There are two senses of earn. The first is a description of what occurred; he worked 2 hours at $9.00 an hour so he earned $18. The second sense is value laden; she did good work, she really earned the $18 dollars. In political discussions regarding compensation, the two are often fused into one by those justifying the status quo.
The popular argument that the super-rich earned what they have equivocates the two. Yes, the billionaire earned his billions in the descriptive sense of the term. He did in-fact obtain his billions. But that is not an argument for anything; it is simply a statement which is either true or false. However, since this is not an argument, this is not what was meant. What was originally meant was that the billionaire deserves his billions. However, when confronted with the fact that no one deserve the personal wealth of a small nation and the bankrupt nature of a worldview siphoning money to day-traders and away from laborers, the statement is repeated. This time, it looks something like: “if she didn’t earn it, she wouldn’t have it.” This time, “earn” is used in the descriptive sense, which in turn justifies the original value-laden statement to the declarant. Since it is descriptive and most likely true, it must be accepted. To the declarant, accepting the description-earn is the same thing as accepting the earn-deserve.
Not sure, however I am sure there is a range which is reasonable. That range could be defined as making it so everyone can atleast have a livable wage while working a full time job - whatever the job. The flip side of this range, of course, is that it does not allow for private jets. Actually, I’m not sure how a society ought to determine wages because I don’t care how a society determine wages once these conditions are met.
You are right, fairness is subjective. But, I also believe there is an inter-subjective definition of fairness which most people can agree on. We have pervasive elements in our culture; we all wanted george bailey to triumph over Mr. potter; we all wanted Atticus to win the trial.
Make a statutory minimum wage which is livable; make a statutory maximum wage which is the flip-side of the livable wage. Statutorily make corporations profit share equally among all employees. Enforce personally through court orders and contempt. Temporarily nationalize corporations which do not comply, dissolve there board, then hold open election among all employees for the position. Monitor to ensure competency.
Nah man. By objectively measuring and making sure that everyone gets to have a baseline standard of living that everyone would be willing to accept for themselves, and then allowing people to work even harder if they want and earn more if they want to the extent that the baseline standard of living remains as described. Fairness is completely quantifiable or else you can’t make an argument that shows it’s fair the way things are now.
There’s so much subjectivity there. We still haven’t defined what’s livable or what qualifies as appropriate sharing. We also haven’t determined the appropriate degree of labor required for wages.
It’s very political. You’d end up with accusations all over the place just so people could get each other in trouble and force them to do each other’s work.
I didn’t say anything about wage slavery I just said people should have incentives to do as well as they can so long as it’s not at the expense of the standard of living of the society that supports them. There’s a reason the term “robber baron” was coined you know.
And about people having choices…if those choices are between two indistinguishable deals in which a consumer is leveraged for his necessities for the purpose of someone “earning more” then I don’t think that should be allowed.
It’s like if 2 companies snuck in a passed a law that let them be the only sellers of water in the world and then since there were two of them they called it a competition and went on selling water to everyone since no one could get it anywhere else now.
Then they start to raise the price a little. See that’s what they call competition. They want you to think that the competition will result in efficiency and then you imagine a world where there’s water for everyone, but instead they compete for profits and then not enough water is there for everyone because these guys are hoarding it and artificially fucking up the price of it and the next thing you know you can’t even have food or water or shelter or anything unless you give up your life and freedom to go and build this guy a mcmansion or your formerly unemployed housewife now has to go and clean his house for extra cash so you can get enough water for your kids who have to cut his grass so that you have enough money to buy his water so that you wont be thirsty and die.
You’re not advocating for that dude are you? Because I doubt you’re him. You’d probably end up dying of thirst like the rest of us but you somehow fail to see that as you advocate for your own demise.
I haven’t been confronted with this fact actually.
So, Marcus Aurelius didn’t have a legitimate right to his inherited or taxed wealth? The Philosopher King wasn’t in a legitimate position to order his countries money to respond to invasions from several successive frontiers in order to save those laborers? Belisarius didn’t have the right to his riches when he tried to rebuild the western empire after it’s fall?
There isn’t a inherent fact that the rich should be divorced from the poor JUST BECAUSE you feel like it. You may be able to assert the general soundness of this assertion in many, even most cases, but it’s not universally applicable. You run into the Batman Paradox- there are some pretty badassed people in history that used the system, the goods they accumulated that other people would of wasted and blown, for a greater good of all.
The same paradox holds out the potential that some forms of government- if even just for a short amount of time, are preferable to democracy. For example, I can’t say that a communist dictatorship is a inherent evil, despite the mentality of most marxist being equal with the worst tyrannical crude of history- a desire for status and authority, a need to wreak havoc. There may potentially be that one guy floating around out there, Jimmy the Dictator, who is really a swell guy capable of doing some bad ass shit for society. I don’t go around saying ‘it’s a fact that no one deserves to be dictator’… heck, maybe a few people do, and we simply lack the metrics to know this, given every time we try for it we get nothing but bad apples.
My bias is against communism and socialism- for obvious reasons- it ends brutally and millions have to suffer, and I have statistical and historic evidence to support this. However, there may be that paradoxical situation that defies my assumptions, and I keep a eye out for that. In your case, can you honestly say there is no capitalist who isn’t deserving of his wealth? Who didn’t go well beyond anything you could realistically pull off if put suddenly in his shoes, who made the maximum productive use of his wealth and services for society? Come on, there has gotta be at least one if your honest.
Yeah, you are right, I haven’t defined those things. But, the idea that reasonable people cannot agree on such things is absurd. I propose a statistical analysis of what an average individual spends on the necessities of life. Things to be considered: shelter, food, entertainment, transportation, and a buffer preventing a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. Of course we will have to adjust for relative wealth as poorer people spend less on these things. Let us poll individuals who make between 30,000 to 75,000 a year and the livable wage will be average of what all individuals in this range spend to maintain a happy lifestyle.
Someone else will propose another method. Our methods will come out to different numbers, but it doesn’t matter. They will both be within a range that reasonable people can accept as a livable wage. If we have the same goal, are reasonable individuals, and are proceeding in good faith then I am satisfied with the outcome. My current intuition is atleast 40,000 a year for an single individual. Maybe you say 25,000 - 30,000, and smears says 40,000 - 45,000. Who cares, all three are more livable than 6.00/hr. Do it through legislation, if it’s not high enough, do it again. What matters is that society can recognize the problem and have the motivation to fix it. That, really, is all I want.
This is the same sort obfuscation my original post was about. Of course this could happen, and it will happen. It happens now. That’s not an argument against a minimum livable wage, it is an argument against being a dirtbag. Most people don’t do it. What this socieyt does do, is attempt to pay employees as little as possible so that the wealthy can accumulate even more extravagant amounts of wealth. I call that being a dirtbag - dirtbag society. I simply wish to institute parameters reigning in dirtbags. A maximum limit of ditbagery, and a maximium limit of how much an individual can be dirtbagged–that is my entire political philosophy.
I’m not denying it happens right now. I’m saying it happens right now because the economy is politicized. The solution is to remove politicization, not to politicize it further. If you have an epidemic running amok in society, you don’t tell everyone to get infected.
Furthermore, you can’t guarantee who does it or who doesn’t. You’re inherently forcing people to assume the risk, especially in having to get paid at the same level. Would you like working with a dirtbag who gets paid the same amount as you?
I’m not asking for a definition, I was asking you to examine the logic of your facts. The minimum wage scenario is rather pointless. It’s like going to Vietnam, and saying ‘the vietdong, the national currency, will now increase proportionally to match that of rate pay of the average worker in Germany, and so from now on, all Vietnamese shall be as wealthy as the Germans, as we, the leaders here in Vietnam, are so wise and liberal as to of figured this one out and forced it’s acceptance.’
The end result is alot of fixed contracts for debt internationally using Vietnamese debt as a means for fueling will bust in the short term, and the recovery afterwards will find the people are not on par with Germany at all, that their currency across the board decreased in value, and to buy goods from neighboring countries, they have to offer much more of their currency to buy goods. Furthermore, accepting payment for goods via the currency will be less valuable, as the currency will be more and more suspect by merchants who have to pay in acceptable currency to international sellers. Does anyone honestly think if vietnam increased it’s national wage, the buying power for rice in five years for the average person would honestly increase? No, it would be equal or less (save for some hypothetical agricultural revolution making it dirt cheap because of the ease of increased production) despite the individual putting out more dollars.
I live in America, so let’s use America as a example. We say ‘minum wage increase for all, everyone now maked 16 dollars a hour at the very least.’ In my area, the minumum wage is 7 something a hour, but in San Francisco, it’s around 10 dollars. If West Virginia is making 3 dollars more a hour than San Francisco, and has much lower wages, and yet they buying power of the people is uniformly the same, because our productivity has increased the cost of all goods uniformly higher given increased currency in relation to increase debt the business holders have to pay for their higher cost employees, then we end up in the situation that Rural west virginians are making 3 dollars more per hour over their big city counterparts, whereas the roles were once reverse- whereas the universal cost of living has increased for people living in the bigger cities, given the national costs for goods have gone up.
The cities would have no choice but to adjust the local minimum wage higher, to at least 13 dollars per hour in the case of San Francisco, just to keep the people barely impoverished. The wealth of everyone would geometrically increase as well in the end… despite no noticeably increase in production, or in real buying capacity.
Basically, all that uniform minimum wage increases do is give a placebo effect. The cost of living is factored in by the needs of producing, maintaining, and making accessible goods to a local population. In places where housing is at a premium, it will cost more, in places not, less. Jiggling the national minimum wage will only in the short term help tenants, as the cost of rent will rise the second contract renewal comes up, or they have to move. The cost of food will increase, transportation, etc.
In the end, I am left completely opposed to minumum wage hikes, as they are silly and don’t produce any real benefits over costs to society in the short term. It leaves the economy in the lurch during the period of readjustment, and it’s the little man and honest entrepreneur who were barely making it that get slammed the hardest.
Instead of making such a gamble, it might be more worth while to target aspects of the cost of living, such as addressing the issue why housing is so expensive, or food, or transportation. In the case of food, we have a micro-currency, the Food Stamp program, that acts similar to money. In housing, we have subsidies, but it’s in the landlord’s interest to inflate the cost of housing above what it realistically would cost if there was NO subsides, as most landlords wouldn’t be able to charge as much if the government wasn’t artificially propping up the renters market.
A minimum wage increase for everyone is a rather silly and useless thing, and doesn’t do anything to address the issues of poverty, as wealth isn’t a by product of money, it’s at best the other way around, and if you mess with money- by artificially increasing it’s supply, it quickly adjusts itself. It’s why a candybar costs almost a dollar now, but 15 years ago was around 30 cents.
Whatever happened to making sure people were checked by their community in only having kids if they were responsible? If people weren’t checked, the community excluded them from activities.
Question: If you could make ten times the national average income (adjusted for regional variance) would that be enough incentive to work hard and fruitfully? I’m guessing you would.
If we begin with national average income as the floor, then capitalistic incentives remain in place. The only difference is that you can’t make five million a year while the janitor makes half the national average. If there is an annual ceiling on income from all sources, then it is in your interest to do what you can to increase that national average income. Remember, you get to earn up to ten times whatever that amount might be. There would still be plenty of room for promotion incentives. Some people might make two times the national average and on up the scale. The people at the top can still accumulate wealth. Ten times every year for ten years is 100 times that national average.
Obviously, it would require stringent monitoring of income to prevent large scale cheating, but it’s at least possible if not easily practicable. If this ceiling were applied to corporations, then hiding money all over the world become self-defeating. Other than providing prudent cash reserves necessary to run a business, “profits” would be subject to pay-outs in the form of lower pricing, returns to shareholders or even something as silly as producing higher quality (greater cost) products.
Not that you could sell this to anyone short of death threats, but it is a simple answer that would begin to resolve the income disparity and begin to bring the bottom a little closer to the top.