Re: Does the minimum wage actually hurt workers.
- From: "Matt Dz." <matt-NO-SPAM.please@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 18:51:03 +0200
markwh04@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
From sci.econ.research
[...shortened...]
Of course, an object lesson in this is that you can't do economics
without value judgements. It's not a pure science, Nobel
notwithstanding.
Thank you - you have just shown the basic of the problem with the statist "thinking" - the lack of the appreciation for the scientific argument. By the end of the day, the science and reason have always been on the side of the free market - both empirically and theoretically. Nothing has changed...
Your later considerations show complete lack of understanding of what the "free market" is; have you ever considered reading works by Milton Friedman? Or, perhaps, economic science as exercised by this Nobel Prize laureate is something you don't accept in the politicized ideologically narrow mind-frame? Ah... I'm afraid you've already provided readers with the answer...
> Invariably, you find that costs or pricing tends to go completely out
of kilter in each case: the major swings in the housing market, the
sky-high raise in health care, particularly in the US with its
"insurance-ization".
That's quite off-topic, but it's not hard to see both of these as the results of the gov't intervention - regulation of the interest rates and the regulation of the health care industry (limits on access to personal insurance as opposed to employment-dependent and further limits on competition in the health industry market => eliminating the incentives to cut the costs and/or innovate => increasing the prices; licenses limiting the supply of both the labor (doctors) and products (medicines) thus further increasing the prices). Gov't intervention is always bad for the consumers - no surprise here.
You only need to look at the "Career" columns in your typical paper or
talk to job placement specialists for a brief while before it becomes
clear that the entire frame of mind of what proceeds from their advice/
conversation/observations is premised on one basic fact: the Employer
calls the shots and you'd better please them.
Yeah, especially independent contractors in business intelligence, IT, and in general - nowadays growing knowledge-based industry... Oh, but they are actually the employees - aren't they?
small number of personnel, and normally expect to. However, the
situation is entirely opposite for the individual: unless you've come
equipped with a bunch of money at the outset, you can't go without a
job for any period -- without precipitous consequence.
Well - without personal savings (and with heavy CC debt) one indeed cannot go without a job for too long. And that can be even harder when the unemployment rates are high "thanks" to the minimum wage regulation (as shown by over 50 years of research). I don't see however, how can you blame the labor market for what's very often just the lack of personal responsibility and just another outcome of the gov't intervention.
It comes down to the question of who's the big hulking giant with
infinite resources (or something 10% short of infinity) vs. who's the
gnat.
Now that's not science - it's politics.
As can be said by the majority of the political statements you have made - which belong in a different group, IMVHO.
If there's no scarcity of resources, we don't have much to talk about (well, perhaps with exception to the information economics ;-) - however I don't suppose you assume the sole valuable asset each single company has is the information, do you?). All the workers could be paid the +\infty wages possibly without affecting the profits (possibly, as +\infty - \infty is undefined). Now, wake up from the fantasy and welcome to the real world - the world of actually _scarce_ resources.
It's not a free market. Therefore the absence of a prop will hurt
workers -- the pain and degredation of enduring "employment" in a sub-
minimum wage job is worse than having no job at all, and worse even
than starving. I speak from experience when I say that.
So that's your experience. And perhaps you'd even like to help - great.
Here's an advice:
"If you feel driven to feed the poor, get your checkbook out and keep your tyrannical mouth shut about it." –- Lew Goldberg
Start charity fund, open a company and hire the workers on whatever terms you'd like. And it's really up to you whether your operation is going to be profitable.
Don't expect, however, that you have the legitimation to control the other agents of the economy - because you do not. You have no right to tell the others that they are to starve having no job simply because it's your personal opinion that they should actually be happy, because, at least, they don't have to "endure employment" below whatever is the rate currently defined as the "minimum wage". That's totalitarianism - just like the compulsory collectivization which caused the great hunger during the Stalin years in the Soviet Union - and we've already seen how that ends.
"Empirical studies" notwithstanding.
Sure. Let's ignore over 50 years of research published in peer-reviewed journals. After all, there's Mark who knows it all - perhaps Mark would even like to assume dictatorial powers to tell us all how to live. And as all the totalitarians throughout the history - Mark despises the science he cannot bind to his whims.
Fortunately, in this world and this time it won't happen. Welcome to the 21st Century - the age marking the beginning of the Global Capitalism - and the comeback of the free market - already lifting up millions of people from poverty. Because they have chosen a better life - in freedom - and no ideologue, bureaucrat or state is to deny them that choice. Ever again.
Matt P. Dz.
.
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