Re:Say Hello to Full Employment
by Veelox on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @12:31PM
(#17499623)
You have quite a few objections and I will try to address them one at a time.
>With all due respect, that's probably because you're not someone who's having to survive on it.
I have a lot of respect and empathy for those working multiple minimum wage jobs to make sure their children have food to eat. With that said, whenever I consider a policy I start with how I think the world ought to be and then I make considerations for how the world really is. Hence why I say it is probably a good thing that we have the minimum wage.
>I don't believe that population is significant, or more significant than those that do need it to be a living wage.
Data would be nice, but I would guess that the long term gain in increased experience from more jobs happening would be better than the marginal increased income for those with the now higher minimum wage.
>I do not believe that having a non-living wage job would help, because James would still need to survive, and on a non-living wage, he's going to have to supplement that income somewhere.
James would need to live somehow, by keeping the min. wage low, we give James the chance to gain a work history at a low paying job (while he is provided supplemental support) so he can transition to a better paying job.
>A better thing for James would be "Ban the Box" laws, which prevent potential employers from asking about criminal history if it's not relevant to the job.
Ban the Box is a bad idea because it hurts young black men[0]. tl;dr when employers cannot know that a person does or doesn't have a criminal record, they don't hire from the populations with high rates of criminal records (young black men).
>And I don't. Just about every example for why it shouldn't happen comes down to business wants cheap labor. And that's not an argument that I am sympathetic to.
I feel like you missed an important assumption I made, business will never hire a person if the value that labor produces is less than the cost of the wage. The min. wage sets a floor on the value a person and this hurts people that cannot produce more value than the floor. This is different from the fact that a business seeks to minimize costs of which labor is a major one. That is capitalism, some business seek to pay people that absolute minimum they can to cut costs. Others (like QuikTrip and In-N-Out) pay a premium for better workers to get better value.
What is your suggested fix for businesses wanting cheap labor?
>With all due respect, that's probably because you're not someone who's having to survive on it.
I have a lot of respect and empathy for those working multiple minimum wage jobs to make sure their children have food to eat. With that said, whenever I consider a policy I start with how I think the world ought to be and then I make considerations for how the world really is. Hence why I say it is probably a good thing that we have the minimum wage.
>I don't believe that population is significant, or more significant than those that do need it to be a living wage.
Data would be nice, but I would guess that the long term gain in increased experience from more jobs happening would be better than the marginal increased income for those with the now higher minimum wage.
>I do not believe that having a non-living wage job would help, because James would still need to survive, and on a non-living wage, he's going to have to supplement that income somewhere.
James would need to live somehow, by keeping the min. wage low, we give James the chance to gain a work history at a low paying job (while he is provided supplemental support) so he can transition to a better paying job.
>A better thing for James would be "Ban the Box" laws, which prevent potential employers from asking about criminal history if it's not relevant to the job.
Ban the Box is a bad idea because it hurts young black men[0]. tl;dr when employers cannot know that a person does or doesn't have a criminal record, they don't hire from the populations with high rates of criminal records (young black men).
>And I don't. Just about every example for why it shouldn't happen comes down to business wants cheap labor. And that's not an argument that I am sympathetic to.
I feel like you missed an important assumption I made, business will never hire a person if the value that labor produces is less than the cost of the wage. The min. wage sets a floor on the value a person and this hurts people that cannot produce more value than the floor. This is different from the fact that a business seeks to minimize costs of which labor is a major one. That is capitalism, some business seek to pay people that absolute minimum they can to cut costs. Others (like QuikTrip and In-N-Out) pay a premium for better workers to get better value.
What is your suggested fix for businesses wanting cheap labor?
[0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ban-the-box-laws-may-be...