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Gbaji lives in Ayn Rand's Jr. High diary or something where, when you're mistreated at the factory you just go to the next factory down the street who'll treat you better. Because there's an infinite number of factories and no collusion and the "free market" means rainbows for all if you only look hard enough.

He presented this hilariously in responding to working conditions in the mines where they must be giving the adults better wages because otherwise the people would just go to "the mine down the road" where they'll be paid better wages. Because, you know, mines are set up like independently and separately owned bookstores or something and right next to the ACME Silver Mine is the XYZ Silver Mine.

His ten paragraph defenses of how well it all works aren't even worth reading when you can look at both contemporary and historical examples of largely unregulated businesses and how they treat(ed) their workers.

And you live in a Marxist delusion where no one will ever be paid a fair working wage if some authoritarian power doesn't make it happen.

The fact that many many Americans (most in fact) manage to earn more than minimum wage proves that your assumption is wrong. There are forces other than government mandated wage laws which cause businesses to pay people more money. Your entire argument rests on the assumption that this does not happen, yet very clearly it does.

Ergo, you are wrong. I'm just not sure how much more clearly I can say this. If you were right, no one would ever earn more than minimum wage. Since people do, you must be wrong. It's really that simple.

You obviously have no idea what my argument was. I had argued that companies, if able to replace their employees with lower paid employees, do not necessarily turn this savings to higher wages for the remaining workers as you said they world ("the free market works!"). This is historically true, this is true based on contemporary examples, this is true based on people's experiences in industries on this forum. Your counter argument is to say "Nuh uh!" and bring up completely unrelated strawman points. No one ever said that no one could ever earn higher than a state mandated minimum wage. You made that up all in your own little fevered brain. So congratulations on defeating your own made-up attacks.

Seriously, Ugly. Forget all you've learned from running hotels and just listen to Gbaji's "fundamental facts of business". I mean, he says you know it's true so obviously he knows better than you, huh?

Shit, you're probably practically an "expert" and we all know how well those guys stack up against folksy common sense wisdom.

Saying they will "not necessarily" do so is so broad as to be meaningless. I agree that they will not necessarily do so. I just disagree on the frequency. I believe that most of the time, they will. You believe that most of the time, they wont. So let's start with at least agreeing on that, shall we?



No, it's not. For the exact reasons I've explained to you several times now. If this happened most of the time, then most of the workers in the US would be currently paid minimum wage. Not only is that not true, but the opposite is true. The overwhelming majority of US workers are paid more than the minimum wage. Thus, we must conclude that at least in the US, the labor market is such that workers can demand and receive higher wages based on the market value of their labor and that this market value is almost always greater than the mandated minimum wage.

Given that wages are always going to be the result of a conflict between the desire of the worker to maximize their wages and the desire for the employer to minimize wages, we can conclude two things:

1. Employers don't pay higher wages because they are being nice. They do so because market forces make them do so (hence "the market works!").

2. Anything which changes the equation will affect the result. The degree to which an employer will resist paying a higher wage is based on his own profit factors. So we must assume that anything which increases relative profit must also decrease that resistance.


What this means in this context is that an employer will be more willing to give in to demand by employees for higher wages if it's less of a burden on him to do so. If he's making more money, he's going to fight it less than if he's just barely getting by. Thus, assuming the labor market forces are the same, if something decreases his costs in some other area he will be more willing to allow an increase somewhere else. Like say, if he's able to pay his temp workers less money per hour, he will be more willing to pay his permanent workers a higher wage. This doesn't mean he absolutely will, but everything else staying the same, he's more likely to if he's saving money elsewhere than if he is not.

Make sense? My argument is the equivalent of saying that if you go into a store you're more likely to buy two pairs of jeans if they are half price, than if they are full price. Obviously, you might just buy the one pair for half price and pocket the difference, but assuming there's some inherent value in having another pair of jeans, you might buy the second one. Similarly, if there's some value in paying your employee more (and there must be otherwise no one would ever do it), there will be a tendency to do so if other costs are reduced such that it allows you to do so.




Sure. But the fact that employers do pay more than the minimum wage means that employees have sufficient bargaining power to earn more than the government mandates. Your argument rests on the assumption that employees have absolutely no power to force employers to pay them a higher wage based on changing market conditions. Clearly that is not true, thus if market conditions change (like say the employer incurs a labor costs savings somewhere), employees can demand a piece of that.

If you'd prefer, I could talk about things like employee benefit packages, vacation time, stock options, etc. Same thing. It's not about them specifically, but the fact that they exist at all in our market means that employees do enjoy sufficient power to demand them. Employers don't spend money for a basketball court and gym because they just thought it would be nice. They do so because they want to make their employees happy. And they don't do that because they want to be nice. They're in it to make money, not be nice. Thus, we have to conclude that employers know that they will make more money making their employees happy than making them miserable.


That can only be true if unhappy employees have sufficient power to affect the profitability of an employers business. We can argue about the specifics of how this happens, but we should not have any disagreement that it does happen. Yet it seems as though many of you base your entire position on issues like wage laws on the assumption that it doesn't. And yeah, I find that bizarre as hell. We're literally surrounded with examples of market forces naturally resulting in people earning good wages, yet some people ignore that and focus just on the failures (often without asking why they happen). I think that's silly.

Edited, Dec 4th 2013 5:48pm by gbaji

That's nice. Seriously, your core argument is laughable and, as I said, immediately disproved by numerous examples. The difference is that it takes me three sentences to be right and you spend ten paragraphs being wrong.

What numerous examples? What we're talking about is nearly impossible to quantify, so good luck with your examples. It's all theory. We can't know for sure what someone would have done if conditions were different than what they actually were. All we can do is look at trends of behavior. And while there are certainly occasional examples of businesses taking unfair advantage of their workers, in the US, the reality is that workers do have the ability to demand good wages. We do have a robust labor market. A business that treats it workers badly will find itself outpaced by competitors which don't. This is all around us. I honestly can't understand why some of you refuse to see it.

You're ignoring the norm and looking only at the exception. And then demanding that we proceed as though that exception is the norm. It's not. And by basing our laws on that exception we actually hurt the people we're trying to help. As I said at the very beginning, by continually increasing our minimum wage to a level right at the point at which many working class businesses can just afford to pay, we flatten the wages in those industries, and thus reduce the opportunities for those working in them, and reduce the ability for employers to adjust pay to the needs of their employees.

We can argue around in circles about what would happen in some third world country, but here in the US, if we're going to allow teens to have more presence in our labor market, we have to make steps to ensure that they are not taking labor dollars away from adult workers. Lowering the minimum for them is one way of accomplishing this. And yes, I'm aware that this creates the potential for jobs being lost to adults in favor of cheaper teens. But as you said yourself, some jobs need to be done by adults. I think we should trust that by making the really low skill jobs "cheap", we make it possible for employers to pay a better wages for the "slightly more than low skill" jobs. Obviously, there's no guarantee of this, but it's more likely to happen than if we don't lower that minimum.

Everyone is forced to pay a fair wage. The problem is that some people's idea of fair is incredibly unrealistic.



How many millions? How many more millions are making more than that, enjoy their jobs, and have advancement opportunities? Shall we just toss the baby out with the bathwater? Can you be a bit more emotional and less logical please! (I'm being sarcastic).



You're kidding right? Do you honestly think some nefarious mustache twirling boss is sitting around figuring out how to schedule hours so as to most ***** over the employees? That's insane.




Boo hoo. This is not typical, unless you're in the "dropped out of highschool, got pregnant, and/or been in and out of prison" crowd. I get that this does happen, but it's the exception, not the norm.



No, it's not the new standard. This is the same old tired rhetoric that gets bandied around. Seriously?

The median personal income for all workers aged 25 and older is right around $30k/year. That's $15/hour full time. Of course, that includes part time workers as well, so we're really looking at a higher median dollar/hour figure. Can we please knock off this sob story about how so many Americans are trapped at minimum freaking wage jobs with no opportunities? It's getting tired as hell. It is far from the "new standard" for folks to be stuck earning $9/hour. Only a small percentage of the total work force does, and most of those are young people who have just entered the workforce. Those who are "stuck" earning that amount are usually stuck doing that because of lack of any sort of action on their own part to increase the value of their labor. I don't see how helping them out at the expense of all the people who actually bothered to try to make something of themselves is a worthwhile pursuit.


As I said at the beginning, some people's idea of "fair" is unrealistic. If you can be replaced trivially by someone who just started the job yesterday, you shouldn't be earning much money. That may seem cruel, but that's absolutely "fair".

The free market does actually work

Except it never actually does, sadly. Nice slogan, though.

And we have speed limit laws because not everyone drives at a safe speed. Do you see how that doesn't mean that slower is always better though?

But good job lumping the kitchen sink in there though! My argument is that if we're going to allow more minors to enter the workforce, we should not require that they earn the same minimum wage that is currently set based on wage requirements that simply don't apply to a 12 year old living under his/her parents roof. I honestly don't think that's too unreasonable, nor do I think equating it to tossing out all wage, labor, safety, and environmental regulations is a fair rebuttal. Gee. Can we stick to what I'm actually talking about, or is that too much to ask?

So you agree that, left unregulated and unfettered, a great many of us would drive at unsafe speeds? Just like, left unfettered, the "free market" works against the common worker in a great many instances?

Excellent! I KNEW you'd come around!

You're free to have that opinion. What I objected to was your Pollyanna notion that it would all just work out to the benefit of the employees (versus adults getting fired to make way for children at a fraction of the wages with owners keeping the difference) because "the free market works". It provably does not in this case and we have an entire period of labor reform (including child labor) to show as evidence, not to mention contemporary examples in nations where child labor is still (quasi)legal. If you want to say "kids shouldn't get paid as much as adults", I disagree but fine. Don't follow it up by spreading some bullshit about how this is actually better because the receptionist is going to get a raise now that the janitor was sacked to hire some kid.

Edited, Dec 4th 2013 11:57pm by Jophiel

That number is not taking into account the people that make a dollar or two over it which is still below a decent wage. With raising cost of living mainly housing, 30k a year is not going to cut it. This is just the the beginning. The more people that gain the skills for the higher skilled jobs the more supply employers will have pull from and there will always be people that will take a job for less then what your making now.