Who decides? The state or the individual?

Well, JP, if you wish to assign to the minimum wage a weight in the equation which determines the cost to the consumer which is unrealistic, that's OK by me. When i was a kid in high school, before McDonald's appeared on the scene, burgers at the Sandy's were 15 cents. The minimum wage then was $1.25/hour. Burgers of the same type are now more than ten times that price, but the minimum wage is not $12.50/hour.

The most consistent inflationary factors since 1973 have been the cost of petroleum and switch to over-the-road transport from railroads to deliver consumer goods. The minimum wage has frequently not been raised for years on end, but inflation continues. It simply is not the powerful infaltionary factor you seem to wish to contend, and i strongly suspect that you make your claim as a result of an ideological position.

Set I'm not saying that it is the all encompassing reason for inflation that you think I am, but it is part of the cost of doing business and does factor into the cost of commodities.

Part of my claim is based on an ideological position and I make no bones about it. I would also like to point out, that while minimum wage is not at 12.50 an hour, there certainly have been call to make it that high... a postion that is also the result of ideaological positions.

The cause of dick-in-the-dirt poor working white America is spoken for exclusively by educated middle class people who grew up on the green suburban lawns of America. However learned and good intentioned, they are not equipped to grasp the full implications of the new American labor gulag -- or the old one for that matter. They cannot understand a career limited to yanking guts out through a chicken's ass for the rest of one's life down at the local poultry plant (assuming it does not move offshore). Being born working class carries moral and spiritual implications understood only through experiencing them.

By the way, JP, to give you a little perspective on the minimum wage and petroleum costs as inflationary factors--in 1973 the minimum wage was $1.65/hour, it is now $5.15. In 1973 (before the Arab-Israeli War, and the subsequent Arab oil embargo), petroleum sold on the spot market for from $1.80 and $2.00 per barrel--it recently hit an all-time high of $78.00 per barrel, roughly 40 times the 1973 pre-war price. It has dropped down to less astronomical levels right now, but, nevertheless, ask yourself which you would consider to be the most important inflationary factor.

I'm not denying that, set. But what would happen if you you were to double or triple the minimum wage? Do you deny that this would contribute to inflation as well?

Re: Who decides? The state or the individual?


You could have chosen another term but I went with the common definition of the one you did choose.



Well, again we'll get into quibbles about words but - impermissble? No, not currently IMO. Excessive? Yeah, probably so in many cases.

I beleive the current status of our contract framework is that the authority to create laws derives from the Constitution (at both Federal and State levels.) and a component of any contract's validity is that it can not compel either party to violate any law. Since a change of law can force a change in (or make provisions unenforceable) any existing or future contract it seems to me that we have already moved away from the freedom to contract being any sort of significant right on par with the right against self incrimination, for example. It is now a right so dilluted that most people don't recognize it. Personally, I'd prefer to see this particular right elevated in importance.




Well, it was relevant until you decided that "mediator" wasn't the word you wanted. *shrugs*

Re: Who decides? The state or the individual?

Where does Locke say the state is entitled to make decisions about their their work contract? Where does Locke say individuals have to abide by every decision the state makes? I'm getting a sense you may be mixing up Locke and Hobbes here.


I wouldn't necessarily express it in such absolute terms as "every" and "destroy". But yes: on the margin, every limitation destroys some of their freedom of contract.


Yes it is. But that's okay if the law is narrowly tailored to enforce the equal natural rights of Mrs. Boss, whose protection is a compelling state interest. If you can show me how the labor contract infringes on the natural rights of others in ways comparable to a hit job, I may change my mind.


I don't think this last point is true. A Christian Socialist might be a good analogy for my position -- often they point in the same direction, sometimes they don't -- but a Christian Atheist is not. For example, I see no contradiction in believing that murder is inherently evil, that it's destructive of overall happiness, and that both are valid arguments for making it illegal. But your general point is fair: my moral convictions are not entirely consistent. When utilitarian and natural law arguments point in the same direction, as they usually do, I use them both with conviction. In the rare cases where they point in different directions, my moral compass admittedly doesn't work. In those cases, I have to fly by eyesight, which means I decide from case to case. I'm not sure this is one of those cases. That's why I concentrate on the natural rights side, which I find more interesting here.


It is never improper for the state to expect something. The question is what it may do if its expectation proves wrong. In this case, the state may refrain from awarding to Boss the medal of honor that it might otherwise have awarded to him. It may create a product label saying "worker-friendly company", specify work conditions for firms who wish to feature it, and prohibit Boss to display the label on his products. The state may decide to quit doing business with Boss's firm altogether. It may do all these things -- but it may not force boss at gunpoint to pay the higher wage. I agree with Max Weber that what defines a state is its socially accepted monopoly on violence. The permissible use of this violence is constrained to the protection of people's lives, liberty and property against force and fraud by others. A wage that disappoints the state's expectations does not rise to this level.


Maybe, maybe not. But enough about me -- what about your approach? Are you going to suggest one? Or do you just want to play Socrates, asking me questions and waiting until my arguments stumble over their own feet?

I do, to answer your earlier question. Prices rise when aggregate demand outgrows aggregate supply. Minimum wages, to the extent that they compel businesses to give workers a raise, make no difference to aggregate supply and are a wash for aggregate demand: Whatever extra money workers have more to spend, businesses have less. To the extent that minimum wages disemploy workers, they decrease aggregate supply (because workers are not working), but also decrease aggregate demand (because workers have no money to spend). As I said earlier, the changes all add up to zero.

The next saturday morning you're standing in line at walmart and the pot-bellied 40 something in front of you with the cart holding a case of Pennzoil 10W30, a case of Bud Lite and a case of ammo and he's wearing a Disneyland tshirt, pretend that you understand his plight. His father, an independent contractor (a janitor with no benefits be they health insurance, retirement, vacation/holiday) made 8$ an hour and prayed there would be enough hours on the clock to pay the heat bill. This slob in your lane at the check-out was never asked to join Skull & Bones, apply to Yale or, even apply to the community vocational college, the last book he read had drawings of a spotted dog and he remains a statistic in the debate between liberals and conservatives while remaining a dedicated christian conservative. He is called "the working backbone" of america (to his face) and yet, remains the most dissed human being in north america by every political faction. Locke you say? How very *****ing interesting

How would pretending to understand his plight make me support the minimum wage?

It wouldn't.

okay. How would truly understanding his plight (by your definition of "truly") make me support the minimum wage?

Again, it wouldn't, what I posted really has nothing to do with the minimum wage laws and much to do with philosophising about the human condition while observing it from a Boeing 747.

We weren't talking about doubling or tripling the minimum wage, we spoke or a rise of $2.00 or $3.00. I wouldn't deny that tripling the minimum wage (and remember, the Federal minimum wage right now is only $5.15/hour) would have a significant impact. However, even if that had been the case, petroleum prices have increased more than 30 times the 1973 cost, while the minimum wage has more than tripled since 1973. It still would seem to me that the effect of the increase pales into meaninglessness in comparison to the increase in prices entailed in the rise of the cost of crude oil, and the transport of consumer goods by over-the-road transport rather than railroads.

The Census Bureau keeps numbers on the working poor. Universities conduct studies and economists rattle off statistics. If studies and numbers alone could solve the problem of working poverty, then rip-off check cashing would not be one of the hottest franchises in the country and Manpower would not be our largest employer. Yes, and if a bullfrog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass. Reason and social science are not cutting it, and numbers cannot describe the soul and character of a people. Those same ones who smell like an ashtray in the checkout line, devour a carton of Little Debbies at a sitting and praise Jesus for every goddam wretched little daily non-miracle.

Re: Who decides? The state or the individual?

I'm not sure if Locke says anything specifically about work contracts, but he does say a fair amount about obedience to the state:

Sect. 150. In all cases, whilst the government subsists, the legislative is the supreme power: for what can give laws to another, must needs be superior to him; and since the legislative is no otherwise legislative of the society, but by the right it has to make laws for all the parts, and for every member of the society, prescribing rules to their actions, and giving power of execution, where they are transgressed, the legislative must needs be the supreme, and all other powers, in any members or parts of the society, derived from and su bordinate to it.

Now, of course, Locke argues that the state cannot take property away from the people without their consent, but his definition of "consent" is as I have described it before:

Sect. 140. It is true, governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them....

Thus, Locke clearly views "consent" as a willing acquiescence to the state (I copied these sections from this online version of the Second Treatise).


That's fine. I just wanted to see how far you were willing to take the freedom to contract.


"Wrong" in what sense? In a natural rights sense, or in a utilitarian sense?


But, as you yourself pointed out before, Boss isn't forced to pay any wage at all, since he always has the option of not employing anyone.


According to whom?


I am, by nature, an anarcho-pessimist. I believe that no government can be just, but that people, left to themselves, would exterminate each other in a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes. Admittedly, shedding about 80% of the population would cause me but a manageable amount of grief, but the loss of the remaining 20% would be very hard indeed.

Consequently, if the inherent evil of human nature forces us into the unhappy expedient of the state, I suppose we should have the most just state. I am inclined, in that instance, to agree with John Rawls's approach. We should have the kind of government that we'd all agree to if we knew nothing of our own interests. Would a Rawlsian government permit minimum wage/maximum hour legislation? I'm pretty sure that it would.

Joe from Chicago took a course in Torts once. Because of that, he feels he is an expert in Economics. He is not. It is clear from his discussion on the subject that he is a simpleton. Thomas Sowell, a highly regarded Economist shows using evidence that a rise in the minimum wage is usuall counter productiver. Because Joe From Chicago is ignorant about Economics, he will be unable to rebut the arguments put forth by Dr. Sowell. When you read one of Joe from Chicago's counfused blurbs again, remember he is unable to rebut evidence and just spouts slogans.


Here is what Dr. Sowell had to say about the Miniumum Wage Laws.


by Thomas Sowell


The presently proposed minimum wage legislation raises two major sets of issues: (1) the question of the real effects of minimum wages, as such, and (2) the effect of the new principle of automatically escalating minimum wage levels, tied to earnings elsewhere in the economy.
Because of inflation, minimum wage levels have been periodically reviewed, and therefore the general issues and growing evidence on the actual effects of the Fair Labor Standards Act have also been reviewed. What an automatic escalation provision means is that we stop looking at the evidence. And we would stop at a time when a growing body of research by independent economists around the country is documenting the negative effects of the minimum wage law?-and particularly its devastating impact on job opportunities for minority teenagers.1
Minimum wage laws have been aptly described as "anathema to economists."2 Even though 88 percent of academic economists supported the "war on poverty," 61 percent of those same economists opposed the minimum wage law.3 In short, this is not opposition based on philosophy or political leanings, but on economic analysis and on the mounting factual evidence that the law increases unemployment among the very people intended to be benefited. Moreover, economic research has also revealed a disturbing correlation between teenage unemployment rates and teenage crime rates.4 In view of this, this seems like a particularly inappropriate time to stop looking at the evidence by putting in an escalator clause that will give the law a life of its own, independent of its effects on people.
The minimum wage law might be discussed in terms of philosophical, political, or economic theory, but the real issues turn on facts. The crucial factual question is whether eliminating wage rates below some designated level also eliminates jobs. As a realistic matter, few people of any philosophical, political, or economic persuasion would want to see either (a) job-seekers unemployed with a hypothetical right to a "living wage," or (b) people employed at very low wages when they could be equally fully employed at normal wages.
While facts are crucial, they are not easy to get, for a number of reasons which will be discussed. It will also be necessary to consider a number of standard (or stereotyped) arguments about the minimum wage effects which have persisted over the years. Finally, I would like to venture a few suggestions about the continuing need to assess the impact of the law and some ways that assessment might be improved.
Factual Studies

There are serious problems inherent in trying to study the unemployment effects of minimum wages, as well as other problems that derive from the way the U. S. Department of Labor chooses to approach the issue.
One problem that plagues minimum wage effects studies is getting statistical data for the specific workers directly affected by the minimum. Such workers are often only a small fraction of the total work force. Even where a substantial proportion of the directly affected workers lose their jobs as a result of a minimum wage increase, this effect can be lost statistically in the random fluctuations in employment of the much larger number of workers whose wages were always above the minimum. The statistical extraction of the relevant changes is analogous to trying to receive an electronic signal through a heavy background of static noise. Different economists use different methods and devices to mute the background statistical "noise" in order to read the signal. As a result of their different procedures for grappling with this problem, economists' numerical estimates of the unemployment effect of the law differ?-a variation seized upon by proponents of minimum wages5?-but it is increasingly clear that the consensus of these studies is that the law does cause substantial unemployment, and that is more fundamental than the question of exact numbers.
One of the simplest ways of reducing the statistical "noise" in the data is by selecting some age-group which is known to receive very low wages, so that a relatively high percentage of the people in the category chosen are earning low enough wages to be directly affected by minimum wage changes. Teenagers are an obvious choice, and nonwhite teenagers even more so. Here the serious unemployment effect of minimum wage rates has been repeatedly demonstrated by economists operating independently of one another and using different statistical methods.6
Extremely high unemployment rates among black teenagers have been so highly publicized in recent years, and so automatically attributed to employer discrimination, that certain historical facts must be noted. Large racial differences in teenage unemployment are of relatively recent vintage. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were no such large differences, and indeed, black youngsters 16 and 17 years old had consistently lower unemployment rates than whites in the same age brackets.7 Surely no one is going to claim that there was less employer discrimination then than now. We all know better. What was the difference, then? Minimum wages had not yet begun the rapid rise and spreading coverage which has been the dominant pattern since then.8
The unemployment effect of minimum wages can also be seen in international comparisons of countries that do and do not exempt young people from the adult minimum wage. In countries where such exemptions are slight or nonexistent?-such as the United States and Canada?-youth unemployment is some multiple of adult unemployment. But where there are exemptions that are large and cover a number of working years?-as in England, Germany and The Netherlands9?-there are no significant differences between youth unemployment rates and adult unemployment rates.10
These findings may reflect the special vulnerability of teenagers as an inexperienced and relatively unskilled group?-or they may reflect the greater statistical ease of determining the facts for this group. A recent survey of minimum wage studies notes "the lack of acceptable continuing data on low-wage adults."11 The same things known to be happening to teenagers may also be happening to other very low-wage people, who happen not to be grouped together statistically. There are some scattered clues that this is in fact the case. For example, an older study of domestic servants, before they were covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, showed that their ranks tended to be increased in the wake of minimum wage increases, suggesting the displacement of low-skill women from other employment that was covered by the act.12
Factual studies by independent (usually academic) economists must be sharply distinguished from studies by the U. S. Department of Labor. The Labor Department itself has recently been forced to acknowledge the gap between its perennially optimistic conclusions and the consensus of independent studies, the latter "using advanced economic and statistical analyses."13 The crudity of the Labor Department studies has been scathingly criticized by academic economists.14 However, even so, the actual numbers appearing in Labor Department studies of minimum wage effects often show employment declines in the wake of minimum wage increases, even though the stated conclusions of these very same studies may be that the minimum wage did not cost people their jobs.15 Congressman Dent is correct only in the narrowest sense when he asserts that "Not once in the history of the minimum wage has there been an adverse report" from the Labor Department about "the lessening of job opportunities."16 In this context, such a statement is far from reassuring. It will hardly be the first clean bill of health given by an agency evaluating itself or the legislation on which its own appropriations and staff depend. This is especially unsurprising to me, as one who worked inside the Labor Department on minimum wage research, and who personally experienced the pressures to reach conclusions consistent with the department's interests.

Assumptions and Claims

The economic analysis which concludes that minimum wages increase the unemployment of low-wage workers rests essentially on the belief that labor is no exception to the general rule that less is demanded at a higher price than at a lower price. Attempts to overturn this basic economic principle usually reduce to one of four assumptions or assertions: (1) there is a fixed number of workers demanded, more or less without regard to wage rates; (2) low-wage workers are victims of employer monopoly power rather than low productivity, so that raising their wage rates will not price them beyond their value to the employer and therefore will not price them out of a job; (3) higher wage rates will cause employers to use labor more efficiently, so that workers will then become more valuable, and so will not lose their jobs; and (4) the increased "purchasing power" caused by higher minimum wages will lead to a greater demand for goods, and therefore a greater demand for labor, offsetting any tendency toward unemployment. These arguments will be examined in order.

Fixed Demand
The idea that an employer "needs just so many men" is an old one, which dies hard. Factually, it can hardly stand up in the face of declining employment after wage increases, or the virtual elimination of such occupations as Western Union messenger and elevator operator (despite the continued existence of telegrams and elevators). As a theory, it implies that the substitution of capital?-and of higher priced labor?-is impossible. The problem arises not when the theory is stated directly and explicitly, but when it is implicitly assumed (and therefore insulated from critical scrutiny), as in the belief that more jobs for teenagers mean fewer jobs for adults.

Employer Monopoly Power
Under special conditions, where there is only one employer in a labor market or a group of employers acting in concert, wages can be kept below what equally productive workers would earn otherwise. There is a special economic theory for such "exploitation" situations, and a minimum wage increase under those conditions would not produce unemployment.17 Unfortunately, low-wage workers are very unlikely to be in such situations. All sorts of firms, industries, and even households employ unskilled workers, and collusion under these conditions is out of the question. Even such a staunch advocate of minimum wages as the late Senator Paul H. Douglas noted that the market for unskilled labor was one of "almost perfect competition."18 The sad fact is that low-wage workers are not so much underpaid as under-skilled, and there is no easy way around this problem without pricing them out of a job.

Efficiency
Theories of offsetting rising wages by increasing efficiency have long been used to claim that minimum wage increases will not reduce employment. Unfortunately, those who argue this way have not distinguished real efficiency?-larger output from given combinations of input?-from a mere substitution of one input for another as their relative prices change. The examples they cite of "better" or "more efficient" methods of production after a minimum wage increase are methods well-known to employers before the imposed wage change, and were not used then simply because they were not the cheapest methods available under the previous input prices. If higher wage rates lead to the substitution of capital for labor, then by definition there will be more output per unit of labor; but it is mere word play to call this more "efficiency" if the product now costs more to produce and society has to support unemployed workers as well.

Purchasing Power
The doctrine that workers' increased purchasing power after a minimum wage increase will sustain employment has many problems connected with it,19 but the most fundamental problem is that it assumes the very thing that is at issue: that the workers keep their jobs and work as many hours as before. If not, their hypothetical right to a higher wage rate will not buy anything. Workers can only spend real earnings, not hypothetical rights. Once this is realized, it is hardly necessary to go into the other deficiencies of the theory, such as the fact that inflationary increases mean that more spending power is not more purchasing power.

Conclusions

The minimum wage law addresses a serious social problem, but creates no new options for dealing with it. In fact, it simply reduces the set of existing options available to the parties?-employers and employees?-who must voluntarily agree if there is to be a job. Trying to make people better off by reducing their options seems questionable even as a theory. In practice, what has happened is that fewer transactions (less employment) have taken place when there were fewer options open to the parties. It would be very surprising if it were otherwise.
The great unsolved problem remains of what to do about the poor in general, or the low-wage workers in particular. Low-wage workers are not changed by calling them higher-wage workers, any more than students are improved by calling them B students instead of C students. The tragic educational results of the process of upgrading by fiat is hardly a recommendation for extending this practice into the economic sphere. In both cases, it is of course much harder, much slower?-and more heartbreaking?-to try to create real skills and real achievements. And yet nothing else will really do the job.
Automatic escalation compounds the problems of the minimum wage law by making it possible to close our eyes to its effects hereafter. This seems unconscionable when those affected are poor, vulnerable, powerless, and inarticulate. If the Congress does not monitor what happens to them, there is no other powerful institution to do so. The set of incentives confronting the U. S. Department of Labor makes it unrealistic to expect it to critically evaluate minimum wage effects, and nearly forty years of history make it painfully apparent that it has no intention of doing so. Labor unions have their own imperatives and constraints. For them, the minimum wage law presents the same kind of opportunity that a tariff presents to a business firm. It is a way to price competitors out of the market. That this is accompanied by humanitarian statements may be a matter of rhetorical, or perhaps political, interest but it changes no economic fact. In the Union of South Africa, minimum wage laws were applied to native black Africans for the explicit purpose of stopping their competition with European workers.20 In the days of the British Empire, British unions and manufacturers attempted to get minimum wages applied to India for similar reasons, though with different rhetoric.21 American unions and businesses have been doing something very similar in Puerto Rico and other affiliated territories where minimum wages are set by tripartite boards of mainland Americans, often from competing firms.
The point here is not to depict anyone as particularly evil. The point is that powerful institutional incentives exist to use the minimum wage laws for purposes very different from those announced in the Fair Labor Standards Act, and that these institutional incentives are likely to persist through turnovers of personnel in the future as in the past.
Special interests, recognized as such, may be kept within bounds. For the special interests revolving around the minimum wage laws, Congressional oversight seems especially needed, and therefore automatic escalation seems especially dangerous.
Finally, my hope would be that some way might be considered to have the statistical analysis of minimum wage effects performed by some organization other than the agency whose own fate is intertwined with that of the Fair Labor Standards Act.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


1. Marvin Kosters and Finis Welch, "The Effects of Minimum Wages on the Distribution of Changes in Aggregate Employment," American Economic Review, June 1972; Thomas G. Moore, "The Effect of Minimum Wages on Teenage Unemployment Rates," Journal of Political Economy, July/August, 1971; Michael C. Lovell, "The Minimum Wage, Teenage Unemployment and the Business Cycle," Western Economic Journal, December 1972.
2. Peter B. Doeringer and Michael J. Piore, Internal Labor Markets & Manpower Analysis (D. C. Heath & Go., 1971), p. 182.
3. Jacob J. Kaufman and Terry G. Foran, "The Minimum Wage and Poverty," Readings in Labor Market Analysis, ed. J. F. Burton, Jr., et al. (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 197 1), p. 508.
4. Belton M. Fleisher, The Economics of Delinquency (Quadrangle Books, 1966), Chapter 3.
5. "... the estimated magnitude of these employment impacts and the distribution of these impacts vary among the studies." Statement of Assistant Secretary of Labor, quoted in Minimum Wage Legislation (American Enterprise Institute, 1977), p. 14.
6. See note 1 above.
7. Employment and Training Report of the President (Government Printing Office, 1976), pp. 242, 243.
8. Minimum Wage Legislation, p. 2.
9. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Youth Unemployment and Minimum Wages, Bulletin 1657 (Government Printing Office, 1970),p.138.
10. Ibid., P. 149, Table 10.1. It should be noted that The Netherlands did not have a minimum wage before 1966, so the entry in the table for 1960-64 is misleading.
11. Minimum Wage Legislation, p. 15.
12. Yale Brozen, "Minimum Wage Rates and Household Workers," Journal of Law and Economics, October 1962.
13. Quoted in Minimum Wage Legislation, p. 14.
14. George Macesich and Charles T. Stewart, Jr., "Recent Department of Labor Studies of Minimum Wage Effects," Southern Economic Journal, April 1960. See also Thomas Sowell, "The Shorter Work Week Controversy," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, January 1965.
15. Numerous specific citations of Labor Department studies are listed in Sowell, op. cit. p. 243.
16. Representative John Dent quoted in Minimum Wage Legislation, p. 10.
17. Albert Rees, The Economics of Work and Pay (Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 75-78.
18. Paul H. Douglas, The Theory of Wages (Augustus M. Kelley, 1964), p. 78.
19. See Sowell, op. cit., pp. 241-242.
20. P. T. Bauer, "Regulated Wages in Underdeveloped Countries," The Public Stake in Union Power, ed. Philip D. Bradley (University of Virginia Press, 1959), p. 346.
21. Ibid., p. 332.

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If Joe from Chicago is able to read and understand Dr. Sowell's presentation above, he may get a different insight on the effects of raising the Minimum Wage Laws. That is, unless he behaves like some lawyers and thinks that one course in torts renders him superior to Dr. Sowell in the understanding of Economic Theory. It doesn't---but it is probable that Joe from Chicago doesn't know that.

Re: Who decides? The state or the individual?

Fair enough. None of these two sections convinces me that minimum wage laws fall within the limited scope of legitimate violence that government has according to Locke. But you have convinced me that, after the government has violated Boss's rights, Locke thinks Boss has no remedy but to try to get a different legislature elected. Unlike later thinkers in his tradition (such as Blackstone), Locke does not appear to discuss legitimate grounds for civil disobedience, rebellion, and the like. But just because minorities can't do anything when the majority makes the state transgress against their rights, that doesn't mean these transgressions are okay. They are still violations of natural law.


"Wrong" in the sense of mistaken. As in: "Ted Kennedy expected Boss to pay $7/h; boss actually paid $5. Hence, Ted Kennedy erred in his expectation about boss."


Let me revise my sentence then: "The government must not force Boss at gunpoint to pay a higher wage to Worker, or to lay him off, or not to hire him in the first place, or to do any choice of those three."


The permissible use of this violence is constrained (...) according to Locke: He says natural law, in a state of nature, allows Worker to thwart any attempts of Boss to actively kill him. But it allows him no more retaliation than is necessary to protect his "life, health, liberty, and possessions" (Second Treatise, sections 6 and 7). Boss's low-wage job offer does not transgress against any of these. Worker can either take the offer and be better off, or he can leave it and be off the same as before. Either way, Boss does not violate any of Worker's rights. Hence, the law of nature gives Worker no rightful power to retaliate against Boss's low-wage job offer in a state of nature. When Worker leaves the state of nature and subjects himself to a government, he surrenders to it all rightful power of punishment that he had in the state of nature (Section 130). But he cannot surrender to government any righful powers that he didn't previously have (section 135). Summing up, Boss violated none of Worker's natural rights by making him a low-wage job offer; Worker had nothing to rightfully punish Boss for. Because Worker had no such right, he couldn't transfer it to government when he left the state of nature. It follows that under Locke's Natural Law, government cannot rightfully punish Boss for not paying worker a minimum wage.


I, on the other hand, am pretty sure that it wouldn't. Remember that Rawls's government ends up maximizing the economic welfare of the worst-off. Which stakeholder is the worst off under minimum wage regulations? Not the employers: We can safely assume they are richer than the workers who work for them, or whom they lay off. Not the workers who get a raise, either. The worst-off stakeholders in minimum wage legislation are those workers who get laid off, their employers no longer finding it profitable to employ them. I'm certain Rawls's governement would enact other methods of income redistribution. Examples might include a progressive income tax or the Earned Income Tax Credit. As an individual citizen, Rawls probably has voted for politicians who raised the minimum wage. But if you test the minimum wage against Rawls's philosophy, it fails it, just as it fails the Lockean test.

If that is a problem for you, maybe you shouldn't waste your time in a thread about reason and social science. Maybe you should start your own, more anecdotal thread about the working poor instead.

Re: Who decides? The state or the individual?

Locke does talk about rebellion, but civil disobedience wasn't something that was in anyone's contemplation in Locke's time.


Well, then I don't know what happens when the state is wrong in that sense. Maybe it apologizes?


That's a rather broad interpretation of "force," isn't it? People choose courses of action that have expected legal consequences all the time, but we typically don't say that those people are "forced" to accept those consequences. If Boss is operating a business in a state that has minimum wage/maximum hour legislation, he has already accepted the fact that he will have to abide by those laws when he hires Worker. Indeed, he accepted that fact the moment that he decided to start his business.

Furthermore, just how much "force" is the state permitted to apply? For instance, suppose the state passed a law that required Boss to pay Worker something -- in other words, the law would prohibit an employer from not paying an employee at all. All Boss would need to do in order to comply with the law, then, would be to pay Worker one cent in wages. Is that "forcing" Boss to pay a higher wage to Worker, given that Boss would, in the best of all possible Boss-worlds, prefer to pay Worker nothing? And if that's "force," is that a permissible level of force for the state to exert?


I'll have to think about this a little while longer.


There you go again, assuming that the only good is economic good. As I've mentioned elsewhere, minimum wage laws primarily address a sociopolitical problem, not an economic one. If those laws, therefore, don't satisfy the Rawlsian imperative to better the lives of the worst-off, maybe it's because your notion of "betterment" is too narrow.