Manufacturing Confusion

Patt - If you have a point you want me to consider, you need to be a bit more direct, because I honestly don't get your point; unless of course your point was just to insult me. That much I got. Cool

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revel wrote:

My main concern is that since so many immigrants are willing to work for cheap and unfair wages ...

Who decides what wages are "fair" or "unfair"? I always thought it was the worker who decides whether or not his labor is worth that much or more. Are you suggesting that I might be willing to work for an "unfair" wage? How so, if I think it sufficiently "fair" to agree to work for it, who are you to claim otherwise?

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In this country we have labor laws that is set in place to prevent abuse. It is unfair to work a person sunup till sundown with no overtime pay compensation. As just one example. If a person is poor though they have no choice but to do it. That is why unions were formed, to prevent abuses from employers. Without fair standards set in place, the middle classs disappears and this country is turned into just the rich and the poor with all the rich calling the shots to make sure the poor stays that way.

If one worker is willing to work for unfair wages and unfair conditions then the standard is in danger of being lowered for all.

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revel wrote:

In this country we have labor laws that is set in place to prevent abuse. It is unfair to work a person sunup till sundown with no overtime pay compensation. As just one example. If a person is poor though they have no choice but to do it. That is why unions were formed, to prevent abuses from employers. Without fair standards set in place, the middle classs disappears and this country is turned into just the rich and the poor with all the rich calling the shots to make sure the poor stays that way.

If one worker is willing to work for unfair wages and unfair conditions then the standard is in danger of being lowered for all.

I find it interesting that within your first paragraph you tell me that we have labor laws to protect us from abuse and then tell me that we have labor unions to protect us from abuse. I'm not saying I have the answer, but perhaps we don't need both. (???)

And we could certainly have an interesting discussion about which labor laws actually protect workers and which ones might more accurately be said to simply take away our freedom and remove jobs from the economy, but I think we'll leave that for another day.

I'm all for preventing "abuse". I happen to think it is an abuse of governmental power to tell me that I can't take a legal, legitimate job I would otherwise take if left to my own devices.

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No one is forced to join a union. Workers join unions so that together they can be as strong as the company owners. And if a job is legal and legitimate, why couldn't you take it? Who would be stoping you?

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revel wrote:

No one is forced to join a union. Workers join unions so that together they can be as strong as the company owners.

Who said that anyone is forced to join a union? Rolling Eyes

revel wrote:

And if a job is legal and legitimate, why couldn't you take it? Who would be stoping you?

You. The unions. Those wonderful government labor laws of yours.

Suppose I'm out of work right now. I've got some savings, but not enough to get by. I know there's nothing coming along in my field for six months, and I just need a little extra to make ends meet for that long... maybe a year. A guy I know is willing to pay me $5.00/hour for some simple labor. Working 40 hours a week at that rate I could make ends meet. The work is easy; I know I can do it. The job is mine for the taking, and I could start right away. He wants to hire me, and I want to work for him.

But I can't. Why? Because the government says that I'm not allowed to decide that I'm willing to earn $5.00/hour. They don't trust me to make that decision for myself; they deny me the LIBERTY to determine my own destiny, to decide what my labor is worth and whether I am willing, for a short time, to accept a low wage rather than no job at all.

You think it's a crime for someone to pay a man or woman $5.00/hour for his or her labor. I think the real crime is denying that man or woman the opportunity to at least say "yes" or "no" to that job.

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If the government is stoping you from getting that job then the government is stoping your employer from offering you a job at $5 an hour so the situation you offer as an example would never arise. In other words the employer would be offering you the legal standard pay rate and you would have a job.

Again, if there is no standard then employers can pay anything they like and poor people will have no choice but to work for that little amount even though it is not enough to provide for their families decently so therefore they would never get ahead and could not afford to send their kids to college so they could never get ahead. It is the middle class working Americans that keeps the economy going. We are the ones going to walmart and getting loans for cars and buys the gas that keeps the energy companies going. If our middle class disappears who in the world is going to buy those products that the companies sell, just the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans?

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revel wrote:

If the government is stoping you from getting that job then the government is stoping your employer from offering you a job at $5 an hour so the situation you offer as an example would never arise. In other words the employer would be offering you the legal standard pay rate and you would have a job.

Alternatively, the employer may decide that hiring you at $5 an hour is not worth the expense, in which case you end up jobless. It isn't clear to me that the average of the two alternatives is preferrable to the laissez-faire case.

revel wrote:

Again, if there is no standard then employers can pay anything they like

... just like employees can ask for anything they like. Both sides of the contract must volunteer to be part of it, or there will be no contract.

revel wrote:

and poor people will have no choice but to work for that little amount even though it is not enough to provide for their families decently

Meanwhile, under your scenario, some poor people will have no choice but to be jobless and go on welfare. Again, I don't see how this is an improvement, because they still can't provide for their families decently.

revel wrote:

If our middle class disappears who in the world is going to buy those products that the companies sell, just the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans?

I don't see what class has to do with it.

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revel wrote:

If the government is stoping you from getting that job then the government is stoping your employer from offering you a job at $5 an hour so the situation you offer as an example would never arise.

The situation I offer as an example COULD arise if the government weren't putting itself in the position of deciding what jobs I can and can't take at what pay. (Get it?) Rolling Eyes

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The employer would have to hire someone to get the job done so he or she would hire you for the legal amount if you qualified in every other way.

Class don't have anything to do with it, my point was that if the middle class disappears then the American economy is left with only a small percent of the population to buy a lot of the goods and service and there is not a large percent who is wealthy in this country so the demand would be down and so the company owners would suffer as well. It is just common sense to invest in the middle classs for the sake of the US economy. Consumers is what keeps the country going and if we are not out there buying and getting loans and getting decent wages to pay the loans off which in turn helps the banks, the money flow slows down so the economy slows down and so the companies have to fire or lay people off. It is only so long that the middle class can exist on credit cards, we have got to have money coming in where we can spend it for the economy. (Not to mention provide for our families.)

Math and finance is not a particular area that I am good at, but all this is just common sense that anyone can see.

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revel wrote:

The employer would have to hire someone to get the job done so he or she would hire you for the legal amount if you qualified in every other way.

I don't think you are thinking of this problem on a macro level. Sometimes an employer can absorb a little more in labor costs for a given position, and sometimes he simply can't hire that person at that artificial labor rate. Period. Multiply that effect by how many thousands of businesses and you begin to glimpse how many jobs might be prohibited by the government's price fixing in the labor market.

Try to think of it this way: If it is okay for the government to set the price of labor, why not have them set the price of a loaf of bread, too? Why not make sure that bakers and bakeries can hire lots of people by setting the minimum price for a loaf of bread at $5.00?

Or, if you just want to talk about the price of labor: If a minimum wage is really a good thing and has no negative effect on hiring or jobs, why not set the minimum wage at $100/hour? Surely that would get people out of poverty much faster than $5.45/hour will.

(I hope you'll give these some real thought.)

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Programs are created when situations require it. People used to work in the coal mines and places like that for pennies for however long their employers required it. That happened,people rejected it so the labor laws were created and has worked well. Our country has continued to grow and have continued to be better off than their parents before them because of all the improvements. I only hope that all the improvements stay in place. I can just imagine the revolt from all the workers if people tried to take away the minimum wage rate. Much like the revolt they are going to have with trying to cut down on social security.

I don't mean to be mean or stubborn, I simply do not buy your situations that you cite as examples. I think we have reached the point of agreeing to disagree?

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revel wrote:

Programs are created when situations require it.

Liberals in government create programs when they want to be seen to care about a "problem". Historically, in almost every case where they have done so, it can be shown to have made the "problem" worse.

We are not discussing labor laws setting safety and maximum work-shifts, etc. We are discussing setting an artificial price on the cost of labor. If you remain convinced that there is no reason to not do so, then explain why we don't set it at $100/hour. If raising it a little causes NO harm, why would raising it a lot cause harm?

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Revel - Here are a few comments to consider:

From Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute:

Quote:

"No serious economist doubts that the minimum wage destroys jobs. The only question is how many. Economists Richard Burkhauser, Kenneth Couch and David Wittenberg estimate that every 10 percent increase in the minimum reduces employment by between 2 percent and 6 percent. They figure Congress' 1996 minimum wage hike cost between 153,000 and 457,000 teens their jobs."

From Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a leading authorities on U.S. poverty statistics and the U.S. welfare system:

Quote:

"FACT: Increasing the minimum wage is not an effective way to reduce poverty or change the distribution of income. The popular belief that minimum wage workers are poor adults working full-time, year round, and trying to raise a family is simply untrue. An analysis of March 1999 Census Bureau data shows that:

Of workers who would be affected by a minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $6.15 per hour, over half are either teenagers or young adults under 25; a third are enrolled in school; nearly three-quarters are single; and only 7.4 percent are poor family heads.

The median family income of those who would be affected by a minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $6.15 per hour is $33,000. Nearly 60 percent have household incomes two or more times the poverty level."

From Edward H. Crane, President and Founder of the Cato Institute:

Quote:

"[T]he average income of minimum-wage workers increases by 30% within one year of employment on the basis of learned skills. Which is why any artificial barriers to learning those skills - which is what the minimum wage is - represents a cruel hoax to the working poor. Wage increases due to increased skill levels explain the remarkable fact that only 2.8% of workers over the age of 30 are receiving the minimum wage."
(Sources: Cato Institute; Heritage Foundation)

Economist Jim Cox, from "Minimum Wage, Maximum Damage: How the Minimum Wage Law Destroys Jobs, Perpetuates Poverty, and Erodes Freedom":

Quote:

"If there is supposed to one country on Earth where the individual enjoys the freedom to direct his own life, it is the United States. What business is it of state or federal governments to dictate to a worker the wage at which he will be allowed to work? If one individual is willing to work at a wage of $4.00 per hour and another individual is willing to hire this person at $4.00 per hour, that is entirely and solely their business.

"It takes an appalling level of arrogance for a third party to come in and threaten them at gunpoint (which is what minimum wage laws ultimately boil down to) to prevent this mutually satisfactory and voluntary arrangement."

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scrat,

It is just fundamentally wrong to pay unfair wages and if left up to employers workers would be paid unfairly sometimes and would have no other choice but to accept it. The key word there is fair, there is no reason to pay more than the labor is worth which is what $100/hr work for unskilled labor would be. A person has to make a living and the minimum wage has to keep with pace with the cost of living. It is just that simple.

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How do you get people to agree on just what is the appropriate minimum wage that is "keeping pace with the cost of living"?

Certainly the value would vary from place to place - it costs much more to live in San Francisco or Manhattan than in Iowa or Texas.

Government price controls don't work to keep prices low - instead they reduce productuion and create scarcity. Government enforced wage rates will not keep worker earnings high. Instead they will destroy marginal jobs and employment.

Scrat is correct.

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well, as it is now we still have a minimum wage rate and I imagine that won't change because most workers would throw a holy fit if it did. Thank goodness.

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If only more people would realize that the minimum wage as it stands hasn't kept pace with inflation, etc.

Especially workers. Alas, a certain industry seems to be determined to block any attempts to solve this problem.

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revel wrote:

It is just fundamentally wrong to pay unfair wages...

What is "unfair" about you paying me a wage that I have agreed to accept? If I can't determine what is a "fair" wage for me, who does? You? People love to throw around words like "fair" without ever defining what they mean by them, but often the arguments made by these people fall apart when you actually pin down those terms.

Your argument seems to be that it is unfair for someone to earn less than you think he or she should earn. The fact is that your argument is being used to deny people jobs, and that's the only real impact it has had.

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scrat,

this argument has gone round in circles. There would nothing wrong with you agreeing to work for a agreed upon wage. But you don't live in a vacuum where only you matter. People go into a business to make a profit and some people (more than less) would rather pay a person as little as they get away with for as much labor as they can get out of them. If a lot of people did that then a worker would have a hard time finding a job that paid a wage that would earn them the amount that they deserve but would have no other choice but to take what they can get which is what makes it unfair. This way we can ensure that workers get at least a decent wage for their labor. I imagine that if a person wants to work for less money there is nothing that would stop them from finding someone who would be willing to pay them less. They could even draw up a contract so that the worker could not later claim that he was under paid. The minimum wage is there to ensure that workers get a fair wage. It is as plain as the nose on your face. I am done arguing the validity of minimum wage act.

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Manufacturing Confusion

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