that harnessing those properties, renovating them, and putting them to use would generate work and do more to alleviate housing issues than any minimum wage manipulation would.
If you’re not willing to raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation you might as well not have one at all. Inflation happens with or without a minimum wage increase. It’s not like we’d all still be paying 1930s prices for everything if Congress had let the minimum wage stay at 25 cents an hour.
