The "living wage" concept is simply the discredited Marxian dogma that social justice requires equal distribution of wealth and income on the basis of labor hours worked, without regard to productivity or individual merit.
The "living wage" concept is simply the discredited Marxian dogma that social justice requires equal distribution of wealth and income on the basis of labor hours worked, without regard to productivity or individual merit. And it’s a disguised way to turn red states into blue ones.
Liberal Democrats and Republicans are champions of the ‘living wage’ concept. The Democratic Party believes that it will be a winning issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Recently, advocates of the "living wage" induced the Santa Fe city council to mandate a $9.50 per hour living wage, almost double the $5.15 Federal minimum wage. In prior years similar ordinances were enacted in Baltimore, San Francisco, and elsewhere.
The aim now is to establish the concept at the Federal level in order to impose a one-size-fits-all mandate for the entire nation. More than periodic Congressional adjustments to the ill-advised minimum wage, the living wage would permit large and continuous percentage increases in wages by bureaucrats in Washington.
The case for the "living wage" is presented in the January, 15, 2006, edition of the New York Times Magazine by Jon Gertner, in an article titled "What is a Living Wage?"
The Times’ answer: A) A grass-roots campaign to increase the pay of workers? B) A point of debate among economists? C) A new moral-values issue for Democrats? Answer: All of the above
In giving lip service to moral values, liberal secular-materialists are again speaking out of both sides of their mouths. Side one declares that the ‘morality’ of social justice requires arbitrary minimum wages determined by Marxian economists. Simultaneously, the other side of the liberal mouth insists on purely secular education, prominently featuring the evolutionary hypothesis that there is no God and thus no moral truth.
True morality applies to individuals and to individual businesses, all of whom should strive to treat their employees in accordance with the Golden Rule. Given the vastness and infinite variety of the labor market, no regulatory bureau ever will possess sufficient wisdom and knowledge to determine a "moral" wage level.
It doesn’t take rocket science to perceive the motivation behind this movement: a redistribution of political power paralleling socialistic income redistribution. Voters see higher wages, but don’t connect that to resulting higher prices and fewer jobs over ensuing years.
The red-state populations are growing much faster than those of the blue-state Northeast and upper Midwest, ensnared by their welfare hand-outs and high labor union wages and benefits. Why should low-living-cost states have to pay the same wages as high-living-cost states? Taking away their economic advantages would over time neuter the red states politically.
As Cafe Hayek expressed it, if the New York Times is so keen on raising the living standards of entry-level workers, why doesn’t it donate its profits to charitable groups for that purpose? Why doesn’t the Times pay its entry-level workers $60,000 a year, a living wage for a family with children in high-cost NYC?
Philosophically, the "living wage" assumes the socialistic proposition that there is no such thing as human nature and therefore that there is no rational order to the free market. Life is an inherently meaningless Darwinian struggle for survival that must be subjected to social justice by the material force of bureaucratic regulation (they’re smart; you aren’t). Bureaucrats theoretically will bring perfection, peace, and harmony to political society.
More than two hundred years’ political experimentation belies this hypothesis. Entitlement to wages without regard to productivity, as we saw in the Soviet Union and still see in countries like Sweden, results in cumulative declines in national wealth and lower individual standards of living.
Some other problems:
– The living wage discriminates against the rapidly growing elderly population who seek low-level work to supplement their retirement and Social Security income, but lack the physical stamina and technical training of younger workers.
– It causes job losses, either because businesses hire fewer entry-level workers, or because they lay off entry-levelers. Capital doesn’t remain invested in businesses that lose money or produce marginal rates of return.
– It intensifies pressure to outsource jobs to low-wage countries.
– It leads to substituting automation for live workers as a way to reduce labor costs.
– It makes starting mom-and-pop businesses harder, because they have limited latitude for price increases without established customer bases, and because they have limited financial resources to withstand diminished profit margins.
– It’s unfair to those who are better workers, who lose part of what they might receive as merit pay.
– It ignores the fact that the wage rate is only part of the total compensation package for most workers, who get varying levels of health insurance and other indirect compensation.
– It is a disguised tax on consumers; businesses have to offset higher wage costs, to some degree, with higher prices.
– It’s an indirect way for bureaucrats to pick winners and losers arbitrarily, to preserve businesses by fiat that can’t compete economically with low-labor-cost, low-price businesses like Wal-Mart.
While this article brings up many good points, it overlooks the true notion of the “living-wage” and distorts its origins. It not Marxist. It comes from the work of Heinrich Pesch (1854-1926), a decidedly anti-communist German Jesuit Catholic priest. The living wage comes from the realization that in a agricultural setting (the economic setting of the vast majority of homo sapiens for the last several thousand years) a typical man can support himself through sustenance farming and a family economy can operate with a natural division of labor among husband, wife, and children. This is how the old order Amish live today! They are not suffering harsh poverty or starvation.
Given this fact, Fr. Pesch asserted that any employer that cannot provide a wage great enough for a worker to enjoy that same or better standard of living than a primitive farmer is wrongly inefficient. Indeed, such inefficient employers did exist and continue to exist. The concept of the “living-wage” is therefore useful for benchmarking employers and whole societies. It does not necessarily have to be the Marxist bogeyman suggested in this article. Indeed, efforts to establish a living wage through various government-led coercive measures may indeed reek of Marxism, but this does not mean that the living wage is itself Marxist, harmful, or useless.
With regard to the above comment, "It does not necessarily have to be the Marxist bogeyman…", I submit, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck,…" etc.
A related idea is in my old college economics text – wage levels are not subject to the law of supply and demand because you cannot buy and sell human beings. However, one’s skills are a very marketable commodity, subject to the law of supply and demand. At the risk of being attacked for “blaming the victim,” refusal to acknowledge this fact does a grave disservice to low-wage workers by obscuring how on their own initiative they might improve their economic condition. That people do not really need government to improve their lot brings into question the benevolence of advocates of “living wages.” So-called compassion, divorced from considerations of the effectiveness of what is being proposed, is really self-centered sentimentality.
"Living wage" means that a mother of two who works 40 hours a week can afford to feed her children.
People need to take personal responsibility. People are depending more and more on the Gov. to take care of them. Like Jeshua Erickson who posted above about being able to feed her kids. Well if your job skills don't merit enough pay to feed your kids it is YOUR responsibility to either acquire better skills or get a second job. No sobs stories, people work hard and pull themselves up from their bootstraps everyday. A McDonalds cashier should not be making a "living wage". It doesn't require much skill. A person is not supposed to be able to provide for a family on a minimum wage job. It is a minimum wage because it requires minimum skill!!
All that is really being said here is that conservatives think poverty is right, poverty is normal, and poverty is good. If everyone in the world could pull themselves up by their so called "bootstraps" then who would be left to flip the burgers or clean the office toilets? This is not a matter of what people supposedly do or do not deserve, civilized individuals help each other, period, and realizing that none of us is an island is one the very first steps a child takes to maturity.
Perhaps the conservative utopia should be allowed to develop, and when all the house cleaners are dead because they can't afford to eat, maybe then the remainder will begin to get an idea for themselves how much having their toilet cleaned for them was actually worth.
Nietzsche stated that to be unwilling to help is better than to be constantly helpful for it causes people to help themselves and develop their own will. This is why the so called "Nanny State" is so hated. It does not help people become stronger developed human beings it simply gives power to government officials, and where power is given it is also stolen. Maybe the workers should organize create thier own company doing what they do, if as implied they are not the cause of the terrible inefficiency, and all pay themselves what they deserve. That is the American way, not hand holding.