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Political test: Minimum Wage on Askville
Okay, this is a political post which is NOT filtered. I'm putting it behind an LJ cut, instead. Those who don't like my political posts, DON'T READ THIS.
Someone asked about raising the minimum wage over on Askville.
"Which would do more to improve the economy: More jobs, or a higher minimum wage?"
Inevitably some Republicans raised their usual argument that it would reduce employment. I got sarcastic.
->Peter said:
I know, I know! Let's reduce the minimum wage to NOTHING! Then we could have 100% employment!
Sorry, I was channeling Republican-think for a moment.
Someone took me seriously, and claimed that would let individuals determine their own wages, in a good, holy, free-market way. My response:
That might work, if it weren't that the American labor movement is a mere shell of what it once was, and that in many areas companies have near-monopolistic control of the employment market.
And considering that it's the official policy of the US Government to maintain unemployment at a high enough level to deny workers bargaining power (lest wages begin to go up, which might lead to - GASP! - inflation, which might reduce the value of the holdings of the rich), I think anyone with a grain of common sense knows that if you eliminate the minimum wage, wages for a substantial portion of the workforce will drop drastically. Since the minimum wage itself isn't a living wage in many parts of the country, the result will probably be a dramatic increase in poverty, as well as an increase in illegal alien workers.
Sometimes I think that Republicans believe that poor people have special supermarkets they can go to, where food is extra-cheap. Or maybe they just assume that we live off the watermelons we pick in the fields when we're not picking cotton.
Someone asked about raising the minimum wage over on Askville.
"Which would do more to improve the economy: More jobs, or a higher minimum wage?"
Inevitably some Republicans raised their usual argument that it would reduce employment. I got sarcastic.
->Peter said:
I know, I know! Let's reduce the minimum wage to NOTHING! Then we could have 100% employment!
Sorry, I was channeling Republican-think for a moment.
Someone took me seriously, and claimed that would let individuals determine their own wages, in a good, holy, free-market way. My response:
That might work, if it weren't that the American labor movement is a mere shell of what it once was, and that in many areas companies have near-monopolistic control of the employment market.
And considering that it's the official policy of the US Government to maintain unemployment at a high enough level to deny workers bargaining power (lest wages begin to go up, which might lead to - GASP! - inflation, which might reduce the value of the holdings of the rich), I think anyone with a grain of common sense knows that if you eliminate the minimum wage, wages for a substantial portion of the workforce will drop drastically. Since the minimum wage itself isn't a living wage in many parts of the country, the result will probably be a dramatic increase in poverty, as well as an increase in illegal alien workers.
Sometimes I think that Republicans believe that poor people have special supermarkets they can go to, where food is extra-cheap. Or maybe they just assume that we live off the watermelons we pick in the fields when we're not picking cotton.
no subject
I recall a comedian observing that minimum wage means that if they could they'd pay you less.
The notion that no minimum wage and every individual worker negotiating for their pay, hmm, well, the supporters of that sort of thing I suspect are people who think (and probably haven't had much personal experience to the contrary) that they themselves will do well and everybody else is a parasitic loser.
I recall back in the Argus days some discussion of a notion that different countries end up with different experteses (is that a word? oh well) and thus it matters not that manufacturing goes overseas 'cause Americans (read: the people who believe this) are best at things like programming and engineering and so on. I suspect that the outsourcing of that sort of thing might have made some of these folk reconsider that. At base, about the only jobs that can't be outsourced are hands on stuff like grounds keeping, janitors, barbers, prostitutes, that sort of thing. Not really the stuff to make a Great Power.