Paying a "living wage" for menial jobs

Duoae wrote:

He's a doctor, he probably has patients that have had to have cognitive tests as part of therapy or diagnosis..

Maybe, but it still seems unlikely. Unless he is a phycologist that deals with learning, I don't think most doctors have that information or really care about it unless it is relevant to a diagnosis. Maybe LarryC can clarify.

Duoae wrote:

The interesting thing is that companies have increased wages themselves so are the companies driving the inflation or is inflation a natural by-product of the free (ish) market? CEO and executive pay increases over the decades have to come from somewhere. Yes, there are increased efficiencies from automation and new technologies but overall all wage rises across the business factor into the overall cost of product (as well as dividend payouts to shareholders). It's safe to say that increasing the executive pay from eg 250,000 to 270,000 will pay for a very slight increase to minimum wage earners who are actually making the company achieve its goals a.d targets.

Companies can definitely drive inflation though I don't think CEOs getting bigger salaries has as much of an effect on the cost of goods at a company.

krev82 wrote:

I used to agree with this but these days I do not think more education is the answer. I've discovered that rather often the person working that "unskilled" job has completed college or university, even things like trade school, law school, and engineering do not seem immune to this; there simply does not seem to be enough work for the number of graduates. Go long enough without a source of income and regardless of your educational background you'll probably take an 'unskilled' job just to feed yourself and to pay for the student loan you needed for said education.

I wasn't specifically talking about getting people to college, but rather making sure they graduate high school with some core competencies. The fact that some people are graduating high school who can't read is pretty appalling. There is basic knowledge that even unskilled workers should have.

krev82 wrote:

This would also result in inflation no? Due to the far higher cost of labor in the US vs elsewhere with these higher costs again getting passed right onto the consumer.

Why is labour cheaper in other countries? I argue it is partially because they don't have this concept of a living wage. Most families have to stick together in a very small dwelling and work 12+ hour days every day in order to survive. We are also relying on the strength of the dollar, which has been falling in the past decade.

kazar:

It is relevant to certain diagnoses. For people with chromosomal abnormalities or certain hormone abnormalities (thyroid notably), intelligence testing is advisable. More than that, my profession as anesthesiologist requires me to asses whether a person is competent to give consent, or understand the procedures being explained to them. We're often privy to intelligence testing where it's relevant.

Of course, IQ isn't as big of a deal with us as it may be with you. IQ tests are common for schooling and work purposes, but it's often just to screen lower outliers. Most people test around 100, as is expected. We rarely give it much importance, as it's obvious to us that professional and personal success is almost only incidentally tied to high IQ scores.

So long as you're around 100, you're expected to be fairly normal as far as reading and writing are concerned, which is what IQ tests test best. Your gifts are normally expecte to lie outside such testing.

We have a word for capable people. "Maabilidad" meaning literally "having potent ability." It refers to people who, through events and accomplishments, show that they are unusually influential and/or resourceful. Proving that you can bring home large slabs of bacon matters more than any test result.

kazar wrote:
Duoae wrote:

I really think the problem is with the cost of living and inflation but since we can't really control those very well without creating a completely artificial economy minimum wage is the only mechanism I can see that we have to force companies to treat their lowest paid employees as fairly as their highest.

But if you increase the pay of minimum wage employees, then the products they produce or sell go up to compensate the companies that are paying them. This causes people who make more then minimum wage to ask for more money from their companies. Either

1. the companies comply causing more goods and services to become more expensive which is the cause of inflation. This pushes the minimum wage employees back below the poverty line which yields no gains (though the dollar would now be worth less)

2. the companies refuse the raises and this pushes the middle class down closer to the poverty line. The dollar may stay roughly the same, but we would have more poor people.

I really don't see how the solution to the problem is increasing minimum wage. I see it as a band-aid approach that will just speed up inflation. Maybe the better action would be focus on education and start getting production back in the US instead of importing everything.

This would be a significant factor only to those industries which rely heavily on minimum-wage workers, mostly food service jobs. In my opinion minimum wage workers are a small enough portion of the workforce (Est. 3.8 million workers out of approximately 160 million) to not create a powerful enough pressure on prices to create the rampant inflation you're envisioning.

kazar wrote:

Either

1. the companies comply causing more goods and services to become more expensive which is the cause of inflation. This pushes the minimum wage employees back below the poverty line which yields no gains (though the dollar would now be worth less)

The only problem with that logic is that people's real earnings--wages adjusted to inflation--have actually been falling since the early 1970s. In other words, wages aren't driving inflation.

WSJ[/url]]
Average weekly earnings rose 0.3% in March from a year ago, using the data from the consumer prices report to adjust for inflation, according to this morning’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a static growth rate, and it’s one more drag on a working class that hasn’t recovered from the crash of 2008.

The good news in all this: wages overall are up since the recession’s start. The bad news: They’re down from the end of 2008, broadly flat over the past decade, and on an inflation-adjusted basis, wages peaked in 1973, fully 40 years ago. Apart from brief lapses, like in the late 1990s, wages have been falling for a generation.

Companies might increase their prices, but there's no guarantee that they will. Just look back to the massive spike oil prices in 2008 that added huge, unexpected costs to virtually every company's products and services. A lot of companies didn't pass the higher costs on to consumers because they knew consumers would simply react by not buy their product or service. In other words, those companies ate the cost increase and then figured out how to provide their products or services more cheaply than before.

And even if they do increase their prices it's not as if the price increase will wipe out any wage increase. That's because labor is only a portion of a product's or service's final price.

kazar wrote:

2. the companies refuse the raises and this pushes the middle class down closer to the poverty line. The dollar may stay roughly the same, but we would have more poor people.

See the WSJ quote above. That is exactly what has been happening for the past 40 years. Instead of properly paying workers for four decades of massive productivity increases, companies have been handing all of that money over to investors instead.

kazar wrote:

I really don't see how the solution to the problem is increasing minimum wage. I see it as a band-aid approach that will just speed up inflation. Maybe the better action would be focus on education and start getting production back in the US instead of importing everything.

You know we're still the #2 manufacturer in the world, right? And we just lost our #1 position like a year or so ago? The issues isn't that we don't make enough things.

The issue is that we have a financial system and a class of wealthy folks that are siphoning off a great deal of wealth our economy creates while doing nothing. That's a massive problem for an economy runs on consumer spending because the less money people have in their pockets to spend, the less they consume, and the less they consume, the fewer goods and services that are needed, and the fewer goods and services needed, the fewer jobs there will be.

And that's where our economy is at the moment. Companies are sitting fat and happy. They are the most profitable they've been since the glory days of the 1950s. But the people who buy their goods and services are hurting like they've never hurt before.

The solution to our sluggish economy is simply to increase economic activity. Basically, put more money into people's pockets. Raising the minimum wage will do that for a lot of folks and then that wage increase will bubble up the rest of the economy. And if we were really smart we'd slave the minimum wage to inflation or the cost of living. That way it would be automatically increased instead of waiting years and years between raises. That would also mean that it kept better pace with inflation, rather than trailing it horribly as it does now.

LarryC wrote:

It is relevant to certain diagnoses. For people with chromosomal abnormalities or certain hormone abnormalities (thyroid notably), intelligence testing is advisable. More than that, my profession as anesthesiologist requires me to asses whether a person is competent to give consent, or understand the procedures being explained to them. We're often privy to intelligence testing where it's relevant.

So you use intelligence tests to determine if a patient it competent enough to understand medical procedures that will be done to them, but you stand by the argument that intelligence is not that important for doing skilled labour? Sounds a bit contradictory to me.

I would agree that there are some labour that would be considered skilled where intelligence might not be as an important factor, say carpentry for example, but I am pretty sure that it would help. Intelligence is a measure of ones abilities to solve problems. If someone has a higher IQ, that directly translates into the success at problem solving, which is usually something that skilled labour needs.

I am very aware of what the IQ represents (and 100 being average). The one thing that might help your argument is that IQ uses age in the quotient. This means that as a person ages, their IQ decreases unless they increase their intelligence to compensate. So a 50 year old who has an IQ of 100 would still be more intelligent then a 20 year old with an IQ of 150. This means that IQ can't alone be used to determine how capable someone is at doing a skilled job, but that doesn't mean the intelligence is not important to doing said skilled job.

OG_slinger wrote:

The solution to our sluggish economy is simply to increase economic activity. Basically, put more money into people's pockets. Raising the minimum wage will do that for a lot of folks and then that wage increase will bubble up the rest of the economy. And if we were really smart we'd slave the minimum wage to inflation or the cost of living. That way it would be automatically increased instead of waiting years and years between raises. That would also mean that it kept better pace with inflation, rather than trailing it horribly as it does now.

I definitely agree that minimum wage (and even all wages) should go up at the rate of inflation. I am only concerned that this big of an increase could cause more harm then good. It it was done gradually, then maybe it would have less of an impact on inflation itself.

kazar wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It is relevant to certain diagnoses. For people with chromosomal abnormalities or certain hormone abnormalities (thyroid notably), intelligence testing is advisable. More than that, my profession as anesthesiologist requires me to asses whether a person is competent to give consent, or understand the procedures being explained to them. We're often privy to intelligence testing where it's relevant.

So you use intelligence tests to determine if a patient it competent enough to understand medical procedures that will be done to them, but you stand by the argument that intelligence is not that important for doing skilled labour? Sounds a bit contradictory to me.

Understanding consequences and risks isn't the same as understanding all the nuance and technique required to perform the actions that result in consequences and risks...

I honestly have no idea what point you're trying to make here: as if because you don't know the first thing about mechanics and engineering that you couldn't tell if you were repeatedly getting ripped off by your mechanic...

kazar wrote:

Companies can definitely drive inflation though I don't think CEOs getting bigger salaries has as much of an effect on the cost of goods at a company.

I disagree. Executive reward is disproportionate compared to the amount of work they actually partake in and the importance of that work to the overall operation of the company. Believe it or not but poor decisions from executives can still result in an operational and functioning company because of the lower echelons rather than in spite of.

Our CEO makes 374 times my salary - and I'm not even minimum wage. Just a 5% increase of his salary would cover a $1000 increase per year for 393 people....

We had 17,000 employees in March (though a large number have been made redundant in the recent months) and yet I know that various levels of upper management have been getting bonuses for this "restructuring" since the merger and layoffs. No one who's actually forced to work harder and longer is getting any financial benefit from this.

kazar wrote:

Why is labour cheaper in other countries? I argue it is partially because they don't have this concept of a living wage. Most families have to stick together in a very small dwelling and work 12+ hour days every day in order to survive. We are also relying on the strength of the dollar, which has been falling in the past decade.

Cost of labour is nothing to do with a "concept of a living wage". Cost of labour is directly proportional to the cost of living.

Duoae wrote:

Understanding consequences and risks isn't the same as understanding all the nuance and technique required to perform the actions that result in consequences and risks...

I honestly have no idea what point you're trying to make here: as if because you don't know the first thing about mechanics and engineering that you couldn't tell if you were repeatedly getting ripped off by your mechanic...

You'll need context to understand the point. LarryC made the claim that IQ doesn't have an effect on the ability for someone to do a skilled based job. I didn't start this line of discussion, I just refute the claim. LarryC makes the claim based on personal experience of people he has met. While this could be accurate, it is also just a personal observation.

Duoae wrote:

I disagree. Executive reward is disproportionate compared to the amount of work they actually partake in and the importance of that work to the overall operation of the company. Believe it or not but poor decisions from executives can still result in an operational and functioning company because of the lower echelons rather than in spite of.

Our CEO makes 374 times my salary - and I'm not even minimum wage. Just a 5% increase of his salary would cover a $1000 increase per year for 393 people....

We had 17,000 employees in March (though a large number have been made redundant in the recent months) and yet I know that various levels of upper management have been getting bonuses for this "restructuring" since the merger and layoffs. No one who's actually forced to work harder and longer is getting any financial benefit from this.

In the end, what a CEO makes is completely up to a company, so if the company were to have enough cash on hand to pay 1000 times your salary, that is there choice. But in the end, I don't believe that it has a real factor on the cost of the goods and services. That is based more on the people doing it and the other costs of the location. Increase the wages of the 15000 empolyees making a more reasonable salary would have a much larger impact on the bottom line then the just the CEO.

Not that I am defending companies in how much they pay CEOs or even how companies run. I think it can get pretty ridiculous. A big part of the problem is companies put shareholders first and usually focus on making their numbers for the next quarter and could care less about the future. But I think that part is another topic all together.

Duoae wrote:

Cost of labour is nothing to do with a "concept of a living wage". Cost of labour is directly proportional to the cost of living.

I could be reading this wrong, or maybe you meant something else, but if the cost of labour is directly proportional to the cost of living, then wouldn't the cost of labour have everything to do with the "concept of a living wage"?

kazar wrote:

A big part of the problem is companies put shareholders first and usually focus on making their numbers for the next quarter and could care less about the future. But I think that part is another topic all together.

That's actually the heart of the problem. A short-term focus and relentless pressure to meet ever increasing Wall Street numbers means that management has to look at their employees as disposable, exploitable resources.

So you get the following:

IMAGE(http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/30/tali_kristal_on_labor_unions_and_the_declining_labor_share/fredgraph.png.CROP.rectangle3-large.png)

Labor's share of the overall national income has been declining for decades and went into free fall during the Great Recession. The gap just between the late 70s and 2007 represents $600 billion a year that workers should have gotten (about $5,000 per worker). Instead, it now goes to corporate profits. And those corporate profits are given to a tiny population of increasingly rich people.

And the company doesn't exactly decide CEO compensation. It's typically the Board of Directors or an executive compensation sub-committee that does. Of course all those people were appointed by the CEO himself so they have a tiny conflict of interest.

So in the end you get movie star and athlete salaries: wages that are completely disconnected from the actual value the person delivers and that have much more to do with the fact that Person A at somewhat similar Company B made X amount, so I need to make X+Y because I'm at least as good as Person A is and it would be hard for me to show my face at the country club if I made less.

Dated info but....

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html

Minimum wage is just another way of distributing wealth. Its another sort of tax in essence. Which is another thing the U.S probably doesn't have enough of.

Compared to other countries the U.S should probably be trying to emulate its not so pretty.

Sure you don't want to be the dirty socialist Scandinavian extreme but being closer to say Canada and Australia probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

Not really interested in the Capitalist/Socialist/Libertarian debate about it.

edit: been skimming as I'm not interested in the genetic argument also so if this has already been posted FU

edit2: I can't remember what youtube video I was watching but someone was going through a McDonalds drive thru and 40 McNuggets were 9.99.... Compared that to Canada and you guys really could use some inflation TBH.

kazar:

So you use intelligence tests to determine if a patient it competent enough to understand medical procedures that will be done to them, but you stand by the argument that intelligence is not that important for doing skilled labour? Sounds a bit contradictory to me.

Medicine is an art. It uses but is not medical science. I use an IQ test result in an advisory fashion. It sets a ballpark. It is not used in isolation to determine competence. I did not say that intelligence is not that important for doing skilled labor. I said that a low IQ score does not preempt skill. IQ is not intelligence. I've made this qualification numerous times in this thread. Someone can be very intelligent, but score low on an IQ test. I believe my own IQ rating is much higher in proportion to my own true intellect, since I have a skill that allows me to answer correctly without necessarily even understanding the question.

Seems to me the bigger problem is the patchwork of "free trade" agreements which hurt labor in 1st world nations while not holding trade partners accountable for the same legal and environmental standards our firms are.

I am ALL about a level playing field. May the best company win, but if you aren't going to hold China to the same labor and environmental standards then you should tariff their stuff to equalize it.

bandit0013 wrote:

Seems to me the bigger problem is the patchwork of "free trade" agreements which hurt labor in 1st world nations while not holding trade partners accountable for the same legal and environmental standards our firms are.

I am ALL about a level playing field. May the best company win, but if you aren't going to hold China to the same labor and environmental standards then you should tariff their stuff to equalize it.

How do you stop hours worked?

eg. Whats stopping an American from getting around the hours cap by just moon lighting? Same goes for Chinese etc.

Or say safety? recently the example would be the factory fires in Bangladesh. Problem is its first world firms that are also to blame for not holding the factory owners to a certain standard. Pure bottom line.

Its a slippery slope especially when your enforcing your culture and expectations on another people.

Same goes for minimum wage kinda. As OG pointed out the difference between labour laws. Well at what point do you get where workers and employers starting skirting the rules because they are to cumbersome. The black market for labour already exists (working under the table) for whatever reasons (taxes, employment laws, eligibility to even work). Its not ridiculous idea that theres a certain point where if the minimum wage is to high and employers start really cutting back that labour just agrees to work for a lower rate unofficially.

LarryC wrote:

Medicine is an art. It uses but is not medical science. I use an IQ test result in an advisory fashion. It sets a ballpark. It is not used in isolation to determine competence. I did not say that intelligence is not that important for doing skilled labor. I said that a low IQ score does not preempt skill. IQ is not intelligence. I've made this qualification numerous times in this thread. Someone can be very intelligent, but score low on an IQ test. I believe my own IQ rating is much higher in proportion to my own true intellect, since I have a skill that allows me to answer correctly without necessarily even understanding the question.

Actually IQ is intelligence (divided by age). You can argue that IQ tests are not that accurate, and I could easily buy that. But from the perspective of the topic, we are talking about the actual intelligence of a person, not what they are tested to have. A more intelligent person would have better success at skilled jobs that require thinking.

The context in which I brought that up is that written testing of various sorts act as a barrier for people to acquire the skills and certificates they need to apply for skilled jobs. So, in the context of this topic, I am talking about how IQ does not truly reflect intellgence and the ability to perform skilled labor. IQ is a test result. It is not anything else. If you want to talk about it in another context or meaning, feel free to do so, but this is the context in which I brought it up.

Just going to address this point because I think this conversation is starting to go around in circles.

kazar wrote:
Duoae wrote:

Cost of labour is nothing to do with a "concept of a living wage". Cost of labour is directly proportional to the cost of living.

I could be reading this wrong, or maybe you meant something else, but if the cost of labour is directly proportional to the cost of living, then wouldn't the cost of labour have everything to do with the "concept of a living wage"?

IMO, no. Most jobs above "minimum wage" level are generally offered salaries with the local cost of living taken into account (e.g you'd get a higher salary for the same job in London than you would in Liverpool). The "living wage" concept applies only to minimum wage workers who don't generally get this cost of living salary consideration. Minimum wage is minimum wage in both Liverpool and London and in many areas of the country (if not all right at this moment in time due to inflation) it doesn't cover a person to live at what is considered an acceptable lifestyle.

jowner wrote:

Dated info but....

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html

Minimum wage is just another way of distributing wealth. Its another sort of tax in essence. Which is another thing the U.S probably doesn't have enough of.

You totally have this the wrong way round. Minimum wage laws force companies to internalise the true cost of their labour. When people aren't being paid a living wage they rely on the walfare state to make up the difference. In this way the State, by way of other taxes, ends up subsidising those business which pay workers less than a living wage. Minimum wage laws are an attempt to remove a subsidy not to add a form of taxation. This does likely will increase the operating costs of a business but all increases in operating costs are not equivalent "taxation". You can tell that it is not a form of taxation as the business's extra costs go straight to their workers and not to the state. This does almost certainly act to redistribute wealth but not everything that redistributes wealth is necessarily taxation either.

I prefer to think of it as "wealth fairness." The nature of capitalism strongly places power in the hands of the capitalist and centralizes wealth and power powerfully over generations without intervention. Capitalism is itself wealth redistribution if we think of wealth equality as the baseline. Minimum wage laws are simply meant to counteract wealth centralization.

DanB wrote:
jowner wrote:

Dated info but....

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html

Minimum wage is just another way of distributing wealth. Its another sort of tax in essence. Which is another thing the U.S probably doesn't have enough of.

You totally have this the wrong way round. Minimum wage laws force companies to internalise the true cost of their labour. When people aren't being paid a living wage they rely on the walfare state to make up the difference. In this way the State, by way of other taxes, ends up subsidising those business which pay workers less than a living wage. Minimum wage laws are an attempt to remove a subsidy not to add a form of taxation. This does likely will increase the operating costs of a business but all increases in operating costs are not equivalent "taxation". You can tell that it is not a form of taxation as the business's extra costs go straight to their workers and not to the state. This does almost certainly act to redistribute wealth but not everything that redistributes wealth is necessarily taxation either.

It is taxation if you think about it through wage inflation.

On the whole if you raise the minimum wage of burger flippers and the gap between them and say nurses (middle class skilled jobs) shrink you will eventually see the gap re-stabilize to a certain extent. People are not going through 'hoops' and 'hurdles' to be qualified professionals just to make marginally more than unskilled labour jobs.

Its another way to 'tax' in that if it shrinks a companies profits by a % or out of the CEO's bonus it is because it is directly getting paid to its lowest employees instead of going through the system of taxes on corporate profits and then being redistributed in other ways.

Also I doubt you would see a 1:1 ratio of as you increase the lowest pay the government sees their expenses on social programs shrink. I think the best argument for the minimum wage is it keeps the money flowing to the people who spend it the most which is hugely important in this consumer economy. I would be willing to bet in countries that have low minimum wages that gains outpace the inflation/lay offs etc hugely.

As for internalizing the true cost you might not always want to do that. Canada has an advantage to the U.S for manufacturing jobs by not internalizing the true cost. If your going to be paying your employees > the minium wage anyways and theres no logistical difference in being in southern Ontario vs Detroit etc then you have an advantage in Canada as you don't have to pay your employees Health Care. Theres obviously many other factors to weigh in but that one right off the bat is probably fairly significant.

That btw is another example of how do you 'level the playing field' for workers between countries. Shouldn't Canada then hold its nose up to the U.S because not all their workers have health care? Shouldn't the U.S take Canada to the WTO over subsidizing labour through health care?

jowner wrote:
DanB wrote:
jowner wrote:

Dated info but....

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html

Minimum wage is just another way of distributing wealth. Its another sort of tax in essence. Which is another thing the U.S probably doesn't have enough of.

You totally have this the wrong way round. Minimum wage laws force companies to internalise the true cost of their labour. When people aren't being paid a living wage they rely on the walfare state to make up the difference. In this way the State, by way of other taxes, ends up subsidising those business which pay workers less than a living wage. Minimum wage laws are an attempt to remove a subsidy not to add a form of taxation. This does likely will increase the operating costs of a business but all increases in operating costs are not equivalent "taxation". You can tell that it is not a form of taxation as the business's extra costs go straight to their workers and not to the state. This does almost certainly act to redistribute wealth but not everything that redistributes wealth is necessarily taxation either.

It is taxation if you think about it through wage inflation.

Sure it's taxation if we're happy to redefine what taxation is.

jowner wrote:

As for internalizing the true cost you might not always want to do that. Canada has an advantage to the U.S for manufacturing jobs by not internalizing the true cost. If your going to be paying your employees > the minium wage anyways and theres no logistical difference in being in southern Ontario vs Detroit etc then you have an advantage in Canada as you don't have to pay your employees Health Care. Theres obviously many other factors to weigh in but that one right off the bat is probably fairly significant.

That btw is another example of how do you 'level the playing field' for workers between countries. Shouldn't Canada then hold its nose up to the U.S because not all their workers have health care? Shouldn't the U.S take Canada to the WTO over subsidizing labour through health care?

Well this completely depends on whose shoulder you think the cost of health care should fall on. Keeping the populace healthy strikes me as a function of the state and not of private enterprise. It's not at all clear to me why businesses should foot the bill for employee health care, except in those circumstances where the nature of the work may have clear health impacts on workers. This is a "forced" business cost which is a lot more analogous to taxation than some modest wage inflation. It's pretty weird that US businesses are "ok" with this.

And frankly yes Canada should hold it's nose up at the US because not all their workers have health care. The US has created the least efficient health care system among OECD countries by pushing health care costs on to businesses.

DanB wrote:

Keeping the populace healthy strikes me as a function of the state and not of private enterprise. It's not at all clear to me why businesses should foot the bill for employee health care, except in those circumstances where the nature of the work may have clear health impacts on workers. This is a "forced" business cost which is a lot more analogous to taxation than some modest wage inflation. It's pretty weird that US businesses are "ok" with this.

I think it was created as a perk to retain workers and avoid strikes in a time when workers had more bargaining power. CEOs should want to have a single-payer system to take themselves out of the health insurance circle, but I suspect they assume it will lead to higher personal income taxes as government places the burden on individuals rather than corporate expenses.

kazar wrote:
Duoae wrote:

I really think the problem is with the cost of living and inflation but since we can't really control those very well without creating a completely artificial economy minimum wage is the only mechanism I can see that we have to force companies to treat their lowest paid employees as fairly as their highest.

But if you increase the pay of minimum wage employees, then the products they produce or sell go up to compensate the companies that are paying them. This causes people who make more then minimum wage to ask for more money from their companies.

The problem here is that the whole system is approaching a zero sum calculation. If you let companies under pay people for work then you end up having to create a larger welfare state to make up the short fall, this leads to more taxation and a broader populace under heavier taxation will demand higher wages (and this pushes up the cost of anything that these workers are involved in). You don't escape a population scale increase in wages and inflation by not having a minimum wage, you do change who exactly it is that gets that extra wages though.

Presupposing that we don't want to live in a countries that just let people go homeless or starve then one way or another all workers need to see their income approach "liveable". The question is how you go about it; enforce companies to pay a liveable wage, or let companies pay what they like and make up the difference with the apparatus of the welfare state.

Personally, as I keep going on and on about. I think it's preferable for companies to pay a living wage in the first place. It's more direct and efficient, additionally it's better from a market efficiency perspective. Companies that actually internalise all of their actual costs will correctly price their goods. If their wage bills are effectively being subsidised by welfare payments then the cost of the good you're seeing is being set artificially low.

LarryC wrote:

I'm an MD. My IQ is rated at 148.

It's bullsh*t.

All of it is BS. Not only is IQ an overrated and usually inaccurate way to gauge intelligence, intelligence itself is not as divergent as some people seem to think it is. I've met some really, truly mentally incapable people in my time here on earth, but those people come very rarely, and even they are trainable. It may horrify you that some of those people can be trained to pass the US medical license exams, but, well, that's actually doable.

Without proof, I will not accept the assumption that any person short of people with documented genetic abnormalities (and even most of them are trainable) cannot be trained to perform a profession that would be considered skilled.

As for immigration, the US has basically shut its door to everyone short of very powerful and rich people. Many Filipino MDs of my acquaintance wanted to migrate to the US for better paying jobs. It is very complicated, very difficult, and for some people, impossible. It is not just unskilled workers that the US is shunning. It's gotten so bad that many folks have simply given up and immigrated to Australia and Canada instead, where they were almost treated like royalty, comparatively. Even the British NHS is comparatively more open to nurse applicants these days.

Don't say that illegal immigrants ignored the choice to immigrate legally when that choice doesn't exist.

The way I read your original post is you think IQ itself is overrated then say that any person ("short of people with documented genetic abnormalities") can do any skilled job. You are implying that a person with average intelligence would be as good at being a medical doctor as someone who is much more intelligent. This is what I am talking about, not the validity of the IQ test, but that intelligence does make a difference.

Funkenpants wrote:

I think it was created as a perk to retain workers and avoid strikes in a time when workers had more bargaining power. CEOs should want to have a single-payer system to take themselves out of the health insurance circle, but I suspect they assume it will lead to higher personal income taxes as government places the burden on individuals rather than corporate expenses.

Really? Most people I've heard against it don't their money going to pay for welfare mamas and those 'lazy black/brown folks'. And some of them don't use the term 'black folks'.

nel e nel wrote:
Funkenpants wrote:

I think it was created as a perk to retain workers and avoid strikes in a time when workers had more bargaining power. CEOs should want to have a single-payer system to take themselves out of the health insurance circle, but I suspect they assume it will lead to higher personal income taxes as government places the burden on individuals rather than corporate expenses.

Really? Most people I've heard against it don't their money going to pay for welfare mamas and those 'lazy black/brown folks'. And some of them don't use the term 'black folks'.

Oh, those sort of voters are definitely in the mix. But it's the CEOs, industry groups, and financial companies that have the ear of politicians in D.C. on a daily basis.

With due respect, kazar, that was the wrong takeaway. It was an incidental implication. The point was that skilled professions should not be held away from people with artificial barriers; if nothing else, this will help normalize the assumption that anyone who works hard enough can achieve what's necessary for a skilled position. Currently, many barriers make acquisition of skilled jobs impractical, if not outright impossible, whether or not you have the necessary personal abilities.

If you like, PM me about it and we can talk about it in private.

That was great.

How can it be fixed when the people who control the ability to fix it are part of the problem? What options are left?

Duoae wrote:

How can it be fixed when the people who control the ability to fix it are part of the problem? What options are left?

I think we need to go to Wall Street... and... take it over. Everyone chill out there until something changes.