Defining/Determining "Living Wage"

[DC]

That would be a fine place to start. How large and involved is the beaurocracy involved in running this system, do you know?

i dont really know. but will look if i can find out.

but, those minimal expences are below the minimal wages we start geting from sector to sector.

we still have cases where people dont earn enough to feed their family and they get what they are short from the "Sozialamt", so they meat atleast the minimal expences.

will have a look what this right costs us

 

[Patrick_R]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_Beginnings

Check out Scratch Beginnings



That's more than a LOT of people get to start with. Try starting with the clothes on your back - only - in the current job market - especially in North Carolina, where the tourist industry practically collapsed last year (it's recovering now, thank goodness).

He also failed to mention he started with his health, with public notoriety (his web site), and with labor skills that not everyone possesses.

He's a fraud trying to show he had less than what he actually had.


ETA: He also used welfare to achieve his goal. Generally, libertarians are against the use of welfare. It would be more impressive if he hadn't lived in a shelter, used food stamps, and used a local temp labor agency to find employment - all of which are part of our current 'invasive government'. Under an ideal libertarian government, the shelter and food stamps would not exist.

I can't say the same for the local temp labor agency, but several I have had dealings with claimed to get some support from the government in order to reduce unemployment.

So I take it you will create a welfare system ONLY for those people who have less than $25, no tarp, and are in poor health?

While I disagree that it is necessary that is certainly a more reasonable wellfare state than the one we've got.

 

[Z]

I am very pragmatic:

There are some people that work full time and are *still* entitled to receive additional social security money - even when they are single.

that means, in fact, that I pay taxes to make a profit for whoever employs these people.

To me, that is clearly wrong.

I agree wholeheartedly with this.

If you work full time and are single, you should be making enough to not need any welfare. This is, essentially, a living wage.

Patrick, please consider this point - is it better to pay people enough at a job so that they do not need welfare to survive, and thus eliminate a portion of the welfare taxes needed, or is it better to pay people a lower overall wage, and allow them to use welfare which, ultimately, is paid by taxes anyway?

If the employer cannot afford to pay enough for his employees to survive off of welfare, they shouldn't have that employee at all. Free market system, right? Part of that is managing your wealth and resources sufficiently to be able to afford employees and the associated costs of those employees.

Either way, you'll still pay for them - either directly, by giving them a suitable wage; or indirectly, by paying taxes to cover welfare.

At the moment, we manage this by having everyone over a certain income level pay taxes, so that even those businesses who really can't properly afford their employees can still have them. It could be seen as unfair in several ways:

1) employers who pay their employees enough are being made to pay for employers who don;t;

2) the free market advantage of being able to afford employees is being interfered with by government; those who can't afford employees should fail under a free market system.

Eliminate welfare for full-time employees and raise wages to a sustenance level, and you return free market factors that are currently being reduced or eliminated; plus, you make the employer responsible only for its own employees, rather than everyone else's.

I'd think this would be a clear libertarian goal!

 

[Patrick_R]

Really? Samuel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for his definitive demonstration that they are not.

I guess you know better than the Swedish Academy, then....

I'm not familiar with his work. From what I've seen of game theory attacking the notion of rational actors demonstrates to me that humans can be bad at math and sometimes not that good at judging risk. That doesn't suggest, to me, that they are behaving irrationally just behaving with bad information.

I believe that government has a role to play and helping to make sure proper information is out there: 1) sound money, 2) capitalism, trade and private property 3) information disclosure rules 4) courts to punish fraud etc.

So even if people, on occasion, behave irrationally (and we probably do) I don't see why government has to step in and provide something like health care or a specific wage or a retirement. I think the very provision of these things alters the rational behavior of actors in society encouraging more bad behavior than behavior that would allow them to grow new skills, build wealth, or live a healthy life.

 

[Patrick_R]

People do it all the time for a number of reasons. People take on a job which doesn't give them enough to survive, and they do what they can - usually, welfare, putting off bills, etc. - to reach some minimum level of survival. Usually, it's not enough, so they end up taking a second job or, possibly, turning to crime.

Minimum necessary to survive would be subsistence living. A living wage doesn’t address this. A living wage, as the left defines it, provides an income high enough for people to have a home, decorate it nice, have a tv, cable, vcr/dvd player, some movies, A/C, maybe a car, a computer, a comfy sofa – all the while accepting the trade off that a few people lost their jobs and now are unemployed and worse off than before (raising the minimum wage increases the unemployment of some low-skilled workers. So you may make 97% of them better off at the cost of 3% becoming worse off. You have to be willing to accept that trade off, if you are going to support something like this).

A living wage isn’t about scrapping by, its about getting people to live above their means and putting others out of work to pay for it.

 

[drkitten]

A living wage, as the left defines it, provides an income high enough for people to have a home, decorate it nice, have a tv, cable, vcr/dvd player, some movies, A/C, maybe a car, a computer, a comfy sofa .

And now we get to the "straw man" part of Patrick's Logical Fallacies Parade.

 

[Z]

So I take it you will create a welfare system ONLY for those people who have less than $25, no tarp, and are in poor health?

While I disagree that it is necessary that is certainly a more reasonable wellfare state than the one we've got.

No, I'd create a welfare system for people who are not working out of no fault of their own, for people who can only obtain a living-wage job but have families, for people with special needs (medical/mental), for people working part-time (for a good reason, such as school), for students... basically, for anyone who cannot survive on a living-wage job through no fault of their own.

I would also structure it so that at no point would your benefits surpass a sustenance level - so while welfare would help a living-wage single mother care for her three kids, it would only just do so. When her wage increases by fifty cents, her welfare would decrease by twenty-five cents (I was tempted to say by fifty cents, but we should allow some personal incentive for doing better at work - if you can only ever hope to maintain sustenance level, your motivation to succeed is reduced).

My point in the above is that your idol there didn't make it on purely libertarian values; he made it on welfare. Remove that and THEN let's see how well he'd do.

 

[Z]

Minimum necessary to survive would be subsistence living. A living wage doesn’t address this. A living wage, as the left defines it, provides an income high enough for people to have a home, decorate it nice, have a tv, cable, vcr/dvd player, some movies, A/C, maybe a car, a computer, a comfy sofa – all the while accepting the trade off that a few people lost their jobs and now are unemployed and worse off than before (raising the minimum wage increases the unemployment of some low-skilled workers. So you may make 97% of them better off at the cost of 3% becoming worse off. You have to be willing to accept that trade off, if you are going to support something like this).

A living wage isn’t about scrapping by, its about getting people to live above their means and putting others out of work to pay for it.

I believe everyone here discussing a living wage defined it quite differently. In fact, reviewing the thread, I've seen a single mention of 'possibly' allowing for entertainment.

Your version of the living wage here, which may or may not address how the 'left' views it, is a straw man with regards to this discussion. It doesn't even begin to touch on my own definition of 'living wage'.

A living wage is about scraping by. Read my definition and tell me what you think of what I'm arguing here.

And please note, the title of this thread is 'Defining/Determining Living Wage'. We are doing this, but you are nay-saying a definition that has not been used here.

 

[drkitten]

I'm not familiar with his work. From what I've seen of game theory attacking the notion of rational actors demonstrates to me that humans can be bad at math and sometimes not that good at judging risk. That doesn't suggest, to me, that they are behaving irrationally .

I guess you know better than the Swedish Academy, then.

And you have a novel definition of "irrationally" that is not shared by any other economist in the world. Rather like your definition of "public good."

Once again, Libertarianism fails utterly.

 

[Z]

I will admit error, by the way, in that I was unaware that the general use of 'living wage' meant 'to raise the poor into a higher class'. But then, we weren't asked how to determine what others defined as the living wage; we were asked to define living wage ourselves.

To me, living wage = subsistence wage.

If you want to rise above subsistence, get promoted or find better work.

The resulting rise of unemployment would be an acceptable trade-off for the improvement of living wages. Welfare which currently is given to minimum-wage (and often higher!) workers would instead be reassigned to the new unemployed, and I believe the overall welfare burden would decrease dramatically - especially if those earning at least full-time living wage did not qualify for welfare.

Those employers who could no longer afford employees would fail, and this is in accordance with free market systems. We don't see employers whining because they just can't afford new printers or new factory equipment; we see them fail and close. That should apply to employees as much as to assembly belts.

 

[DC]

When a product requiers underpayd workers, it is sold to cheap. rise the prise for the product, you are not able to make it cheaper.

 

[D'rok]

People are, as far as I can tell rational actors. We take the information that is available and try to make the best choice of ourselves using that information.

Remind yourself that you said this the next time you go down to the pub for a few and end up "rationally" having a few too many.

Or, seeing as how your location is Sin City, pop into a casino and watch all the rational economic activity by rational gamblers there.

 

[leftysergeant]

People are, as far as I can tell rational actors. We take the information that is available and try to make the best choice of ourselves using that information.

So yes, a living wage is the wage you are willing to accept.

Bull flops. Sometimes you have to take a crap job that does not pay enough to live decently on just to to keep from going deeper in the hole.

Bear in mind , I said a "decent" day's provisions.

That implies that you can set aside at least some sort of cushion and save something for eventual retirement.

People who are opposed to both a minimum wage and Social Security ought to be driven out into the wilderness to make room for fully evolved humans.

 

[Patrick_R]

Bull flops. Sometimes you have to take a crap job that does not pay enough to live decently on just to to keep from going deeper in the hole.

Bear in mind , I said a "decent" day's provisions.

That implies that you can set aside at least some sort of cushion and save something for eventual retirement.

People who are opposed to both a minimum wage and Social Security ought to be driven out into the wilderness to make room for fully evolved humans.

So "decent" wage means you want to put a gun to someone's head so you can maintain your current standard of living even though no body is actually willing to pay you that much for your service?

 

[Patrick_R]

Remind yourself that you said this the next time you go down to the pub for a few and end up "rationally" having a few too many.

so you're advocating a welfare state for drunks?

Or, seeing as how your location is Sin City, pop into a casino and watch all the rational economic activity by rational gamblers there.

or a welfare state for people who aren't good at math?

 

[Patrick_R]

When a product requiers underpayd workers, it is sold to cheap. rise the prise for the product, you are not able to make it cheaper.

underpaid? You mean paid less than you're willing to work. That may be paid just fine for them. It may even be more pay than the next alternative.

 

[drkitten]

so you're advocating [...] a welfare state for people who aren't good at math?

Re-read your Kahneman. To a first approximation, no one is good at math.

 

[elbe]

Or maybe it was intended to point out that humans aren't particularly rational animals. We can be, sure, but we often make decisions that are not in our own best interests.

 

[DC]

underpaid? You mean paid less than you're willing to work. That may be paid just fine for them. It may even be more pay than the next alternative.

no, i ment, payd less than he needs to come up for all the minimal expences one faces in our society.

We dont want to have working people living in cardboard boxes or under one of our bridges. Hell, we dont even want workless people having to do that. Not even Junkies.

 

[Patrick_R]

no, i ment, payd less than he needs to come up for all the minimal expences one faces in our society.

We dont want to have working people living in cardboard boxes or under one of our bridges. Hell, we dont even want workless people having to do that. Not even Junkies.

...and that would be the wage people are willing to accept. You wouldnt work for a wage that made you worse off from the alternatives would you?

And seriously now. Are you willing to put people out of work to help others? Lets say the implementation of a living wage helps out 99% of workers and forces 1% of people out of a job. Is that acceptable to you? It is not to me.