Defining/Determining "Living Wage"

Patrick_R said:
...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.
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How old are you?
How often have you aleady searched for a job while beeing workless?

an underpaid job, so you atleast can halfway fead your kids is better than no job. But with that you still havent got the money to rent an apartment or just a room.
so without social security network you are forced to take the job anyway.

and a humans daylabor is atleast worth the minimum so you can atleast take care of yourself.
peoples are faced with expances they have to pay. and even just an apple has its price.
companys are faced with expances for hiring people that they have to pay. and even a low skilled worker has its price.
 
D'rok said:
You are the master of the non sequitur.
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It follows perfectly.

You seem to suggest we need a welfare state or at least the government provision of goods because people aren't always rational actors.

You then proceed to provide examples which I believe are nothing more than dealing with drunks and people who don't know their math.

Thus I make your point look silly by suggesting that the proper role of the welfare state would be to handle these exceptions. I would be MORE in favor of a welfare state that managed the exceptions of society rather than managing everyone.

Of course, most people who advocate the welfare state they don’t prefer to be efficient and manage the exceptions they want to subject everyone to the same bloody inefficiencies of government management.
 
Dictator Cheney said:
How old are you?
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Does it matter?

How often have you aleady searched for a job while beeing workless?
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2 or 3 times I believe.

an underpaid job, so you atleast can halfway fead your kids is better than no job. But with that you still havent got the money to rent an apartment or just a room.
so without social security network you are forced to take the job anyway.
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No, see you all arent advocating helping people survive, you're advocating to help them keep the things they could cut from their budgets like the booze and the smokes and the tv (whatever)
 
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Patrick_R said:
Does it matter?



2 or 3 times I believe.



No, see you all arent advocating helping people survive, you're advocating to help them keep the things they could cut from their budgets like the booze and the smokes and the tv (whatever)
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Who has? Where has anyone apart from one poster insisted on letting people buy booze and smokes and TV?

This is twice you've attacked a straw man. Please consider and respond.
 
Patrick_R said:
Does it matter?



2 or 3 times I believe.



No, see you all arent advocating helping people survive, you're advocating to help them keep the things they could cut from their budgets like the booze and the smokes and the tv (whatever)
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our Existenzminimum does not involve cigarettes.
just the minimum for food, clothes, soap etc, health insurance, apartment, water and electricity.

no room for extras.

i know you would cut the costs for the health insurance.....
 
The fatal flaw in the idea of a compulsory “living wage” is that ignores a simple mathematical reality. 2+2≠6, not even if you define “2+2=6” as a right, and not even if you get a law passed to establish that “2+2=6”.

In a free market, anything and everything is worth exactly what someone is willing to sell it for, and what someone else is willing to pay for it; and nothing more or less.


If, for example, you define a “living wage” as being $12.00 per hour, and require that every worker, no matter how unskilled or incapable, is entitled to make at least that much; then what you have done is to devalue the currency, defining a dollar as being worth the value of five minutes of work from the least valuable worker.


The idea of a “living wage” assumes that the dollar can thus be devalued, without causing the prices of everything to increase, reflecting the lower value of the dollar.

In the end, the real effect of any form of minimum wage is going to be that the low-end worker can not buy any more with an hour's worth of his wages than he could without the minimum wage. He will earn more dollars for each hour of his labour, but each dollar will buy proportionately less, leaving him no better off.


Our resident Marxist likes to assert that every worker is entitled to “a day's provisions for a day's work”. This ignores the simple fact that not every worker has the skills to produce, in a day, enough value to be worth “a day's provisions”.

The solution is not to force employers to pay more for the labor than it is honestly worth; if there is a solution, it is to open opportunities for those at the low end of the food chain to develop skills and abilities to enable them to perform more valuable labor.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
The fatal flaw in the idea of a compulsory “living wage” is that ignores a simple mathematical reality. 2+2≠6, not even if you define “2+2=6” as a right, and not even if you get a law passed to establish that “2+2=6”.

In a free market, anything and everything is worth exactly what someone is willing to sell it for, and what someone else is willing to pay for it; and nothing more or less.


If, for example, you define a “living wage” as being $12.00 per hour, and require that every worker, no matter how unskilled or incapable, is entitled to make at least that much; then what you have done is to devalue the currency, defining a dollar as being worth the value of five minutes of work from the least valuable worker.


The idea of a “living wage” assumes that the dollar can thus be devalued, without causing the prices of everything to increase, reflecting the lower value of the dollar.

In the end, the real effect of any form of minimum wage is going to be that the low-end worker can not buy any more with an hour's worth of his wages than he could without the minimum wage. He will earn more dollars for each hour of his labour, but each dollar will buy proportionately less, leaving him no better off.


Our resident Marxist likes to assert that every worker is entitled to “a day's provisions for a day's work”. This ignores the simple fact that not every worker has the skills to produce, in a day, enough value to be worth “a day's provisions”.

The solution is not to force employers to pay more for the labor than it is honestly worth; if there is a solution, it is to open opportunities for those at the low end of the food chain to develop skills and abilities to enable them to perform more valuable labor.
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yeah have funn having a day job a night job and just have enough to get food and an apartment and find time and money to furter educate you so you have more chance to get a better job.
 
Patrick_R said:
...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?
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Bull flops. You work for what you can get when you are falling into the hole. When people are facing an ecconomic meltdown on the curtrent scale, entrepreneurs have always tried to use it as an excuse to pay less than the value of labor. So the working man is left with no choice but to work for less than he is worth to keep from going deeper in debt. What they are willing to accept has nothing, in these desperatre times, with what they need to live a decent lifde.

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.
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Take that "put others out of work" stuff out to the garden and work it around with a hoe.

If I can't afford a hamburger, the burger flipper down the street is going to be out of work pretty soon.

I do know one way to guarantee a decent wage witout putting other working people out of work.

Tax the butts off anyone making 200 times what their average worker makes.

If you don't want a minimum wage, I would have to insist on a maximum wage.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
In a free market, anything and everything is worth exactly what someone is willing to sell it for, and what someone else is willing to pay for it; and nothing more or less.
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Fine, but since there is no such thing as a free market it would be useful to conduct this discussion about the real world.

Bob Blaylock said:
The solution is not to force employers to pay more for the labor than it is honestly worth; if there is a solution, it is to open opportunities for those at the low end of the food chain to develop skills and abilities to enable them to perform more valuable labor.
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Who defines "honest worth"? And what are the people on the low end of the food chain to get by on while all this development takes place?
 
leftysergeant said:
I do know one way to guarantee a decent wage witout putting other working people out of work.

Tax the butts off anyone making 200 times what their average worker makes.
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And what if that person is contributing 300 times the output of the average worker -- in befitting the company and society?
 
Dictator Cheney said:
how does one do that?
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I'm not saying it's easy, nor that it hasn't been done without sacrifice, but first, I find it interesting that someone automatically takes the position of such to be unobtainable.

Anyway ... one simply starts a business with saved money (and or borrowed in part) that makes a decent product at a fair price. The business continues through expansion to employ hundreds of people. Each having a wage that allows them a comfortable living. Each employee pays taxes, the owner of said company pays taxes and society as a whole gets the product. Everyone benefits.

Now ... tax the butt out of the owner and he may very well close up shop. Now, just where do all those tax paying employees go? What happens to their paid taxes? What does society get with no more product?

So can you please now answer my orignal question?
 
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elbe said:
Have you considered taking a logic class? You can check with your local community college.

To recap, you said "People are, as far as I can tell rational actors", D'rok provided examples to show that people are not particularly rational, and you followed up with "so you're advocating a welfare state". That would be a non-sequiter in that it does not follow.
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Person A)

1) People are rational actors

Person B)

2) We need a welfare state because People are not rational actors here is why X

Person A)

1) That is an example of people being bad at math, do you advocate a welfare state for those who are bad at math?
 
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Bob Blaylock said:
if there is a solution, it is to open opportunities for those at the low end of the food chain to develop skills and abilities to enable them to perform more valuable labor.
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If you increase the supply of workers with a particular skill set, wouldn't it mean that -- ceteris paribus -- you decrease the price of that particular skill set? Which means that those workers are going to be screwed even if they did develop new skills and abilities, because with the new skills and abilities they still won't get a higher wage.
 
The people are not rational actors is a lame excuse to defend the welfare state. It is thrown out everywhere one tries to defend it.

Oh no, you cant make a choice on where to send your school, you're not a rational actor. Here this central bureaucrat will make your life choice he works for the government therefore must be a rational actor.

If people are not rational actors, and because people are not rational actors we must have a welfare state, and as it has been defined government is people, then why must we have a government that creates a welfare state it if too acts irrationally?

The idea that humans may act irrationally does not give you unlimited license to have irrational people dictating to other irrational people what they must do.
 
Patrick_R said:
It follows perfectly.

You seem to suggest we need a welfare state or at least the government provision of goods because people aren't always rational actors.

You then proceed to provide examples which I believe are nothing more than dealing with drunks and people who don't know their math.

Thus I make your point look silly by suggesting that the proper role of the welfare state would be to handle these exceptions. I would be MORE in favor of a welfare state that managed the exceptions of society rather than managing everyone.

Of course, most people who advocate the welfare state they don’t prefer to be efficient and manage the exceptions they want to subject everyone to the same bloody inefficiencies of government management.
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This is why you fail.
 
Earthborn said:
If you increase the supply of workers with a particular skill set, wouldn't it mean that -- ceteris paribus -- you decrease the price of that particular skill set? Which means that those workers are going to be screwed even if they did develop new skills and abilities, because with the new skills and abilities they still won't get a higher wage.
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Assuming the demand for the new skill did not increase with the rise in supply of that new skill then the price would likely fall.

That doesn't mean that person got screwed. And certainly does not mean that anyone has harmed them, or forced them to do anything against their will.
 
Patrick_R said:
Person A)

1) People are rational actors

Person B)

2) We need a welfare state because People are not rational actors here is why X

Person A)

1) That is an example of people being bad at math, do you advocate a welfare state for those who are bad at math?
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I think you should focus more on the conversation that occurs outside your head rather than the one that occurs internally. It might lead to more productive discourse.
 
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