I think Aussie land does min. wage based on age.
in the short-term, until folks attain adequate skills to allow employers to pay them above minimum wage for more productive employment, or until folks go out and create their own gainful employment. due to the end of the government subsidy of below living wage jobs, there’ll be plenty of dough to go around more training and yes, welfare in the short-term.
And why can’t you do this on a below minimum wage job?
Inceasing minimum wage will literally destroy opportunities for on-job training, by destorying the job in the first place.
Yep, construction is a good example. Many skilled laborers started as unskilled earning less than minimum under the table.
I just don’t see the need to meddle and create/continue all these social/control programs. Pick a number. give all citizens cash bi-weekly, and be done with it. Take all these restrictor plates off the economy. That is the one thing we do have going for us. We don’t operate anywhere near full power.
^ That’s what I was referring to earlier.
Yea I know. But it seemed a lot of people here aren’t familiar with the idea, which actually makes a lot of sense. It’s very similar to what Ghilbi is proposing
oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
There’s some serious Lou Bloom shit getting spouted in this thread.
and that’s fine. if employers are willing to take the risk to create and labour is willing to accept a black market for jobs below the living wage, so be it, but the government shouldn’t support legal jobs that are below the living wage and ones in which they must subsidize anyway. this black market will exist at a minimum wage of $8/hr and it will exist at a minimum wage of $15/hr but some jobs have to be one paper and those jobs shouldn’t be condoned if below the living wage.
let me be clear. i’m a pretty hard right conservative by canadian standards. to go with this increase in the minimum wage to the living wage, i would do my best to utterly destroy the unions. hell, if the minimum wage was the living wage in the first place, union power wouldn’t be what it is today. now, the unions protect the privileged while the government protects corporations. the bottom rung of labour is only somewhat protected by social programs, which in some countries, like the U.S., is often in adequate, based on your locale. ensure all legal jobs pay enough to sustain the average household. if your labour is worth more than the living wage, prove it, and you will be compensated. if some reagenesque dude could pull off a raise the minimum wage to living wage and destroy the union move, it would be one of the best improvements in the labour market in history.
and yes, outside of this near impossible task, NIT would provide major productivity gains to the economy. that said, with NIT, wouldn’t most people in the bottom 10%-20% just opt to never work. i think raising the minimum wage, providing income supplements, and providing improved training/education programs empowering individuals to acheive above minimum/living wage incomes would result in a much more dynamic and productive workforce.
As what always happens to me, I watch one Milton Friedman video and I just can’t stop. The dude is just so hillarious! But anyway, a few of the videos addressed this point and I have to say it made sense. Basically he said wage is the only power an underskilled employee has to be valuable. If you institute a minimum wage (or equal pay for genders), then you take this power away. And that results in them never learning valuable skills.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk width:500 height:500]
I’d be interested in knowing your response to that, because it seems true to me.
^ maybe in the olden days when employers actually felt responsible for their employees to the point where they paid a living wage, or at least very close to it. when the average two income minimum wage household is earning 50% of what they need to survive on in major cities, there is something wrong. you’re telling me that them getting paid less is the solution? friedman’s “abolish the minimum wage” campaign is no longer relevant as the bottom 30% of labour has no power anymore. which activity would you consider better at building skills? a person learning a trade or getting a formal education in room full of people learning the same thing and having to bulid things creatively or defend opinions creatively, or a person having repetitive 5 word interactions with customers, pushing buttons on a machine, perfoming a task that will be automated out of existence within the decade anyway. i see very few transferable skills in the latter and plenty in the former. friedman’s comments make sense in the 60s and 70s when the U.S. was a manufacturing powerhouse. not so much anymore.
His arguement is that everyone has to go through those stages. The reason you don’t is because your grandparents worked menial labor until they were able to move up, start a business based off of it, whatever the case may be. I don’t know about Canada, but in USA many people are only first or second generation college grads. My great grandparents were laborers from Italy. Their children went a step up from that. And now I’m here blessed to skip all those steps. It has nothing to do with power in that sense. Wage is a way to get invited to the party even if you aren’t the most qualified but can get the job done. I don’t think it’s feasible to just say okay lets make every family unit be able to skip that process. It isn’t fair, but it’s the only way that works in helping aid upward mobility. Last I checked, economic measurements of the USA’s upward mobility was at all-time lows and part of the reason may be the minimum wage.
^ private capital will still keep the haves far ahead of the have nots. these days, wage isn’t a way to get invited to the party because wages are too low, and jobs too poor, that those on the bottom rung will almost never break from the chains. there is strong evidence that social mobility has worsened materially since the 70s and a major factor is that wages are too low and capital is non-existent for those on the bottom rung to change their situation. labour at the low end needs to develop skills that can fill employment gaps in the economy. working at mcdonalds for $4/hr isn’t going to do them any good when their job is made redundant anyway by technology. i’m not advocating that the government sends all people to harvard, irrespective of ability. private capital will still differentiate between those families that have worked hard to leave a legacy and those families that are just starting to acquire capital. i don’t think wages factor into this equation much anymore.
Well, since we both like analysis lets clarify the terms. Are we talking intragenerational or intergenerational mobility? It sounds like you are talking intra, where the “American Dream” and what I’m talking about is inter. Want to make sure we are clear on the premise before I respond.
i’m talking both.
Do you promote that this massive government training program and high minimum wage be implemented by all countries? How would it work in India or Mexico? In the US, should it be implemented by the feds or left to the states? Do the people get to pick their training or do they have to pursue something that would ultimately allow them to produce more than the minimum? Who decides the value of the training?
How is a “living wage” determined? There have been times in my life when I took a minimum wage job as a second job. I didn’t need the money. I just wanted extra income. Should there be exceptions.
This would make Soviet -style master planning look like a cake walk. The hubris of man will never cease to amaze.
Based on rap videos I’ve seen, a living wage per year is:
Wage = 365*[Cost of Gold Chain] + 12*[Cost of Bentley] + 730*[Cost of a dime bag] + 3000*[Cost of a bag of Cheetos] + 60*[Cost of a cheap hooker] + [Cost of Section 8 Housing] + [Cost of EBT Card]
^ Maybe if the hommie could make fat stacks at Taco Bell he wouldn’t have to live the thug life, yo.
well i don’t exactly has a well thought out plan ready for implementation nor am i running for U.S. senate, nor Canadian parliament, any time soon, but to answer your questions…
no, this should be done at a federal level in any self-respecting western country, but provincial/state level would be fine. in canada, the provinces have control so that would be fine but it should be uniform within a country so as to not create adverse consequences, at least within a country.
people get to pick their training. it wouldn’t be much different to today, just with greater support for low income folks and better federally sponsored programs than the IT programs at Bucktooth College of Feces that are available today. so yes, a little more state control of this part of the education system. All training should be aimed at a specific type of job and part of the process would be to determine what people can and want to do, and what jobs are avaialble in the marketplace. i admit it’s not a perfect system, no system is, but at least useless and unproductive jobs are eliminated and there is greater growth potential for higher skill jobs.
the link i put forth earlier is the result of an MIT study so i think that would be a fine place to start.
i don’t think you need to get all “anti-communist” on this theory. is it communist to feed a hungry person? is it commuist to shelter one dying of exposure? no, its the christian thing to do. why would a government even exist if it let its people die? and don’t say, abolish government because that’s obviously just retarded.
finally, you do realize, that in the time of grand planning (which has been the last 5000 years or so), that reducing the minimum wage to zero is just as much tinkering as is raising it to the living wage. in fact, reducing the minimum to zero would be more radical due to its rarity than is raising it to the living wage (many countries do provide something very close to the living wage when all support systems are included), the U.S. does not. clearly, many states and municipalities that vote for a party that want to maintain or reduce the minimum wage agree with me and separately voted to increase the minimum wage. this is something the republicans have wrong and the broad population is telling them that. the problem is that the repubs’s vision is far too short-term due to their corporate interests, which are also victims of short-termism. the hubris of man will never cease to amaze.
eventually some reaganesque dude will come around and do something that is very left (raise the minimum wage, increase labour training) and very right (beat the crap out of unions and all other masters of labour). this will be a great time to be an investor in America.
So you capitalize “Bucktooth College of Feces”, but virtually nothing else?