I always use 2000 hours in a work year, because that’s easier to do in my head. The correct number is supposed to be like 2082 or something. But I think that’s all 52 weeks…
That’d be $21.61/hr.
If you use 2k straight, then it’s $22.50/hr. Given that even minimum wage workers tend to get some holidays (those who aren’t retail anyway), it’s probably closer to this.
I’m not sure I understand the obsession with minimum wage laws. I suspect they result in more poverty not less. While it is true that the government can compel companies to pay some minimum rate, and that few if any attempt to pay lower unreported wages… short of a far larger set of constraints on behavior this will only create all sorts of bizarre and perverse incentives.
If a company pays five people at barely-livable wages with minimum wage A, they won’t pay those same five people more-livable wages at (higher) minimum wage B. Instead, they’ll fire two of them, and demand the other three do more work. You’ve just improved the scenario for those three, while making the other two more destitute. Large corporations will just eat the cost, likely (they can afford it), and doing so relives some pressure for unionization anyway, so it might be a bargain.
So we’re talking about small (even tiny) businesses, for which unionization pressures are non-existent, or who will deal with it in such a way that the business is tanked and all five lose their jobs. Sure, maybe the owner of that small business is punished too, and if that’s what you’re going for then do a little victory dance, you’ve succeeded. But now we’ve even more who are destitute, not fewer.
I’m with you-- I have a hard time feeling bad for business owners and I’m far more concerned with employees being able to earn a livable wage. $18.75/hour is still far from a living wage and the expectation that anyone should be willing to work with zero vacation, paid or unpaid, is absurd and out of touch.
I used to be of the mindset that I should make a conscious effort to buy local but in the recent years I’ve realized that many business owners who don’t pay their employees a livable wage just use "buy local" as a way to mislead consumers into thinking they’re helping out working class people when in reality, they’re unknowingly just making business owners wealthier than they already are.
Even small business owners whose businesses are suffering… I really have a hard time feeling bad for them given the fact that it’s their employees who are suffering far more. If the business ultimately fails, again I don’t see why it makes sense to feel more empathy for a failed business owner than their employees, as both parties are now unemployed and the business owner most likely owns assets at least worth something while the employees likely own little to no assets.
All these people talking about how minimum wage does little good… it’s baffling to read their comments because it’s almost as if they’ve never made a genuine effort to stop and think about how much more exploitation of working class people there would be if we got rid of minimum wage. This is the kind of mindset that glorifies child labor and sells it as an experience that builds character, while disingenuously leaving out all the negative aspects of child labor that ultimately come to a country’s detriment more than benefit.
I think you may want to read up in leftist critique of minimum wage laws. In many cases they result in less pay for employees especially when taking inflation over time into account.
Care to point me in the directions of some materials you’d like me to read? Most leftist opinions I’ve observed over the years are quite clearly in favor of increased minimum wage that keeps up with inflation, so I’m very curious to know what leftist critiques you’re referring to. It seems to me that conservatives and neoliberals are in favor of keeping minimum wage low and not in line with inflation.
Given the fact that the majority of developed nations switch back and fourth between conservative and neoliberal governments who have both promoted minimum wage rates that are far below livable wages and don’t take inflation into account, I have a hard time believing what you’re saying but again, I’m open to reading any materials you’d suggest.
That is mostly a more recent and US based problem where unions are incredibly weak. The sources I know are not in English and come from countries with strong unions.
But think about it this way: leftist politics should not mandate wages but rather ensure no one is forced to take any job less they starve. Once that is ensured through a basic social safety net, it is much better to have experienced industry insiders negotiate appropriate wages on a regular basis as collective agreements.
I get what you’re saying, but I think you’re missing my point. The USA is not like European countries such as Sweden. For where the USA is at right now, it makes sense to focus on minimum wage being a livable wage and that doesn’t preclude efforts for strong unionization and collective bargaining being made.
No minimum wage in the USA would not at all be like no minimum wage in Sweden. It’s a completely different situation and to compare the USA with European countries that don’t have minimum wage but do have strong unions, meaningful collective bargaining and high taxation that gives rise to the average working class person not having to deal with the struggles that the average American working class person has to deal with.
If minimum wage was abolished in the USA or it wasn’t prioritized, all you’d end up with is workers being even more exploited and having far less time to organize strong unions-- which is exactly what’s happening in the USA right now with minimum wage being as low as it is.
The US is sort off in a lose-lose situation. Yes in the short run abolishing minimum wages would be bad, but the situation partially got so bad because employees rights were systematically neglected and even dismantled while putting a barely livable minimum wage in pace to keep people from rioting.
IMHO efforts that focus on increasing minimum wages are in anything but the most short term view wasted (maybe even counter productive) and play into the hands of the rich who ultimately control the government in most places. Yes you can also try to push a bit in that direction, but other efforts like unionization and improving the social security net are much more likely to have a lasting impact.
First, even someone like myself who find the idea of minimum wage laughable wouldn’t really propose abolishing the minimum wage. Just let it sort of be forgotten.
That avoids the worst of the problems that might come from abandoning it. And truly, if we could run the experiment and see the results, I have my doubts that we’d find people offering 25¢/hr… sure, there’d be trolls out there claiming it to rile people up, but you can’t get work out of anorexically-starved people. The fast food place near my office has “$14/hr” emblazoned on their marquee right now. Minimum wage is already moot almost everywhere, even without it being raised.
But there’s just no reason to run that experiment, and if you think it could end in disaster, I see no reason to demand that out of spite.
What we might do instead (and the libertarian in me objects strongly just on principle) is to focus on some sort of restrictions for offering part-time work. Can’t prohibit it entirely (there may be situations where they only need 20 hours of labor per week), but we could make sure that they’re not doing it just to dick with people and keep their paychecks low. That seems to me like it’s much closer to an unfair bargaining tactic than it is to anything reasonably needed for them to conduct business.
Indeed not literally “not starve”, although in some very poor countries that might be the best one can achieve realistically.
Anything that gives a person the relatively comfortable choice of not taking a job for some time. What that is and how long is context/country specific, but it is important to make sure that people have a reasonably solid bargaining position when negotiating with potential employers. And even better when they can do so collectively with the help of unions or similar professional organizations.
Why do people like you treat leftism like it’s the boogeyman? Relax, there’s plenty of room for critiquing of minimum wage in leftist spaces-- I get the feeling you’re just exaggerating just because your flawed points have been refuted in leftist spaces with counterpoints that you disagree with.
You’re allowed to spout whatever opinions you want but even here in this thread, I don’t see a single person telling you that your critique isn’t allowed. Nobody implied that you want to be a slaveholder, someone just pointed out that your flawed reasoning is the same flawed reasoning that gave rise to slavery and child labor.
Again, no one here has told you that you aren’t allowed to critique minimum wage-- you’re making up a boogeyman to self-validate your false narrative. This website itself was created for "leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts” and you’re here critiquing minimum wage without anyone telling you that’s not allowed. Seriously, what are you even talking about?
Out of curiosity, have you ever worked 52 weeks in a row?
I don’t see why it makes sense to feel more empathy for a failed business owner than their employees, as both parties are now unemployed and the business owner most likely owns assets at least worth something while the employees likely own little to no assets.
I won’t tell you which you should feel more sorry for. It’s a pointless exercise. You feeling sorry for them won’t help them.
But if you supported the policy which caused them to be destitute, aren’t you the problem?
It’s this sort of magical thinking that if you raise the minimum wage by statute, that somehow everyone who is currently paid less than that will suddenly be paid more… it’s unrealistic. Fewer people will be employed at that higher rate, and the others will just have nothing.
What are you going to do about them? Do they just have to take one for the team?
I don’t recall saying or implying that me feeling sorry for employees more than business owners will help them. I do however believe feeling sorry for them is a step in the direction of understanding the struggles of employees, which is important to me as I’m interested in helping the majority of working class people.
But if you supported the policy which caused them to be destitute, aren’t you the problem?
What policy are you referring to, minimum wage? If so, are you really of the belief that abolishing minimum wage wouldn’t result in a sharp increase working class people struggling to make a living wage?
It’s this sort of magical thinking that if you raise the minimum wage by statute, that somehow everyone who is currently paid less than that will suddenly be paid more… it’s unrealistic. Fewer people will be employed at that higher rate, and the others will just have nothing.
So let me ask you… you really are of the belief that business owners who staunchly oppose minimum wage are doing so in part because they want what’s best for their employees? Come on, and you’re accusing me of “magical thinking”? Why do you think corporations are largely opposed to increases in minimum wage? Given the enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, something tells me these people can take one for their team and pay employees a livable wage.
By the same logic, why shouldn’t people be able to sell themselves into indentured servitude, right?
As I understand “indentured servitude”, I’m pretty sure they already can. Certainly not slavery, the terms of such a contract are unconscionable, but the idea that you’d be contracted to labor for some temporary period for food, lodging, and passage doesn’t seem to violate contract law as I understand it.
Though, that said, how does your rhetorical question follow from my logic? I’m not seeing the connection here. My logic is that minimum wage laws have an effect contrary towards that which you’re trying to achieve. Or at least, towards that which most people believe you’re trying to achieve.
Clearly, you want small businesses to die, and for gigantic corporations to flourish, while some large fraction of the population starves because now they’re out of jobs. I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on it before.
I’m not really grasping this… as in they want no minimum wage?
I don’t see the problem here, say minimum wage is 30 an hour (crazy excessive hypothetical one), The union can just as easilly negotiate that Much easier safer jobs are 30/hr, which means our guys aren’t going to take a cent under 50/hr.
Or, because minimum wage is now $30, most of the people working at the non-unionized corporate plant say “but do we really need a union, it’s $30/hr”.
It relieves unionization pressure, and I don’t see how it couldn’t not do so.
You’d have to operate under some really weird mental model of how sociology works to believe that this isn’t the case.
I’m not a big union proponent, I and my family have only ever had bad experiences with them. I do not know if they really are ambivalent on minimum wage, I will take poVoq’s word for it. But I can certainly understand how, if they have intelligent leaders, they might be less than enthusiastic about it.
I always use 2000 hours in a work year, because that’s easier to do in my head. The correct number is supposed to be like 2082 or something. But I think that’s all 52 weeks…
That’d be $21.61/hr.
If you use 2k straight, then it’s $22.50/hr. Given that even minimum wage workers tend to get some holidays (those who aren’t retail anyway), it’s probably closer to this.
I’m not sure I understand the obsession with minimum wage laws. I suspect they result in more poverty not less. While it is true that the government can compel companies to pay some minimum rate, and that few if any attempt to pay lower unreported wages… short of a far larger set of constraints on behavior this will only create all sorts of bizarre and perverse incentives.
If a company pays five people at barely-livable wages with minimum wage A, they won’t pay those same five people more-livable wages at (higher) minimum wage B. Instead, they’ll fire two of them, and demand the other three do more work. You’ve just improved the scenario for those three, while making the other two more destitute. Large corporations will just eat the cost, likely (they can afford it), and doing so relives some pressure for unionization anyway, so it might be a bargain.
So we’re talking about small (even tiny) businesses, for which unionization pressures are non-existent, or who will deal with it in such a way that the business is tanked and all five lose their jobs. Sure, maybe the owner of that small business is punished too, and if that’s what you’re going for then do a little victory dance, you’ve succeeded. But now we’ve even more who are destitute, not fewer.
By the same logic, why shouldn’t people be able to sell themselves into indentured servitude, right?
Really, the abolition of slavery is continuing to hurt small businesses to this day. Won’t someone think of the small business owners?! 🤮
I’m with you-- I have a hard time feeling bad for business owners and I’m far more concerned with employees being able to earn a livable wage. $18.75/hour is still far from a living wage and the expectation that anyone should be willing to work with zero vacation, paid or unpaid, is absurd and out of touch.
I used to be of the mindset that I should make a conscious effort to buy local but in the recent years I’ve realized that many business owners who don’t pay their employees a livable wage just use "buy local" as a way to mislead consumers into thinking they’re helping out working class people when in reality, they’re unknowingly just making business owners wealthier than they already are.
Even small business owners whose businesses are suffering… I really have a hard time feeling bad for them given the fact that it’s their employees who are suffering far more. If the business ultimately fails, again I don’t see why it makes sense to feel more empathy for a failed business owner than their employees, as both parties are now unemployed and the business owner most likely owns assets at least worth something while the employees likely own little to no assets.
All these people talking about how minimum wage does little good… it’s baffling to read their comments because it’s almost as if they’ve never made a genuine effort to stop and think about how much more exploitation of working class people there would be if we got rid of minimum wage. This is the kind of mindset that glorifies child labor and sells it as an experience that builds character, while disingenuously leaving out all the negative aspects of child labor that ultimately come to a country’s detriment more than benefit.
I think you may want to read up in leftist critique of minimum wage laws. In many cases they result in less pay for employees especially when taking inflation over time into account.
Care to point me in the directions of some materials you’d like me to read? Most leftist opinions I’ve observed over the years are quite clearly in favor of increased minimum wage that keeps up with inflation, so I’m very curious to know what leftist critiques you’re referring to. It seems to me that conservatives and neoliberals are in favor of keeping minimum wage low and not in line with inflation.
Given the fact that the majority of developed nations switch back and fourth between conservative and neoliberal governments who have both promoted minimum wage rates that are far below livable wages and don’t take inflation into account, I have a hard time believing what you’re saying but again, I’m open to reading any materials you’d suggest.
That is mostly a more recent and US based problem where unions are incredibly weak. The sources I know are not in English and come from countries with strong unions.
But think about it this way: leftist politics should not mandate wages but rather ensure no one is forced to take any job less they starve. Once that is ensured through a basic social safety net, it is much better to have experienced industry insiders negotiate appropriate wages on a regular basis as collective agreements.
I get what you’re saying, but I think you’re missing my point. The USA is not like European countries such as Sweden. For where the USA is at right now, it makes sense to focus on minimum wage being a livable wage and that doesn’t preclude efforts for strong unionization and collective bargaining being made.
No minimum wage in the USA would not at all be like no minimum wage in Sweden. It’s a completely different situation and to compare the USA with European countries that don’t have minimum wage but do have strong unions, meaningful collective bargaining and high taxation that gives rise to the average working class person not having to deal with the struggles that the average American working class person has to deal with.
If minimum wage was abolished in the USA or it wasn’t prioritized, all you’d end up with is workers being even more exploited and having far less time to organize strong unions-- which is exactly what’s happening in the USA right now with minimum wage being as low as it is.
The US is sort off in a lose-lose situation. Yes in the short run abolishing minimum wages would be bad, but the situation partially got so bad because employees rights were systematically neglected and even dismantled while putting a barely livable minimum wage in pace to keep people from rioting.
IMHO efforts that focus on increasing minimum wages are in anything but the most short term view wasted (maybe even counter productive) and play into the hands of the rich who ultimately control the government in most places. Yes you can also try to push a bit in that direction, but other efforts like unionization and improving the social security net are much more likely to have a lasting impact.
First, even someone like myself who find the idea of minimum wage laughable wouldn’t really propose abolishing the minimum wage. Just let it sort of be forgotten.
That avoids the worst of the problems that might come from abandoning it. And truly, if we could run the experiment and see the results, I have my doubts that we’d find people offering 25¢/hr… sure, there’d be trolls out there claiming it to rile people up, but you can’t get work out of anorexically-starved people. The fast food place near my office has “$14/hr” emblazoned on their marquee right now. Minimum wage is already moot almost everywhere, even without it being raised.
But there’s just no reason to run that experiment, and if you think it could end in disaster, I see no reason to demand that out of spite.
What we might do instead (and the libertarian in me objects strongly just on principle) is to focus on some sort of restrictions for offering part-time work. Can’t prohibit it entirely (there may be situations where they only need 20 hours of labor per week), but we could make sure that they’re not doing it just to dick with people and keep their paychecks low. That seems to me like it’s much closer to an unfair bargaining tactic than it is to anything reasonably needed for them to conduct business.
Is that literally “less they starve”, or a broader “provides basic needs beyond nutrition”?
If the latter, would you mind giving a short overview of what you consider those basic needs to be?
Indeed not literally “not starve”, although in some very poor countries that might be the best one can achieve realistically.
Anything that gives a person the relatively comfortable choice of not taking a job for some time. What that is and how long is context/country specific, but it is important to make sure that people have a reasonably solid bargaining position when negotiating with potential employers. And even better when they can do so collectively with the help of unions or similar professional organizations.
Are leftists even allowed to critique it? Or is leftism a religion that has such things baked into its dogma such that questioning it is blasphemy?
I mean, I point out how flawed the idea is, and I have people saying I want my logic implies I want to be a slaveholder or something.
Why do people like you treat leftism like it’s the boogeyman? Relax, there’s plenty of room for critiquing of minimum wage in leftist spaces-- I get the feeling you’re just exaggerating just because your flawed points have been refuted in leftist spaces with counterpoints that you disagree with.
You’re allowed to spout whatever opinions you want but even here in this thread, I don’t see a single person telling you that your critique isn’t allowed. Nobody implied that you want to be a slaveholder, someone just pointed out that your flawed reasoning is the same flawed reasoning that gave rise to slavery and child labor.
Again, no one here has told you that you aren’t allowed to critique minimum wage-- you’re making up a boogeyman to self-validate your false narrative. This website itself was created for "leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts” and you’re here critiquing minimum wage without anyone telling you that’s not allowed. Seriously, what are you even talking about?
Out of curiosity, have you ever worked 52 weeks in a row?
I won’t tell you which you should feel more sorry for. It’s a pointless exercise. You feeling sorry for them won’t help them.
But if you supported the policy which caused them to be destitute, aren’t you the problem?
It’s this sort of magical thinking that if you raise the minimum wage by statute, that somehow everyone who is currently paid less than that will suddenly be paid more… it’s unrealistic. Fewer people will be employed at that higher rate, and the others will just have nothing.
What are you going to do about them? Do they just have to take one for the team?
I don’t recall saying or implying that me feeling sorry for employees more than business owners will help them. I do however believe feeling sorry for them is a step in the direction of understanding the struggles of employees, which is important to me as I’m interested in helping the majority of working class people.
What policy are you referring to, minimum wage? If so, are you really of the belief that abolishing minimum wage wouldn’t result in a sharp increase working class people struggling to make a living wage?
So let me ask you… you really are of the belief that business owners who staunchly oppose minimum wage are doing so in part because they want what’s best for their employees? Come on, and you’re accusing me of “magical thinking”? Why do you think corporations are largely opposed to increases in minimum wage? Given the enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, something tells me these people can take one for their team and pay employees a livable wage.
As I understand “indentured servitude”, I’m pretty sure they already can. Certainly not slavery, the terms of such a contract are unconscionable, but the idea that you’d be contracted to labor for some temporary period for food, lodging, and passage doesn’t seem to violate contract law as I understand it.
Though, that said, how does your rhetorical question follow from my logic? I’m not seeing the connection here. My logic is that minimum wage laws have an effect contrary towards that which you’re trying to achieve. Or at least, towards that which most people believe you’re trying to achieve.
Clearly, you want small businesses to die, and for gigantic corporations to flourish, while some large fraction of the population starves because now they’re out of jobs. I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on it before.
Uhmm, while I don’t fully agree with the original comment, I would like to point out that most unions are also anti-minimum wage.
In general minimum wage does little good and is only worth it if the situation is so bad that unions can not negotiate at all.
I’m not really grasping this… as in they want no minimum wage?
I don’t see the problem here, say minimum wage is 30 an hour (crazy excessive hypothetical one), The union can just as easilly negotiate that Much easier safer jobs are 30/hr, which means our guys aren’t going to take a cent under 50/hr.
Or, because minimum wage is now $30, most of the people working at the non-unionized corporate plant say “but do we really need a union, it’s $30/hr”.
It relieves unionization pressure, and I don’t see how it couldn’t not do so.
You’d have to operate under some really weird mental model of how sociology works to believe that this isn’t the case.
I’m not a big union proponent, I and my family have only ever had bad experiences with them. I do not know if they really are ambivalent on minimum wage, I will take poVoq’s word for it. But I can certainly understand how, if they have intelligent leaders, they might be less than enthusiastic about it.