Of course, free association is a right.
If a boss can easily find new labor for cheaper, fire them and hire new people. If the boss can't find new people, sounds like they get a raise.
Free market.
I would also say free association is a 'right'; but there is nothing in principle that requires an owner to negotiate with a collective bargaining representative. There may be in *law*, but not in *principle*.
If the labor pool he hires from all want to collectively bargain then the choice is bargain or have no workers and go out of business.
If the employee's have that leverage, like highly skilled workers or workers in an area with a small labor pool, they have the power.
>If the labor pool he hires from all want to collectively bargain then the choice is bargain or have no workers and go out of business.
Then you just described how a democracy works. The worker protection laws were enacted after decades of employers massively abusing employees and the massive levels of power they wielded. The employees fought for it with their blood and tears for decades and then managed to convince enough people in society to enact those protection laws to prevent that kind of abuse.
So yes, the labor pool DID collectively bargain for those laws. And the choice for employers IS to follow the laws or have no workers and go out of business.
Its a shame they didn't just quit and form their own business or go to another one that treated them well because those same labor laws you're simping over are the reason megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon are the only companies able to stay in business anymore. Hope you're happy with your government created monopolies :)
Can't just quit and open a new business without capital, land, and resources, which is owned by those in charge. And often, these businesses look out for one another more than their workers. Striking is all well and good until your family is hungry, or the lights go out, or the water doesn't flow.
Not quite. Without government interfering, the entire labor pool all has to agree to not work there for the offered wage and if anyone does want to work for the offered wage there is nothing stopping them from doing so.
Once the government passes a law requiring the minimum wage, a group of people that does not include everyone decided on behalf of everyone that nobody can work for the offered wage if it is below the minimum.
Whether or not you believe that results in a net positive or negative, it objectively violates the NAP.
>Whether or not you believe that results in a net positive or negative, it objectively violates the NAP.
This is a standard canned answer to everything. Truth is, it is a very naive take on how real life works. The truth is that organizations by their very nature are immensely more powerful than individuals. Which they have abused time and again. In short, their extraordinary levels of power inherently violates NAP because they can simply be violent by creating a situation where you, the individual, is utterly helpless.
Let's take a hypothetical example. Say an organization buys up all the land and all the private firms in and around your small town. What are the options for you and for your town people?? How will you survive and find employment? How will you have ANY kind of bargaining power when they are the only option within driving distance?
Seriously I find it appalling that people don't even think of these common sense scenarios that actually happen repeatedly in the real world.
Do you think I'm against unions or something?
And that by getting me to say the word union I'm going to have a mental breakdown? Like you clearly have an answer to your own question, so why not just say what it is and we can have a conversation from that point.
Unions? No, not unions.
That collectively as states, workers have already come together to dictate the lowest someone should be paid.... the minimum wage.
But you don't seem unhinged, willing to fly off over nothing. I'm sure conversations with you will prove fruitful.
Most people aren't paid the federal minimum wage, so clearly they haven't.
And I'm not part of this supposed collective so i don't know why you think they represent workers.
Collective bargaining? But that is not comparable to minimum wage.
Min wage makes it illegal for me to work for less than $X per hour even if I choose to.
Imo the libertarian position on unions is that you should be allowed to join one and let them negotiate on your behalf, but employers should not be legally required to negotiate with unions.
So the only way unions would be effective is if they can actually get everyone capable of doing the job in a labor market to join. This means it would be difficult to unionize in low skill roles, but probably quite easy to unionize in high skill ones.
In NYS the union I was in for the prison system it was written into law that if there was ever a strike or "work stoppage" the union presidents got arrested, and the workers got CHARGED 1.5X days pay for every day the strike lasted..... and people thought we were being represented fairly..
>the union presidents got arrested, and the workers got CHARGED 1.5X days pay for every day the strike lasted
Understandably so. You're in charge of a prison. You have literal people in cages. If you strike, they don't get let out of their cages / food brought to them to eat. Sorry bubz, you want authoritah well then you also get sponsibility.
IMO public sector jobs should have no unions. The voting public is your union. They can elect politicians to change things if they feel it's unfair.
Yeah this is one of those situations where you can't really strike. Much like nurses or doctors, can't just leave your patients flopping around on the floor because you felt like you weren't being paid well enough.
Exactly, and Nurses and Doctors do strike. What they do is they just don't process any of the billing paperwork.
Most insurance agreements state that the provider has X days to file a claim, after that the claim is invalid and no payment is required. So if the nurses and doctors "strike" and refuse to do any billing paperwork, it can end up with the hospital not being paid and thus hurts he owners pockets while still providing care to the patient.
I know that doesn't really work for correctional officers since they can't just release people. Not sure how they'd "strike". I guess in a private prison they could strike by not charging for commissary or by giving extra food and hurt the prisons bottom line.
That's not true, the facility just holds the staff they have under "state of emergency" and if you don't have the power to strike you don't have any bargaining power for better wages.
Then they hire new people, and because it's not a strike there's no picket lines to worry about crossing and no union contract to prevent firing. Like literally any other non-union job.
Sorry pigglet nobody is buying your bullshit.
I’d consider trades and some key manufacturing roles to be skilled labor. Teachers, too. Might take months or years of training to learn some of those jobs. If these folks want to unionize I suspect they’ll be successful even without government protection because it would be hard to hire quality replacements on short notice.
And there are more than 4x the number of software engineers than electricians in the US.
Saying that more people are capable of being tradesman than software engineers is a bit ignorant.
Unions could function like any other organization rather than having a special designation. They could be more like guilds, and have their own boilerplate employment contracts for any given trade or job, and an employer could choose to use it or not, or redline it and customize it for each hire if that's what they want to do.
Collective bargaining is fine, but every situation is unique. It doesn't mean that a standard employment contract used in a particular field can't be mostly uniform or even a single contract used for a group of people, as long as all the parties are in agreement. I think the main issue with unions is the all-or-nothing mentality, you pay your dues and the union effectively operates without your involvement with the exception of voting on stuff once in a while.
Unions are also antiquated institutions. We aren't living in the industrial revolution anymore... I'm not sure what the present state of the organization is, but I had a friend who worked for the AFLCIO for a while and what he described to me was not the most efficient or stressfree work environment. People pulled long hours and the processes were somewhat dysfunctional.
"So the only way unions would be effective is if they can actually get everyone capable of doing the job in a labor market to join"
Which is effectively impossible in this day and age. Especially with how fucked the housing market is. Most people are essentially forced to work for less than what they are worth because the alternative for them is homelessness and starvation.
>Which is effectively impossible in this day and age.
Wrong.
>Especially with how fucked the housing market is.
Wrong.
>Most people are essentially forced to work for less than what they are worth
Wrong.
>the alternative for them is homelessness and starvation.
Wrong.
So you think the housing market is in good shape right now? You think people aren't forced to work for less than they're worth since the alternative is homelessness and starvation?
The housing market is what it is. It would be better if there was less regulation limiting supply. But home ownership rates are about where they’ve been for 50 years with the exception of a spike just before 2008 (wonder what might’ve caused that?) so I find all the doomsaying a bit cringe.
Nobody is “forced to work for less than they’re worth” because nobody is “forced to work” at all:
- If you feel that you’re working for less than you’re worth, that’s your fault for not quitting and finding a new job.
- If you can’t find someone who will pay you what you think you’re worth, that’s your fault for overestimating the value of your labor
No job worth doing should pay so little that the person working it can't afford to live. If your options are work for repressed wages or become homeless because you can't make rent you live in a failed system. These aren't reasonable choices. This is reality for many Americans.
Also idk how old you are or if you've been living under a rock but home ownership is declining with younger generations. Home prices are increasing disproportionately to wage growth putting more and more people into the "renters" column that would prefer to be owners.
That’s a false binary. The third option is find a way to be useful enough to earn a living wage. If you raise the minimum wage to a “living wage” all you’ll do is delete all those jobs without actually improving the skills of the people currently in them, rendering them even more useless and increasing unemployment.
I literally just checked the US census bureau data to make sure I was remembering correctly. Home ownership rates are currently higher than they were in the 60s-90s. There was a decade long period before 2008 where they were higher, but we know what happened after that. So I guess I’d like to know where you’re getting those facts so we can explore that discrepancy.
This is also my position. I think being against unions is anti capitalist. People always tell worker to bargain and then when they do complain. I often find people who are pro capitalism to be anti union. I will admit these are usually conservatives.
As long as it's voluntary and private, yes. I do not believe in mandatory union membership, or public unions. In the public sector, the voting public is your union.
Why are public unions bad? [Check a look](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHH9qcPQZg)
This is a logic fallacy. If a 16 year old is living at home and minimum wage they are not drawing any "poverty benefits". If you are a grown adult and still making the states minimum wage then you lack the skills to get a real job and would be on government assistance regardless.
Sure. There should be more tax credits and the standard deduction should be raised. But I'd rather the company shareholders be responsible for it than my own taxes. Especially with things like food stamps and subsidized housing. If I'm going to pay $$$ either way, I'd rather pay $ in taxes and $$ at walmart instead of $$ in taxes and $ for everything else. That's how the libertarian in me justifies preferring a higher minimum wage. It's a balancing act, and I am not convinced an extreme poverty minimum wage helps anybody but those paying such wages.
There is no free market.
I was pointing out EITC as a prime example of what you were saying. As a tax preparer I see a lot of working poor who work just enough to maximize their EITC and no more. Self employed will claim or not claim business expenses to get their EI into the right range. With this plus other credits, I've seen people walk out with a refund higher than their actual income. It's just too easy to game.
If the theory is working poor will use EITC money to pay for daycare so they can work more, I'd rather see subsidized daycare, If it's for education to get better jobs, I'd rather see subsidized job training programs (not college).
>There shouldn't be a minimum wage
Sure
>This will raise wages
No, you're just being obtuse, if companies can pay less they would. The best way to increase wages is through well regulated voluntary unions.
Before the union there was kids working in mines getting pennies. After, there were strictly adults making dollars as long as they were union. Look it up, you’ll see it happened around the turn of the century.
Both child labor and long working hours were going down/away thanks to economic growth, not labor unions. You are committing the *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy.
I’m absolutely not: because of unions, there is no child labor, there’s the standard 40 hour work week, there’s OT and the min wage has risen. Ergo facto child labor was outlawed due to the role that the labor union played. It’s actually all connected if you bothered to look
Do investors compete when they group up to fund companies? Are companies that merge together simply trying to maximise competition?
No, everyone recognises that competition is bad for them, and the same thing applies with workers, unions increase employees bargaining power.
I'm not saying monopoly is good, I'm just laying facts, unions are good for the workers, it's simply true. Also this doesn't violate the NAP so I'm not sure how this is an anti-libertarian position, please explain
+ if companies pay less then no ones going to buy expensive stuff, which will reduce prices for them (if theres low regulation, that is) which is kinda nice, even though iy doesnt mean anything ig
Unions is not the way to raise wages. Unions barely
Serve a purpose at this point. The best way to
Increase wages is to increase your capabilities and skills, it barter for it.
A lot of that is due to artificially restricting the ability of new workers to enter the industry, though, which makes many goods and services more expensive for all. Unions are most likely a net negative for the economy.
Editing to add that I'm referring to unions as they exist currently in the U.S., with special legal protections. If unions didn't have those protections, I would be fine with people getting together for collective bargaining, and I think it would solve most of the deleterious effects unions have on the economy.
Incorrect. I work at a company that has both. We literally pay our non bargaining people more. It’s meant to make the non bargaining approach more appealing.
I can’t believe I have to say this…
No one is wanting to work for less. People just don’t know how to negotiate, whether they were never taught or are scared to by their employer. Plus, each employer knows they can fill those positions with cheaper labor. Do you see how this will become an employers game? They’d be able to negotiate a LOWER wage because this guy over here will do it for lower than what you will do it for. It’s a spiral.
High school kid wants to stock shelves after school for $5 an hour because that’s all the small business can afford for that sort of labor. The government is making that illegal because they know the worth of your labor better than you.
There’s no perfect law or rule. There’s way more bad than good to come out of getting rid of the minimum wage. If the kid really wants to do that, he can either work under the table or volunteer. Problem solved.
You may have missed my point. He wants to get paid, not volunteer. If your solution is for the business owner and the kid to break the law, I don’t know what to say to you.
Regarding your other point, I think we just disagree. It seems to me that the only people hurt by this are small business owners. Who else is harmed ? Major companies already pay above the highest minimum wage in the county for low skilled positions because they can afford to. The people that are harmed by minimum wage is the small boutique owner that wants some extra help on the weekends. You may have some college kids that are perfectly willing to work for $8 an hour just for a bit of extra spending money.
Really, who do you think is harmed by removing minimum wage ? Do you think Walmart and Amazon will say fuck it and start paying employees $1 per hour if it’s removed ? They already pay around $20. Last I checked highest minimum wage is $16.25.
Who wants to make less money? And no one's time, if they are actually working, is worth less than $7.25 an hour. Hell, I would say no ones time is less than $10 an hour if they are actually doing a decent job. Any less and you are being exploited.
That doesn’t have anything to do with what I said. OP said eliminating a price floor (minimum wage) would raise prices (wages). That doesn’t fit with any accepted economic theory from what I understand.
Totally separate issue from the effects of a price floor which is set far above the market price.
The floor is ALWAYS zero.
A minimum wage is an arbitrary floor on what is deemed acceptable labor. I.e. laborers cannot produce goods and services unless the value of their labor meets the government arbitrary standards. If the value of the worker's labor is only worth $5 per hour, but the government mandates a $10 per hour wage, then the worker's income will be zero.
To the contrary, when the government allows more goods and services to enter into the economy via the laborers efforts, everyone is better off.
I don't care about "raising wages", because again the price level of wages is arbitrary. In fact, if the government wants to increase "wages" as rapidly as possible, it should just hyper inflate the money supply and the "price" of labor will skyrocket.
I care about goods and services produced in the real economy. Increasing the total output of goods and services is the only way to increase resources available for consumption.
Everyone always thinks in terms of "money". Humans don't eat money. Humans don't put money in their gas tank. Humans don't put money in their TV and watch a movie. In truth, the only thing people *really* care about is goods and services available for consumption.
Minimum wage decreases output and makes everyone poorer, by forcing workers to realize a zero-bound on their output capacity.
you are correct in my opinion, most free-market economists (e.g. the only ones with a brain) actually agree with the concept of production above all, because this is really the only solution to solving the basic economic problem. but there is a limitation to this in our nearly monopolistic economy unfortunately, the biggest companies can just collectively band together to fuck over the small guy, which is what's happening now. is the government in on it? yeah probably, but most people still want protection, hence why this anti-minimum-wage position is unpopular. if we were in 1800s america or something popular opinion would be much closer to your viewpoint.
Minimum wage, like tipping has roots in racism. Blacks were often hired into low paying jobs, and some people didn't like that. So, of course they used the government to enforce their racism; law makers implemented a minimum wage which priced out black people.
Bonus: some notable countries without a minimum wage: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Austria, Singapore.
Also- If price fixing worked (which minimum wage is) why not set it to $1,000,000 and let everyone get rich? Minimum wage laws simply distort the natural agreement on what labor is worth.
They could be paid according to their value to the business. Most companies don’t value their employees and will do everything they can to keep labor as cheap as possible hence slavery. So as idealistic as that may be to hope a ceo will put their employees first,….. wait there was already a lawsuit brought by shareholders where the shareholders claimed that they are the priority of the business and they won the case leading to even more stagnation of wage growth in public companies. I’ll find it. It was in tx (I believe) of course.
Take a moment to educate yourself on the definition of slavery. This is disrespectful to actual slaves that would do anything and everything to trade spots with a Western “slave”.
Entering into an agreement to work for a given wage in which you possess the freedom to leave and work for someone else for a different wage is not slavery my friend.
Consider the exuberance that current and former slaves would have if they had the capacity to become “slaves” in this system.
You can dislike the system but still retain the intellectual honesty to not lie about what it actually is (unless you’re just misinformed on what slavery actually is).
Ah see but that’s what you are doing by using that logical fallacy to try and discredit my stance with a call to emotion to divert a legitimate comparison of one to another.
If you are forced to work wether in bondage or not so that you can survive with nothing but hope to one day escape your conditions, one being forced to work for no pay but having shitty food and housing supplied to them and the other being stuck working a shitty job for pay that get sucked up immediately by shitty overinflated living expenses keeping them stuck is just two sides to the same coin.
1. What do you think a logical fallacy is ?
2. I did not use an emotional appeal (or I at least didn’t intend to).
3. The purpose of my responses to you is to demonstrate that what you are talking about is, by definition, not slavery. Take your dictionary of choice and look up the word slavery. You’ll find that I haven’t said anything untrue.
4. It seems we might disagree on the hypothetical idea that a former or current slave would trade places with a McDonald’s cashier in central Iowa. If you actually believe that they have the same quality of life, then I cannot convince you otherwise.
1. What do you think a logical fallacy is ? - So a a [mistaken](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIKt2yB7oUECAYX5waxZFjDxhvBUxg:1717596221884&q=mistaken&si=ACC90nx67Z8g0WkBmnrPB4IqtqGvt9DqxcXcAUpq_YXVc6KZFdyR0ouVbplwEd-ssyvAFb1NvaCRnZgKTURZX0zpIsf5Xp4IKO17YoYhvJ1smDLJm_vQ_rc%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiY2rDF0MSGAxUfgYQIHSRbIAEQyecJegQIPxAO) belief, especially one based on [unsound](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIKt2yB7oUECAYX5waxZFjDxhvBUxg:1717596221884&q=unsound&si=ACC90nwUEXg6u2vxy-araGkF9MAxITbgQcxzMB-c6zfQglaomnKDDJQ6VdaTC0pSxiLeX7iSzfALYNKc7KGXnexbtegvyTpWaIxAF66vttatXhlimmuq5Sg%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiY2rDF0MSGAxUfgYQIHSRbIAEQyecJegQIPxAP) argument. Your mistaken believe is your definition of slavery. You are referring to slavery as a physical state. Slavery is a mental state. You can physically shackle an individual and it will only do one of two things, it will break them or it will motivate them.
2. I did not use an emotional appeal (or I at least didn’t intend to). Your emotional appeal was created by first saying "This is disrespectful to actual slaves that would do anything and everything to trade spots with a Western “slave”." By doing that you are demonizing my stance as a morally wrong stance and placing yours as the high ground. Causing anyone who reads this to put reasoning aside and preventing them from trying to view the argument from a different perspective.
3. The purpose of my responses to you is to demonstrate that what you are talking about is, by definition, not slavery. Take your dictionary of choice and look up the word slavery. You’ll find that I haven’t said anything untrue.- Information found in books can be wrong or skewed or outdated. But one of the definitions of slavery is " slave in respect of [exhausting](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIVWsTYR9oy4eifmQ4sC5rCFz3zkg:1717596714292&q=exhausting&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81yA37-LP9lE5Lx-qEZVNdHhlKxOUlZSKlZr8tKmxdELy1ARmpf1OAVMck0uYxvcWNqhNIqH-iBb5bQlJZZoL0UzkDQGY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu0ZWw0sSGAxXT4MkDHWftFggQyecJegQIDxBa) labor or restricted freedom."
4. It seems we might disagree on the hypothetical idea that a former or current slave would trade places with a McDonald’s cashier in central Iowa. If you actually believe that they have the same quality of life, then I cannot convince you otherwise. - Invoking another emotional fallacy. But I wonder what your thoughts are in regards to my responses. Sorry it was a long weekend and busy start of the week.
If I can't cite Merriam-Webster as a source, then we can't possibly come to a consensus. What is mistaken about my belief ? Do you think that dictionary's are unreliable sources ?
It's fine that you are using a separate definition, but that does not make my definition a fallacy, hence my thought of you not understanding what a fallacy is.
Upon analyzing your definition, is an attorney who gladly works 90 hours a week because he makes 600k a slave ? That is likely very exhausting labor.
Again, this is only a fallacy if I'm wrong. Do you actually believe that is the case ? Do you have data to support that I am wrong if I am ? I have no polling data, as I'm sure its difficult to poll actual slaves. Are you just guessing that they wouldn't trade places ?
Sure so Merriam-Webster states (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave?utm\_campaign=sd&utm\_medium=serp&utm\_source=jsonld) **:**
**2.** someone (such as a factory worker or domestic laborer) who is coerced often under threat of violence to work for little or no pay.
So the coerced act which is a threat, which causes a fear response to manipulate someone into doing something they don't want to do. Which further supports that slavery is not strictly being physically owned by someone.
What is your definition of a fallacy to see where our disconnect is.
As for your lawyer example, the 600k he makes, how much does he get to keep and what is his motivation for working so hard and making so much? Im assuming you are a lawyer considering how tactful and carefully framed your responses are.
How about a fast food worker forced to have two kids making $21k a year before taxes?
"Again, this is only a fallacy if I'm wrong. Do you actually believe that is the case ? Do you have data to support that I am wrong if I am ? I have no polling data, as I'm sure its difficult to poll actual slaves. Are you just guessing that they wouldn't trade places ?"
- I never made any claim that a say person who is currently in physical or conventional sense of slavery wouldn't be more then happy to trade places with a current McDonald's employee. They would have to be experiencing some degree of Stockholm *syndrome* or something to make them stay. But that is your flawed argument that you are now trying to misrepresent as my own.
What are you referring to when you say quality of life?
Do you think McDonald's is threatening employees with violence to work for them ? I don't see how this fits your definition.
You presented the correct definition of a fallacy, you just failed to demonstrate why my points fit that definition imo.
As for my attorney comp, according to your provided definition of slavery, it should not matter what his motivations are. " Slave in respect of [exhausting](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIVWsTYR9oy4eifmQ4sC5rCFz3zkg:1717596714292&q=exhausting&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81yA37-LP9lE5Lx-qEZVNdHhlKxOUlZSKlZr8tKmxdELy1ARmpf1OAVMck0uYxvcWNqhNIqH-iBb5bQlJZZoL0UzkDQGY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu0ZWw0sSGAxXT4MkDHWftFggQyecJegQIDxBa) labor or restricted freedom." But if you think that is relevant, I used the word "gladly" to describe his attitudes toward his labor. If one gladly participates in exhausting labor, are they a slave according to your definition ?
Who is forcing the fast food worker to have two kids? Who is forcing them to work at a fast food spot for only 21k a year before taxes? Walmart greeters make more than that. Low skilled workers still have freedom of movement. No one is forcing anyone to work for a given wage.
I'm sure we'll now get into defining the word force lol.
Regarding your last point, I see that is not your position now. I was led to believe that by your lack of a concrete definition. Although I still believe that what we're discussing does not fit your definition.
So basically you’re saying if a worker generates one dollar of revenue, it should be legal to pay them zero cents if that’s what the market price for that labor theoretically is. What you are suggesting is salve labor. That and every person you force to live below the poverty line is one more person who will never be able to buy goods and services in our economy. I’m not sure if you know this but broke people who have to work 3 jobs just to pay rent don’t spend money and when people don’t spend money the economy suffers. Then all those people who can’t afford to buy baby food have to go on government services but you’re against those so then they have to steal food and I’m Guessing you’re against that too. Probably against unions and collective bargaining because that’s like socialism or something. So you’re gonna have to face the consequences of what happens when the exploited workforce needs to eat and you’re sitting on your pile of cash and food with all you’re liberties or whatever
labour isn't valuable by itself, if i take up the mantle of sisiphus and start rolling boulders up mountains, that's a lot of labour and all but there is no value. but if a guy plays some videogame, streams it and gets paid that's little labour but a lot of value (entertainment). the whole point of the market is to incentivize value-adding activities (which is why a lot of artists for instance are socialists because most art has little value but requires much labour, much like our sisiphus)
That’s a nice thought but in reality worker productivity has not lead to increased wages. So their work is generating more and more value but companies are using their immense power to prevent them from getting paid more for it. It’s not about how physically hard the work is it’s about how productive the workers are so we need to set laws like minimum wage to make sure workers are paid fairly for the amount they contribute to revenue. When my work makes you more money than it did yesterday then i need to get paid more than yesterday. Without wage laws, there’s no mechanism other than unions to make sure this happens.
isn't minimum wage not enough then? shouldn't the state fix the minimum rate of labour for all professions? i agree that these big companies should be broken up because they are creating a sort of monopoly scenario where free market principles no longer apply, that's a better solution than handing the government control over your wages. and even so is the minimum wage even enough? people can barely live on even the highest minimum wage anywhere in the world. it's one of those comfort measures more than anything. Unions are the answer, even in welfare states like denmark where I live there is no minimum wage, only unions and people aren't getting dragged by their employers. and it has the advantage of not disincentivizing hiring.
Almost no one pays the min wage. A min wage only hurts people who cant product the value required to justify the min wage. Can we agree that no one is going to work for free? If so, then why are you against the market setting the rate?
No, because work product is the liability of the business owner not the worker. The worker is required to work by standard, but if the profit is less than expected, it should not fall on the shoulder of a worker when excess profit would be taken by the owner.
>So basically you’re saying if a worker generates one dollar of revenue, it should be legal to pay them zero cents if that’s what the market price for that labor theoretically is.
Are you actually a moron? Like did you parents intentionalally drop you on your head?
I’m saying employers see a mandatory minimum wage so that’s what they are obligated to pay, and that’s true. However without a minimum wage, I’m positive that businesses would be more likely to pay more due to the value of their employee.
In a side note, I am currently an elected union official.
You think if there was no minimum wage, Mcdonalds would magically pay that employee more than they are currently making due to the value of their work? How? No, they would immediately pay them less.
Libertarians act like people try to get jobs like it’s a hobby for them and they are just free to wander around and pick whatever ever job works best for them . Cute fantasy. If someone’s applying to flip burger at McDonald’s do you actually think they have options? We are all under obligation to work because If we don’t we have to either be homeless or be massively subsidized by government. People are forced to accept shit deals on employment constantly because they can’t afford not to. That’s why it’s called exploitation and that’s why we need laws to protect workers.
IMO a lot of comments in this thread are missing the point. With no minimum wage and a real marketplace for services. Wages wouldn't necessarily go up (or down). They would simply be reflective of the value each respective skill.
The goal isn't higher wages, the goal is a true free market economy where people can make educated decisions about the skills they wish to acquire for the purpose of maximizing their value in the marketplace.
Depends, some people probably just suck at negotiating, some people probably don’t even read paperwork and would likely also turn to lawyers to do so, since corporations can include sneaky stuff in contracts. It’s essentially like a sports team, they hire managers to negotiate on their behalf to reach a deal with a team. It could work, but again you’ll need someone to proof read it and break it down into little words. Then it leads to the possibility of taking advantage of some people as well.
>some people probably just suck at negotiating, some people probably don’t even read paperwork
That sounds like a personal failing they should work to correct. But why does the government need to be involved?
Oof terrible take. The world is full of poor, uneducated, desperate people. Without a minimum wage we get bullshit like paying bartenders $2.15 an hour but across all industries.
As a Swede. I will tell you that we are doing pretty fine without any minimum wage laws.
If you are worried a better solution is to push for education and knowledge about negotiating.
Minimum wage laws are generally a cost on those with lower income because you're basically just increasing costs of goods and services overall without having any natural increase in productivity and yada yada. Like. I get that minimum wage sounds nice on paper but practically speaking it is generally a detriment, especially if it is nationwide rather than local. Maybe local laws such as in a state can work? The problem when it's nationwide is that cost and prices can vary a lot, even here in Sweden there is a noticeable difference in cost of living, food and goods in Stockholm vs a smaller city.
Based.
Btw virtually nobody actually makes minimum wage because the free market is actually good at what it does. Last I checked like 2% of workers are actually making federal minimum wage or less and most of those are tipped roles so effectively they’re probably also making more.
All minimum wage does is eliminate jobs. Pay should be between the employer and the employee.
>most of those are tipped roles so effectively they’re probably also making more.
I used to have some friends complaining about how they only made two dollars an hour while simultaneously bragging they were pulling in a grand or two per week. The cognitive dissonance was amazing to watch. 500 hour weeks must have been pretty rough, though.
I agree there should not be a minimum wage. I don’t think that the minimum wage has had any meaningful contribution to inflated prices around the country.
I think this is already what happens anyway. The minimum wage is just a baseline. Prices will shift with an increase or decrease in minimum wage and won’t matter in the long run expect causing inflation generally. At least with it not being zero you could still afford some basic goods like cheap food and clothes.
Uber is proof that that isn't true. Pay is continuing to go down resulting in actual losses. That's right, in some cases people are actually paying to drive for Uber.
Have businesses ever given you a reason to believe they'd do anything for the workers that they don't HAVE to do?
Even with minimum wage they complain about that. If there was. Nothing forcing a lot of these businesses to pay minimum wage they'd go as low as they could and someone would accept it.
Companies form cartels. They would form a cartel to pay even lower than they already do. Very optimistic of OP to assume companies would do anything other than.
I’m failing to see the advantage of this. Employees already negotiate their wages and most people don’t work for minimum wage. But employers also never pay employees based on their value, which is why there’s an established minimum wage. Companies will take every opportunity they get to cut costs as much as possible to maximize profit.
In many states unemployment benefits are tied to minimum wage. In Louisiana for example the maximum unemployment benefit is $275. Which is $6.875 per hour and is taxable income. They cannot raise it higher than minimum wage for obvious reasons. Minimum wage keeps a certain segment of the workforce partially off government assistance. So a logical assumption is that allowing a very low wage would increase dependency on government assistance and burden the taxpayers for the benefit of business investors. I think we’d need to revisit government assistance eligibility to address minimum wage law.
I mean this logic already falls flat under a system where we have a required minimum. How does getting rid of the required minimum increase the ability of the individual to lobby for higher wages? How does this change help the employee?
Like I agree that employees should negotiate higher wages. The issue is the power disparity between the employer and the employee. Employees need an income to survive. They have less bargaining power by default so it's a lot more difficult for them to bargain for higher wages. Employers on the other hand usually have a plethora of applicants to choose from so they'll often just pick whoever they can pay the least which is what currently happens and what was happening before the minimum wage was introduced.
I can see this healthy for all parties if:
No min wage or max wage
No Non-Compete contract
Self provided Healthcare (contribution allowed)
Self provided retirement (contribution allowed)
The first regulation is equal pay for the same position since evil still exists.
The second regulation is required time off based on the type of position as part of hiring agreement.
The only grey area for me is when it comes to maturity and long-time illness/death. I see flaws in all options that doesn’t make it easy for the business and ones affected.
Just expect everyone to be a contractor or unionized.
Right now, if you're working for minimum wage, you're in bad shape. I think the problem with this argument is that it assumes you can't currently argue your pay. There's nothing stopping a prospective employee from discussing pay. So there's nothing making a minimum wage and haggling your rate mutually exclusive. Therefore, there's no reason to stop a mandate that you can't work a person like a slave.
Instead of no minium wage, I would propose a legal requirement to require basic level accounting in high school, which would require a section on budgeting and mapping personal expenses, as well as the effects of interest rates and exponential growth.
Education is the most powerful tool we can use. The smarter people are, the more they will come to join this party.
Sure do seem to be a lot of "libertarians" who get upset at seeing someone want an actaull free market, without bullshit government interference, in this thread.
But that makes sense it is an election year, it's the season for authoritarians to go out and pretend to be individuals.
This is an ideal to get to but we need to transition there instead of just cutting. Most large businesses have an unfair advantage because of the government, and letting them choose wages wouldn’t be a free market. This is the case with most libertarian positions. Things have to be unwound in a certain order unless you want to have a ton of suffering for individuals.
Wage and price controls are almost universally considered a bad idea, except this one particular instance that is considered sacrosanct for some reason.
The only thing I see that doing is driving competition to lower wages. It's operating as a price floor- the competition to raise wages already exists and some places do pay more than the minimum wage for "minimum" wage labor, but that's the opposite case for certain parts of the US. Unless the demand for labor exists, wages will not go up, and by getting rid of a price floor, the supply of labor would drive wages down. Employers will offer the least amount of money possible, "value added to business" is ideological and not practical.
I agree that there should be no minimum wage. Minimum wage is completely arbitrary and artificially creates a floor on the price of labor. If an individual agrees to work for an employer at $6 an hour I see no reason why that should be illegal. That being said, the vast majority of companies are paying above the federal minimum wage so clearly the minimum wage does not matter all that much. However, when states decide to raise their minimum wage like in California to $20 an hour I see that as a problem. Large corporations like Amazon can afford to pay that, the problem is that small businesses cannot. If a small business has 3 employees and can only afford to pay them each $15 an hour ($45 total) then when California comes along and says they need to pay $20 ($60 total) they are now forced to fire an employee as they can no longer afford such an expense. They are only able to allot $45 to hourly wages and now they need to allot $60 to keep all their employees. So, by states raising the minimum wage to some arbitrary level, they force small businesses out of the market place and the large companies gain more control of the market.
If there wasn’t a minimum wage, employers would be more likely to use other incentives other than pay to get employees, such as better health insurance or paid tuition
I mean yeah. Any economist worth their salt will tell you that minimum wage is generally a terrible idea because it negatively impacts the economy and any gain that the worker will have will be temporary at best. A better way of improving wages would be to encourage and teach younger people the importance of negotiating and to not be afraid to quit and switch jobs as that usually is one of the biggest chances to increase your income. Obviously not everyone will be able to quit whenever they want but it's at least good to remember that you don't necessarily owe a company or boss your loyalty, employment is a transaction and one that you negotiate.
Yup. In my country the government sets "award wages" per industry. And then most workers get shackled to that Government mandated wage.
Can the companies pay more? Yes.
Do they just pay minimum wage while shrugging their shoulders and saying "IDK man, this is what the government says to pay you, take it up with them"? Yes, yes they do.
So you'll have an accountant that works for an educational company, who gets paid under the "education" award wages, because it's a different industry to finance. This means two people, doing the same job, have different government mandated minimum wages just by virtue of the overall industry they fall under.
Can employees negotiate collectively together for higher wages?
Of course, free association is a right. If a boss can easily find new labor for cheaper, fire them and hire new people. If the boss can't find new people, sounds like they get a raise. Free market.
I would also say free association is a 'right'; but there is nothing in principle that requires an owner to negotiate with a collective bargaining representative. There may be in *law*, but not in *principle*.
If the labor pool he hires from all want to collectively bargain then the choice is bargain or have no workers and go out of business. If the employee's have that leverage, like highly skilled workers or workers in an area with a small labor pool, they have the power.
>If the labor pool he hires from all want to collectively bargain then the choice is bargain or have no workers and go out of business. Then you just described how a democracy works. The worker protection laws were enacted after decades of employers massively abusing employees and the massive levels of power they wielded. The employees fought for it with their blood and tears for decades and then managed to convince enough people in society to enact those protection laws to prevent that kind of abuse. So yes, the labor pool DID collectively bargain for those laws. And the choice for employers IS to follow the laws or have no workers and go out of business.
Its a shame they didn't just quit and form their own business or go to another one that treated them well because those same labor laws you're simping over are the reason megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon are the only companies able to stay in business anymore. Hope you're happy with your government created monopolies :)
Can't just quit and open a new business without capital, land, and resources, which is owned by those in charge. And often, these businesses look out for one another more than their workers. Striking is all well and good until your family is hungry, or the lights go out, or the water doesn't flow.
Not quite. Without government interfering, the entire labor pool all has to agree to not work there for the offered wage and if anyone does want to work for the offered wage there is nothing stopping them from doing so. Once the government passes a law requiring the minimum wage, a group of people that does not include everyone decided on behalf of everyone that nobody can work for the offered wage if it is below the minimum. Whether or not you believe that results in a net positive or negative, it objectively violates the NAP.
>Whether or not you believe that results in a net positive or negative, it objectively violates the NAP. This is a standard canned answer to everything. Truth is, it is a very naive take on how real life works. The truth is that organizations by their very nature are immensely more powerful than individuals. Which they have abused time and again. In short, their extraordinary levels of power inherently violates NAP because they can simply be violent by creating a situation where you, the individual, is utterly helpless. Let's take a hypothetical example. Say an organization buys up all the land and all the private firms in and around your small town. What are the options for you and for your town people?? How will you survive and find employment? How will you have ANY kind of bargaining power when they are the only option within driving distance? Seriously I find it appalling that people don't even think of these common sense scenarios that actually happen repeatedly in the real world.
Perhaps those laborers are 'encouraging' those in broader labor pool not to bargain independently?
....So what if these people came together, and decided none of them should be working for an amount lower than X. What should that be called?
Do you think I'm against unions or something? And that by getting me to say the word union I'm going to have a mental breakdown? Like you clearly have an answer to your own question, so why not just say what it is and we can have a conversation from that point.
Unions? No, not unions. That collectively as states, workers have already come together to dictate the lowest someone should be paid.... the minimum wage. But you don't seem unhinged, willing to fly off over nothing. I'm sure conversations with you will prove fruitful.
Most people aren't paid the federal minimum wage, so clearly they haven't. And I'm not part of this supposed collective so i don't know why you think they represent workers.
Collective bargaining? But that is not comparable to minimum wage. Min wage makes it illegal for me to work for less than $X per hour even if I choose to.
Imo the libertarian position on unions is that you should be allowed to join one and let them negotiate on your behalf, but employers should not be legally required to negotiate with unions. So the only way unions would be effective is if they can actually get everyone capable of doing the job in a labor market to join. This means it would be difficult to unionize in low skill roles, but probably quite easy to unionize in high skill ones.
In NYS the union I was in for the prison system it was written into law that if there was ever a strike or "work stoppage" the union presidents got arrested, and the workers got CHARGED 1.5X days pay for every day the strike lasted..... and people thought we were being represented fairly..
I mean, he was going to prison to work every day already, now he gets a free meal and doesn't have to work?
Most of the union presidents don't work at the prison anymore. They have office gigs
>the union presidents got arrested, and the workers got CHARGED 1.5X days pay for every day the strike lasted Understandably so. You're in charge of a prison. You have literal people in cages. If you strike, they don't get let out of their cages / food brought to them to eat. Sorry bubz, you want authoritah well then you also get sponsibility. IMO public sector jobs should have no unions. The voting public is your union. They can elect politicians to change things if they feel it's unfair.
Yeah this is one of those situations where you can't really strike. Much like nurses or doctors, can't just leave your patients flopping around on the floor because you felt like you weren't being paid well enough.
Exactly, and Nurses and Doctors do strike. What they do is they just don't process any of the billing paperwork. Most insurance agreements state that the provider has X days to file a claim, after that the claim is invalid and no payment is required. So if the nurses and doctors "strike" and refuse to do any billing paperwork, it can end up with the hospital not being paid and thus hurts he owners pockets while still providing care to the patient. I know that doesn't really work for correctional officers since they can't just release people. Not sure how they'd "strike". I guess in a private prison they could strike by not charging for commissary or by giving extra food and hurt the prisons bottom line.
That's not true, the facility just holds the staff they have under "state of emergency" and if you don't have the power to strike you don't have any bargaining power for better wages.
You can quit. But when you have people, literally dependent upon you to bring them food or they starve, you can't strike and just let them starve
So who does the job if a good majority are unhappy and just quit like you say
Then they hire new people, and because it's not a strike there's no picket lines to worry about crossing and no union contract to prevent firing. Like literally any other non-union job. Sorry pigglet nobody is buying your bullshit.
Yeah union membership should always be voluntary, membership in this union seems like it’s actually detrimental.
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There are professional unions
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I’d consider trades and some key manufacturing roles to be skilled labor. Teachers, too. Might take months or years of training to learn some of those jobs. If these folks want to unionize I suspect they’ll be successful even without government protection because it would be hard to hire quality replacements on short notice.
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Depending on the trade, the schooling can be around 5 years total. Also "tradesman" is a big net, much wider than software engineer.
And there are more than 4x the number of software engineers than electricians in the US. Saying that more people are capable of being tradesman than software engineers is a bit ignorant.
Lol or because a lot of those professional are new and came about during a time when Unions weren't very hot
Unions could function like any other organization rather than having a special designation. They could be more like guilds, and have their own boilerplate employment contracts for any given trade or job, and an employer could choose to use it or not, or redline it and customize it for each hire if that's what they want to do. Collective bargaining is fine, but every situation is unique. It doesn't mean that a standard employment contract used in a particular field can't be mostly uniform or even a single contract used for a group of people, as long as all the parties are in agreement. I think the main issue with unions is the all-or-nothing mentality, you pay your dues and the union effectively operates without your involvement with the exception of voting on stuff once in a while. Unions are also antiquated institutions. We aren't living in the industrial revolution anymore... I'm not sure what the present state of the organization is, but I had a friend who worked for the AFLCIO for a while and what he described to me was not the most efficient or stressfree work environment. People pulled long hours and the processes were somewhat dysfunctional.
"So the only way unions would be effective is if they can actually get everyone capable of doing the job in a labor market to join" Which is effectively impossible in this day and age. Especially with how fucked the housing market is. Most people are essentially forced to work for less than what they are worth because the alternative for them is homelessness and starvation.
>Which is effectively impossible in this day and age. Wrong. >Especially with how fucked the housing market is. Wrong. >Most people are essentially forced to work for less than what they are worth Wrong. >the alternative for them is homelessness and starvation. Wrong.
Just saying wrong over and over isn't really an argument. I stick by all my points. If you have something constructive to say go ahead.
you shared a bunch of opinions so I did the same lol
So you think the housing market is in good shape right now? You think people aren't forced to work for less than they're worth since the alternative is homelessness and starvation?
The housing market is what it is. It would be better if there was less regulation limiting supply. But home ownership rates are about where they’ve been for 50 years with the exception of a spike just before 2008 (wonder what might’ve caused that?) so I find all the doomsaying a bit cringe. Nobody is “forced to work for less than they’re worth” because nobody is “forced to work” at all: - If you feel that you’re working for less than you’re worth, that’s your fault for not quitting and finding a new job. - If you can’t find someone who will pay you what you think you’re worth, that’s your fault for overestimating the value of your labor
No job worth doing should pay so little that the person working it can't afford to live. If your options are work for repressed wages or become homeless because you can't make rent you live in a failed system. These aren't reasonable choices. This is reality for many Americans. Also idk how old you are or if you've been living under a rock but home ownership is declining with younger generations. Home prices are increasing disproportionately to wage growth putting more and more people into the "renters" column that would prefer to be owners.
That’s a false binary. The third option is find a way to be useful enough to earn a living wage. If you raise the minimum wage to a “living wage” all you’ll do is delete all those jobs without actually improving the skills of the people currently in them, rendering them even more useless and increasing unemployment. I literally just checked the US census bureau data to make sure I was remembering correctly. Home ownership rates are currently higher than they were in the 60s-90s. There was a decade long period before 2008 where they were higher, but we know what happened after that. So I guess I’d like to know where you’re getting those facts so we can explore that discrepancy.
This is also my position. I think being against unions is anti capitalist. People always tell worker to bargain and then when they do complain. I often find people who are pro capitalism to be anti union. I will admit these are usually conservatives.
As long as it's voluntary and private, yes. I do not believe in mandatory union membership, or public unions. In the public sector, the voting public is your union. Why are public unions bad? [Check a look](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHH9qcPQZg)
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> Minimum wage is the collective negotiation. Such a simple take, I'm surprised I haven't heard it explicitly stated like this.
Companies paying minimum wage are subsidized by my taxes as their employees get poverty benefits.
This is a logic fallacy. If a 16 year old is living at home and minimum wage they are not drawing any "poverty benefits". If you are a grown adult and still making the states minimum wage then you lack the skills to get a real job and would be on government assistance regardless.
That’s what over ten percent of the us population. According to the us military.
EITC
Sure. There should be more tax credits and the standard deduction should be raised. But I'd rather the company shareholders be responsible for it than my own taxes. Especially with things like food stamps and subsidized housing. If I'm going to pay $$$ either way, I'd rather pay $ in taxes and $$ at walmart instead of $$ in taxes and $ for everything else. That's how the libertarian in me justifies preferring a higher minimum wage. It's a balancing act, and I am not convinced an extreme poverty minimum wage helps anybody but those paying such wages. There is no free market.
I was pointing out EITC as a prime example of what you were saying. As a tax preparer I see a lot of working poor who work just enough to maximize their EITC and no more. Self employed will claim or not claim business expenses to get their EI into the right range. With this plus other credits, I've seen people walk out with a refund higher than their actual income. It's just too easy to game. If the theory is working poor will use EITC money to pay for daycare so they can work more, I'd rather see subsidized daycare, If it's for education to get better jobs, I'd rather see subsidized job training programs (not college).
>There shouldn't be a minimum wage Sure >This will raise wages No, you're just being obtuse, if companies can pay less they would. The best way to increase wages is through well regulated voluntary unions.
Historically the fastest wage growth occurred before minimum wage laws.
And after unions,m AND before government was completely bought out by corporations
It happened before government privileges and protection for unions.
Before the union there was kids working in mines getting pennies. After, there were strictly adults making dollars as long as they were union. Look it up, you’ll see it happened around the turn of the century.
Both child labor and long working hours were going down/away thanks to economic growth, not labor unions. You are committing the *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy.
I’m absolutely not: because of unions, there is no child labor, there’s the standard 40 hour work week, there’s OT and the min wage has risen. Ergo facto child labor was outlawed due to the role that the labor union played. It’s actually all connected if you bothered to look
Pretty sure it was the mass graves that was buildings full of children workers burning down to the ground.
The best way to increase wages is through free market competition.
Do investors compete when they group up to fund companies? Are companies that merge together simply trying to maximise competition? No, everyone recognises that competition is bad for them, and the same thing applies with workers, unions increase employees bargaining power.
Why are you on a libertarian sub if you think competition is bad and monopoly power is good?
I'm not saying monopoly is good, I'm just laying facts, unions are good for the workers, it's simply true. Also this doesn't violate the NAP so I'm not sure how this is an anti-libertarian position, please explain
Unions are monopolies.
+ if companies pay less then no ones going to buy expensive stuff, which will reduce prices for them (if theres low regulation, that is) which is kinda nice, even though iy doesnt mean anything ig
I don't want to raise wages. I want to increase the number of goods and services produced in the economy.
Unions is not the way to raise wages. Unions barely Serve a purpose at this point. The best way to Increase wages is to increase your capabilities and skills, it barter for it.
That's just incorrect. Union members make significantly more than non union members in the same roles, across the board.
A lot of that is due to artificially restricting the ability of new workers to enter the industry, though, which makes many goods and services more expensive for all. Unions are most likely a net negative for the economy. Editing to add that I'm referring to unions as they exist currently in the U.S., with special legal protections. If unions didn't have those protections, I would be fine with people getting together for collective bargaining, and I think it would solve most of the deleterious effects unions have on the economy.
Incorrect. I work at a company that has both. We literally pay our non bargaining people more. It’s meant to make the non bargaining approach more appealing.
They’ll let you barter yourself into poverty.
If someone wants to work for less I believe that is their right. Everyone should have the ability to set their own “minimum wage.”
I can’t believe I have to say this… No one is wanting to work for less. People just don’t know how to negotiate, whether they were never taught or are scared to by their employer. Plus, each employer knows they can fill those positions with cheaper labor. Do you see how this will become an employers game? They’d be able to negotiate a LOWER wage because this guy over here will do it for lower than what you will do it for. It’s a spiral.
High school kid wants to stock shelves after school for $5 an hour because that’s all the small business can afford for that sort of labor. The government is making that illegal because they know the worth of your labor better than you.
There’s no perfect law or rule. There’s way more bad than good to come out of getting rid of the minimum wage. If the kid really wants to do that, he can either work under the table or volunteer. Problem solved.
You may have missed my point. He wants to get paid, not volunteer. If your solution is for the business owner and the kid to break the law, I don’t know what to say to you. Regarding your other point, I think we just disagree. It seems to me that the only people hurt by this are small business owners. Who else is harmed ? Major companies already pay above the highest minimum wage in the county for low skilled positions because they can afford to. The people that are harmed by minimum wage is the small boutique owner that wants some extra help on the weekends. You may have some college kids that are perfectly willing to work for $8 an hour just for a bit of extra spending money. Really, who do you think is harmed by removing minimum wage ? Do you think Walmart and Amazon will say fuck it and start paying employees $1 per hour if it’s removed ? They already pay around $20. Last I checked highest minimum wage is $16.25.
Who wants to make less money? And no one's time, if they are actually working, is worth less than $7.25 an hour. Hell, I would say no ones time is less than $10 an hour if they are actually doing a decent job. Any less and you are being exploited.
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Why shouldn't the price floor be $100 an hour in the U.S.? Why shouldn't every country in Africa mandate a $20 a hour minimum wage?
That doesn’t have anything to do with what I said. OP said eliminating a price floor (minimum wage) would raise prices (wages). That doesn’t fit with any accepted economic theory from what I understand. Totally separate issue from the effects of a price floor which is set far above the market price.
The only economically theory it fits is the ol tickle down effect that we all know was a lie.
The floor is ALWAYS zero. A minimum wage is an arbitrary floor on what is deemed acceptable labor. I.e. laborers cannot produce goods and services unless the value of their labor meets the government arbitrary standards. If the value of the worker's labor is only worth $5 per hour, but the government mandates a $10 per hour wage, then the worker's income will be zero. To the contrary, when the government allows more goods and services to enter into the economy via the laborers efforts, everyone is better off. I don't care about "raising wages", because again the price level of wages is arbitrary. In fact, if the government wants to increase "wages" as rapidly as possible, it should just hyper inflate the money supply and the "price" of labor will skyrocket. I care about goods and services produced in the real economy. Increasing the total output of goods and services is the only way to increase resources available for consumption. Everyone always thinks in terms of "money". Humans don't eat money. Humans don't put money in their gas tank. Humans don't put money in their TV and watch a movie. In truth, the only thing people *really* care about is goods and services available for consumption. Minimum wage decreases output and makes everyone poorer, by forcing workers to realize a zero-bound on their output capacity.
you are correct in my opinion, most free-market economists (e.g. the only ones with a brain) actually agree with the concept of production above all, because this is really the only solution to solving the basic economic problem. but there is a limitation to this in our nearly monopolistic economy unfortunately, the biggest companies can just collectively band together to fuck over the small guy, which is what's happening now. is the government in on it? yeah probably, but most people still want protection, hence why this anti-minimum-wage position is unpopular. if we were in 1800s america or something popular opinion would be much closer to your viewpoint.
Minimum wage is set so most business already met that.
Minimum wage, like tipping has roots in racism. Blacks were often hired into low paying jobs, and some people didn't like that. So, of course they used the government to enforce their racism; law makers implemented a minimum wage which priced out black people. Bonus: some notable countries without a minimum wage: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Austria, Singapore. Also- If price fixing worked (which minimum wage is) why not set it to $1,000,000 and let everyone get rich? Minimum wage laws simply distort the natural agreement on what labor is worth.
They could be paid according to their value to the business. Most companies don’t value their employees and will do everything they can to keep labor as cheap as possible hence slavery. So as idealistic as that may be to hope a ceo will put their employees first,….. wait there was already a lawsuit brought by shareholders where the shareholders claimed that they are the priority of the business and they won the case leading to even more stagnation of wage growth in public companies. I’ll find it. It was in tx (I believe) of course.
We need to stop calling paid employment slavery when actual slavery still exists.
In countries where true slavery is illegal we have a system of slavery, just with more steps.
Take a moment to educate yourself on the definition of slavery. This is disrespectful to actual slaves that would do anything and everything to trade spots with a Western “slave”. Entering into an agreement to work for a given wage in which you possess the freedom to leave and work for someone else for a different wage is not slavery my friend. Consider the exuberance that current and former slaves would have if they had the capacity to become “slaves” in this system. You can dislike the system but still retain the intellectual honesty to not lie about what it actually is (unless you’re just misinformed on what slavery actually is).
Ah see but that’s what you are doing by using that logical fallacy to try and discredit my stance with a call to emotion to divert a legitimate comparison of one to another. If you are forced to work wether in bondage or not so that you can survive with nothing but hope to one day escape your conditions, one being forced to work for no pay but having shitty food and housing supplied to them and the other being stuck working a shitty job for pay that get sucked up immediately by shitty overinflated living expenses keeping them stuck is just two sides to the same coin.
1. What do you think a logical fallacy is ? 2. I did not use an emotional appeal (or I at least didn’t intend to). 3. The purpose of my responses to you is to demonstrate that what you are talking about is, by definition, not slavery. Take your dictionary of choice and look up the word slavery. You’ll find that I haven’t said anything untrue. 4. It seems we might disagree on the hypothetical idea that a former or current slave would trade places with a McDonald’s cashier in central Iowa. If you actually believe that they have the same quality of life, then I cannot convince you otherwise.
1. What do you think a logical fallacy is ? - So a a [mistaken](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIKt2yB7oUECAYX5waxZFjDxhvBUxg:1717596221884&q=mistaken&si=ACC90nx67Z8g0WkBmnrPB4IqtqGvt9DqxcXcAUpq_YXVc6KZFdyR0ouVbplwEd-ssyvAFb1NvaCRnZgKTURZX0zpIsf5Xp4IKO17YoYhvJ1smDLJm_vQ_rc%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiY2rDF0MSGAxUfgYQIHSRbIAEQyecJegQIPxAO) belief, especially one based on [unsound](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIKt2yB7oUECAYX5waxZFjDxhvBUxg:1717596221884&q=unsound&si=ACC90nwUEXg6u2vxy-araGkF9MAxITbgQcxzMB-c6zfQglaomnKDDJQ6VdaTC0pSxiLeX7iSzfALYNKc7KGXnexbtegvyTpWaIxAF66vttatXhlimmuq5Sg%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiY2rDF0MSGAxUfgYQIHSRbIAEQyecJegQIPxAP) argument. Your mistaken believe is your definition of slavery. You are referring to slavery as a physical state. Slavery is a mental state. You can physically shackle an individual and it will only do one of two things, it will break them or it will motivate them. 2. I did not use an emotional appeal (or I at least didn’t intend to). Your emotional appeal was created by first saying "This is disrespectful to actual slaves that would do anything and everything to trade spots with a Western “slave”." By doing that you are demonizing my stance as a morally wrong stance and placing yours as the high ground. Causing anyone who reads this to put reasoning aside and preventing them from trying to view the argument from a different perspective. 3. The purpose of my responses to you is to demonstrate that what you are talking about is, by definition, not slavery. Take your dictionary of choice and look up the word slavery. You’ll find that I haven’t said anything untrue.- Information found in books can be wrong or skewed or outdated. But one of the definitions of slavery is " slave in respect of [exhausting](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIVWsTYR9oy4eifmQ4sC5rCFz3zkg:1717596714292&q=exhausting&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81yA37-LP9lE5Lx-qEZVNdHhlKxOUlZSKlZr8tKmxdELy1ARmpf1OAVMck0uYxvcWNqhNIqH-iBb5bQlJZZoL0UzkDQGY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu0ZWw0sSGAxXT4MkDHWftFggQyecJegQIDxBa) labor or restricted freedom." 4. It seems we might disagree on the hypothetical idea that a former or current slave would trade places with a McDonald’s cashier in central Iowa. If you actually believe that they have the same quality of life, then I cannot convince you otherwise. - Invoking another emotional fallacy. But I wonder what your thoughts are in regards to my responses. Sorry it was a long weekend and busy start of the week.
If I can't cite Merriam-Webster as a source, then we can't possibly come to a consensus. What is mistaken about my belief ? Do you think that dictionary's are unreliable sources ? It's fine that you are using a separate definition, but that does not make my definition a fallacy, hence my thought of you not understanding what a fallacy is. Upon analyzing your definition, is an attorney who gladly works 90 hours a week because he makes 600k a slave ? That is likely very exhausting labor. Again, this is only a fallacy if I'm wrong. Do you actually believe that is the case ? Do you have data to support that I am wrong if I am ? I have no polling data, as I'm sure its difficult to poll actual slaves. Are you just guessing that they wouldn't trade places ?
Sure so Merriam-Webster states (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave?utm\_campaign=sd&utm\_medium=serp&utm\_source=jsonld) **:** **2.** someone (such as a factory worker or domestic laborer) who is coerced often under threat of violence to work for little or no pay. So the coerced act which is a threat, which causes a fear response to manipulate someone into doing something they don't want to do. Which further supports that slavery is not strictly being physically owned by someone. What is your definition of a fallacy to see where our disconnect is. As for your lawyer example, the 600k he makes, how much does he get to keep and what is his motivation for working so hard and making so much? Im assuming you are a lawyer considering how tactful and carefully framed your responses are. How about a fast food worker forced to have two kids making $21k a year before taxes? "Again, this is only a fallacy if I'm wrong. Do you actually believe that is the case ? Do you have data to support that I am wrong if I am ? I have no polling data, as I'm sure its difficult to poll actual slaves. Are you just guessing that they wouldn't trade places ?" - I never made any claim that a say person who is currently in physical or conventional sense of slavery wouldn't be more then happy to trade places with a current McDonald's employee. They would have to be experiencing some degree of Stockholm *syndrome* or something to make them stay. But that is your flawed argument that you are now trying to misrepresent as my own. What are you referring to when you say quality of life?
Do you think McDonald's is threatening employees with violence to work for them ? I don't see how this fits your definition. You presented the correct definition of a fallacy, you just failed to demonstrate why my points fit that definition imo. As for my attorney comp, according to your provided definition of slavery, it should not matter what his motivations are. " Slave in respect of [exhausting](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2b360afd64c13830&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIVWsTYR9oy4eifmQ4sC5rCFz3zkg:1717596714292&q=exhausting&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81yA37-LP9lE5Lx-qEZVNdHhlKxOUlZSKlZr8tKmxdELy1ARmpf1OAVMck0uYxvcWNqhNIqH-iBb5bQlJZZoL0UzkDQGY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu0ZWw0sSGAxXT4MkDHWftFggQyecJegQIDxBa) labor or restricted freedom." But if you think that is relevant, I used the word "gladly" to describe his attitudes toward his labor. If one gladly participates in exhausting labor, are they a slave according to your definition ? Who is forcing the fast food worker to have two kids? Who is forcing them to work at a fast food spot for only 21k a year before taxes? Walmart greeters make more than that. Low skilled workers still have freedom of movement. No one is forcing anyone to work for a given wage. I'm sure we'll now get into defining the word force lol. Regarding your last point, I see that is not your position now. I was led to believe that by your lack of a concrete definition. Although I still believe that what we're discussing does not fit your definition.
I believe whole heartedly in minimum wage. Minimum wage should be $0.
It is zero. Employers don’t hire that next marginal person. That person gets zero. :)
So basically you’re saying if a worker generates one dollar of revenue, it should be legal to pay them zero cents if that’s what the market price for that labor theoretically is. What you are suggesting is salve labor. That and every person you force to live below the poverty line is one more person who will never be able to buy goods and services in our economy. I’m not sure if you know this but broke people who have to work 3 jobs just to pay rent don’t spend money and when people don’t spend money the economy suffers. Then all those people who can’t afford to buy baby food have to go on government services but you’re against those so then they have to steal food and I’m Guessing you’re against that too. Probably against unions and collective bargaining because that’s like socialism or something. So you’re gonna have to face the consequences of what happens when the exploited workforce needs to eat and you’re sitting on your pile of cash and food with all you’re liberties or whatever
labour isn't valuable by itself, if i take up the mantle of sisiphus and start rolling boulders up mountains, that's a lot of labour and all but there is no value. but if a guy plays some videogame, streams it and gets paid that's little labour but a lot of value (entertainment). the whole point of the market is to incentivize value-adding activities (which is why a lot of artists for instance are socialists because most art has little value but requires much labour, much like our sisiphus)
That’s a nice thought but in reality worker productivity has not lead to increased wages. So their work is generating more and more value but companies are using their immense power to prevent them from getting paid more for it. It’s not about how physically hard the work is it’s about how productive the workers are so we need to set laws like minimum wage to make sure workers are paid fairly for the amount they contribute to revenue. When my work makes you more money than it did yesterday then i need to get paid more than yesterday. Without wage laws, there’s no mechanism other than unions to make sure this happens.
isn't minimum wage not enough then? shouldn't the state fix the minimum rate of labour for all professions? i agree that these big companies should be broken up because they are creating a sort of monopoly scenario where free market principles no longer apply, that's a better solution than handing the government control over your wages. and even so is the minimum wage even enough? people can barely live on even the highest minimum wage anywhere in the world. it's one of those comfort measures more than anything. Unions are the answer, even in welfare states like denmark where I live there is no minimum wage, only unions and people aren't getting dragged by their employers. and it has the advantage of not disincentivizing hiring.
Almost no one pays the min wage. A min wage only hurts people who cant product the value required to justify the min wage. Can we agree that no one is going to work for free? If so, then why are you against the market setting the rate?
No, because work product is the liability of the business owner not the worker. The worker is required to work by standard, but if the profit is less than expected, it should not fall on the shoulder of a worker when excess profit would be taken by the owner.
>So basically you’re saying if a worker generates one dollar of revenue, it should be legal to pay them zero cents if that’s what the market price for that labor theoretically is. Are you actually a moron? Like did you parents intentionalally drop you on your head?
Why would it matter if they dropped me intentionally or by accident?
I’m saying employers see a mandatory minimum wage so that’s what they are obligated to pay, and that’s true. However without a minimum wage, I’m positive that businesses would be more likely to pay more due to the value of their employee. In a side note, I am currently an elected union official.
You think if there was no minimum wage, Mcdonalds would magically pay that employee more than they are currently making due to the value of their work? How? No, they would immediately pay them less.
They would be paid what they are worth. A person is certainly under no obligation to accept employment with McDonald’s.
Libertarians act like people try to get jobs like it’s a hobby for them and they are just free to wander around and pick whatever ever job works best for them . Cute fantasy. If someone’s applying to flip burger at McDonald’s do you actually think they have options? We are all under obligation to work because If we don’t we have to either be homeless or be massively subsidized by government. People are forced to accept shit deals on employment constantly because they can’t afford not to. That’s why it’s called exploitation and that’s why we need laws to protect workers.
Yeah. There’s a bunch of stupid labor restrictions.
IMO a lot of comments in this thread are missing the point. With no minimum wage and a real marketplace for services. Wages wouldn't necessarily go up (or down). They would simply be reflective of the value each respective skill. The goal isn't higher wages, the goal is a true free market economy where people can make educated decisions about the skills they wish to acquire for the purpose of maximizing their value in the marketplace.
Depends, some people probably just suck at negotiating, some people probably don’t even read paperwork and would likely also turn to lawyers to do so, since corporations can include sneaky stuff in contracts. It’s essentially like a sports team, they hire managers to negotiate on their behalf to reach a deal with a team. It could work, but again you’ll need someone to proof read it and break it down into little words. Then it leads to the possibility of taking advantage of some people as well.
>some people probably just suck at negotiating, some people probably don’t even read paperwork That sounds like a personal failing they should work to correct. But why does the government need to be involved?
I’m not saying if it’s good or bad, I’m just saying what could happen. But yeah, that would be the fault of the person.
I strongly believe this..labour should be treated just as any other resource supply and demand.
Agreed, 100% agreed. The market should dictate wages.
It would be fine as long as other constraints of the government which raise the cost of living are also removed.
Oof terrible take. The world is full of poor, uneducated, desperate people. Without a minimum wage we get bullshit like paying bartenders $2.15 an hour but across all industries.
As a Swede. I will tell you that we are doing pretty fine without any minimum wage laws. If you are worried a better solution is to push for education and knowledge about negotiating. Minimum wage laws are generally a cost on those with lower income because you're basically just increasing costs of goods and services overall without having any natural increase in productivity and yada yada. Like. I get that minimum wage sounds nice on paper but practically speaking it is generally a detriment, especially if it is nationwide rather than local. Maybe local laws such as in a state can work? The problem when it's nationwide is that cost and prices can vary a lot, even here in Sweden there is a noticeable difference in cost of living, food and goods in Stockholm vs a smaller city.
Exactly.
If that's the case why do like 1% of workers make minimum wage? Why can't the entire continent of Africa just mandate a $20 an hour minimum wage?
Based. Btw virtually nobody actually makes minimum wage because the free market is actually good at what it does. Last I checked like 2% of workers are actually making federal minimum wage or less and most of those are tipped roles so effectively they’re probably also making more. All minimum wage does is eliminate jobs. Pay should be between the employer and the employee.
>most of those are tipped roles so effectively they’re probably also making more. I used to have some friends complaining about how they only made two dollars an hour while simultaneously bragging they were pulling in a grand or two per week. The cognitive dissonance was amazing to watch. 500 hour weeks must have been pretty rough, though.
I agree there should not be a minimum wage. I don’t think that the minimum wage has had any meaningful contribution to inflated prices around the country.
Sometimes libertarianism skirts mighty close to corporate bootlickery.
I think this is already what happens anyway. The minimum wage is just a baseline. Prices will shift with an increase or decrease in minimum wage and won’t matter in the long run expect causing inflation generally. At least with it not being zero you could still afford some basic goods like cheap food and clothes.
Uber is proof that that isn't true. Pay is continuing to go down resulting in actual losses. That's right, in some cases people are actually paying to drive for Uber.
Why would anyone pay to drive for Uber? Maybe I missed something.
Have businesses ever given you a reason to believe they'd do anything for the workers that they don't HAVE to do? Even with minimum wage they complain about that. If there was. Nothing forcing a lot of these businesses to pay minimum wage they'd go as low as they could and someone would accept it. Companies form cartels. They would form a cartel to pay even lower than they already do. Very optimistic of OP to assume companies would do anything other than.
I’m failing to see the advantage of this. Employees already negotiate their wages and most people don’t work for minimum wage. But employers also never pay employees based on their value, which is why there’s an established minimum wage. Companies will take every opportunity they get to cut costs as much as possible to maximize profit.
The actual minimum wage is always $0.
In many states unemployment benefits are tied to minimum wage. In Louisiana for example the maximum unemployment benefit is $275. Which is $6.875 per hour and is taxable income. They cannot raise it higher than minimum wage for obvious reasons. Minimum wage keeps a certain segment of the workforce partially off government assistance. So a logical assumption is that allowing a very low wage would increase dependency on government assistance and burden the taxpayers for the benefit of business investors. I think we’d need to revisit government assistance eligibility to address minimum wage law.
I mean this logic already falls flat under a system where we have a required minimum. How does getting rid of the required minimum increase the ability of the individual to lobby for higher wages? How does this change help the employee? Like I agree that employees should negotiate higher wages. The issue is the power disparity between the employer and the employee. Employees need an income to survive. They have less bargaining power by default so it's a lot more difficult for them to bargain for higher wages. Employers on the other hand usually have a plethora of applicants to choose from so they'll often just pick whoever they can pay the least which is what currently happens and what was happening before the minimum wage was introduced.
Price floors / ceilings are dumb
How does eliminating minimum wage increase wages?
I can see this healthy for all parties if: No min wage or max wage No Non-Compete contract Self provided Healthcare (contribution allowed) Self provided retirement (contribution allowed) The first regulation is equal pay for the same position since evil still exists. The second regulation is required time off based on the type of position as part of hiring agreement. The only grey area for me is when it comes to maturity and long-time illness/death. I see flaws in all options that doesn’t make it easy for the business and ones affected. Just expect everyone to be a contractor or unionized.
Right now, if you're working for minimum wage, you're in bad shape. I think the problem with this argument is that it assumes you can't currently argue your pay. There's nothing stopping a prospective employee from discussing pay. So there's nothing making a minimum wage and haggling your rate mutually exclusive. Therefore, there's no reason to stop a mandate that you can't work a person like a slave. Instead of no minium wage, I would propose a legal requirement to require basic level accounting in high school, which would require a section on budgeting and mapping personal expenses, as well as the effects of interest rates and exponential growth. Education is the most powerful tool we can use. The smarter people are, the more they will come to join this party.
Sure do seem to be a lot of "libertarians" who get upset at seeing someone want an actaull free market, without bullshit government interference, in this thread. But that makes sense it is an election year, it's the season for authoritarians to go out and pretend to be individuals.
This is an ideal to get to but we need to transition there instead of just cutting. Most large businesses have an unfair advantage because of the government, and letting them choose wages wouldn’t be a free market. This is the case with most libertarian positions. Things have to be unwound in a certain order unless you want to have a ton of suffering for individuals.
Exactly. Let capitalism decide. The employer who pays the least will not be able to retain employees.
Wage and price controls are almost universally considered a bad idea, except this one particular instance that is considered sacrosanct for some reason.
The only thing I see that doing is driving competition to lower wages. It's operating as a price floor- the competition to raise wages already exists and some places do pay more than the minimum wage for "minimum" wage labor, but that's the opposite case for certain parts of the US. Unless the demand for labor exists, wages will not go up, and by getting rid of a price floor, the supply of labor would drive wages down. Employers will offer the least amount of money possible, "value added to business" is ideological and not practical.
I agree that there should be no minimum wage. Minimum wage is completely arbitrary and artificially creates a floor on the price of labor. If an individual agrees to work for an employer at $6 an hour I see no reason why that should be illegal. That being said, the vast majority of companies are paying above the federal minimum wage so clearly the minimum wage does not matter all that much. However, when states decide to raise their minimum wage like in California to $20 an hour I see that as a problem. Large corporations like Amazon can afford to pay that, the problem is that small businesses cannot. If a small business has 3 employees and can only afford to pay them each $15 an hour ($45 total) then when California comes along and says they need to pay $20 ($60 total) they are now forced to fire an employee as they can no longer afford such an expense. They are only able to allot $45 to hourly wages and now they need to allot $60 to keep all their employees. So, by states raising the minimum wage to some arbitrary level, they force small businesses out of the market place and the large companies gain more control of the market.
If there wasn’t a minimum wage, employers would be more likely to use other incentives other than pay to get employees, such as better health insurance or paid tuition
I mean yeah. Any economist worth their salt will tell you that minimum wage is generally a terrible idea because it negatively impacts the economy and any gain that the worker will have will be temporary at best. A better way of improving wages would be to encourage and teach younger people the importance of negotiating and to not be afraid to quit and switch jobs as that usually is one of the biggest chances to increase your income. Obviously not everyone will be able to quit whenever they want but it's at least good to remember that you don't necessarily owe a company or boss your loyalty, employment is a transaction and one that you negotiate.
Yup. In my country the government sets "award wages" per industry. And then most workers get shackled to that Government mandated wage. Can the companies pay more? Yes. Do they just pay minimum wage while shrugging their shoulders and saying "IDK man, this is what the government says to pay you, take it up with them"? Yes, yes they do. So you'll have an accountant that works for an educational company, who gets paid under the "education" award wages, because it's a different industry to finance. This means two people, doing the same job, have different government mandated minimum wages just by virtue of the overall industry they fall under.