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.
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
Which is IMHO a direct result of people deciding to quit en mass partially due to government handouts during the current Pandemic (and some other factors). But that is a good thing as it kinda simulated for a short while how people would behave if there was a proper social safety net in place.
I don’t really see the problem with part-time jobs though. Sure if you have a desolate and easy to exploit population then things like zero hour contracts and such shit is bound to happen. But the problem there isn’t the part-time job, but that people are forced to take such jobs. In any reasonably wealthy society that is just atrocious.
Imagine a scenario where grocery stores sold meals/food/ingredients in portions too small for even a single person. At that point, people would probably be compelled (I like this word better than “forced”) to buy them. Because they were compelled to do so, the prices would rise.
There is a finite amount of food, some of which is packaged in portions-too-small. Because of the less-than-widespread availability of normal-sized portions, some people simply have to get the too-small-portions… it’s all that’s left. Since people buy them at inflated prices, this causes food distributors to package yet more in the too-small-portions, higher profit margin. At some point, some equilibrium is reached, but by the time that happens it’s a large fraction that is sold Too Small™, and even the remainder carries a premium (since many people who don’t want to be gouged are bidding on a limited supply of normal portions).
In such a situation, it would be a legitimate power of government to put a stop to the nonsense and say “you’re not allowed to do that”. It doesn’t do so currently, because there’s no need to do that. For food. That situation is a little far-fetched, it is some local minimum that wouldn’t be easy to reach from where we are now, but would be quite sticky and hard to leave if circumstances ever did drive things there.
I think we’re stuck in that local minima now, for employment. If some business legitimately only needs 15 or 20 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to disallow this. If there is a business that needs 400 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to split that up among 20 part-time workers unless they are trying to manipulate the labor market.
It may be counter-intuitive that it’s possible to manipulate the market that way, and I doubt very much that most of them are perfectly aware that they’re doing it… but so many are partially aware of it. How many stories have I read on r/antiwork where someone’s griping that their manager is fucking with them by giving them zero-hour weeks and so on. Many more offer part-time because it sidesteps the requirement to offer medical insurance.
Since at least the first Bush term, I’ve heard the joke “the economy’s so great, everyone has a job followed up by the second guy saying yeh I know I have two of them”. This is a big deal, even if it doesn’t seem like it. And changing it might make a big difference.
Hmm, yeah that does seem to be a problem in a limited segment of the labour market.
However in Europe I think it is more common that employees want to have partime jobs and for various reasons the employers prefer to only hire full-time.
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.
Which is IMHO a direct result of people deciding to quit en mass partially due to government handouts during the current Pandemic (and some other factors). But that is a good thing as it kinda simulated for a short while how people would behave if there was a proper social safety net in place.
I don’t really see the problem with part-time jobs though. Sure if you have a desolate and easy to exploit population then things like zero hour contracts and such shit is bound to happen. But the problem there isn’t the part-time job, but that people are forced to take such jobs. In any reasonably wealthy society that is just atrocious.
Imagine a scenario where grocery stores sold meals/food/ingredients in portions too small for even a single person. At that point, people would probably be compelled (I like this word better than “forced”) to buy them. Because they were compelled to do so, the prices would rise.
There is a finite amount of food, some of which is packaged in portions-too-small. Because of the less-than-widespread availability of normal-sized portions, some people simply have to get the too-small-portions… it’s all that’s left. Since people buy them at inflated prices, this causes food distributors to package yet more in the too-small-portions, higher profit margin. At some point, some equilibrium is reached, but by the time that happens it’s a large fraction that is sold Too Small™, and even the remainder carries a premium (since many people who don’t want to be gouged are bidding on a limited supply of normal portions).
In such a situation, it would be a legitimate power of government to put a stop to the nonsense and say “you’re not allowed to do that”. It doesn’t do so currently, because there’s no need to do that. For food. That situation is a little far-fetched, it is some local minimum that wouldn’t be easy to reach from where we are now, but would be quite sticky and hard to leave if circumstances ever did drive things there.
I think we’re stuck in that local minima now, for employment. If some business legitimately only needs 15 or 20 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to disallow this. If there is a business that needs 400 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to split that up among 20 part-time workers unless they are trying to manipulate the labor market.
It may be counter-intuitive that it’s possible to manipulate the market that way, and I doubt very much that most of them are perfectly aware that they’re doing it… but so many are partially aware of it. How many stories have I read on r/antiwork where someone’s griping that their manager is fucking with them by giving them zero-hour weeks and so on. Many more offer part-time because it sidesteps the requirement to offer medical insurance.
Since at least the first Bush term, I’ve heard the joke “the economy’s so great, everyone has a job followed up by the second guy saying yeh I know I have two of them”. This is a big deal, even if it doesn’t seem like it. And changing it might make a big difference.
Hmm, yeah that does seem to be a problem in a limited segment of the labour market.
However in Europe I think it is more common that employees want to have partime jobs and for various reasons the employers prefer to only hire full-time.