cottonpicker

I don't say this to advocate minimum wage. I am opposed to minimum wage. But that doesn't mean we should ignore the costs of low wages.

This is why I am opposed to minimum wage: My child does not need to make a living wage bagging groceries. I want them to have a job for the life experience, but they don't pay rent or utilities or a car payment or a grocery bill. If they have skills to land a $30/hr job, great! But they don't have those skills. They have no skills and no credentials. I want them to get a summer job so they can start building. The wage doesn't matter.

Here's another reason: I have a great job with great benefits. I also have spare time. I don't mind doing side jobs for peanuts if I find value in the work. For instance, I might teach a class at the local community college. I don't do this for the money, but for other reasons. Is this fair to other teachers whom I displace? Well... I think so. If they want job security they should get skilled at something with more security. Imagine if the cost of medical school got cut in half because so many successful doctors spent some of their free time working part-time at medical schools for $5/hr.

Is a minimum wage preventing doctors from working part-time at medical schools? Of course not. But there are many circumstances where a minimum wage and other well-meaning labor laws are having a detrimental effect.

I know that if we dropped all protections for workers, many workers would allow employers to take advantage of them. So I don't know the right balance. But I would err on letting the worker make the call.

One more thought, though, is that we have reached a point where we can produce far more than we consume. There is just less need for labor. So we are seeing growing pains as we continue the everlasting wrestle over who controls and benefits from the means of production. In a world where we only need 40% of the population to be able to produce enough for everybody, how do you decide who does how much work and who benefits how much from their work?

The historical answer is, pay people to play games while other people watch. That way, we can employ people to produce nothing. So you end up with one person who works 80 hours a week to barely support their family while another person refuses to play another game unless they get paid $100K to play it. That is because YOU are willing to pay $100 to go to see people play a game, but balk at paying $1/pound for onions.

um... yes. If a product costs $1 to produce, why should I be unhappy that it costs $1.10?

I may choose not to buy it, but that doesn't mean I am unhappy. It may mean I can't afford it.

If a product costs $0.25 to produce plus a few finger off little children working in the factory, but we don't pay for fingers... then the product doesn't really cost $0.25 to produce. So I can pay $0.25 plus higher taxes to pay for dismemberment medical, or higher taxes to pay for police to arrest dismembered people from stealing for a living, or higher costs from being mugged every so often by fingerless bandits.

Not paying a living wage has costs to the consumer and everyone else in society.

But the median-wage Wells Fargo employee is a crook who defrauds Wells Fargo employees. It is not right that those employees should profit from abusing customers. Clearly, top-tier executives should be the ones to profit from this.

You are exactly right. But who said that strawberries should be inexpensive and found in every fridge in America? What you have just acknowledged is that strawberries are not cheap. They should not be cheap.

The real danger here is not that Americans will be deprived of strawberries. The danger is that some American who does not actually harvest strawberries will not be able to profit so much from strawberries. Their business will be in jeopardy. It is obviously bad for America when we drive businesses out of business. American business people need to be able to have somebody else do all the work very cheaply so that the American business person can profit.

If nobody values your product enough to pay its true costs, the answer is to reduce costs by having somebody else work cheaper. If the free market doesn't support cheaper labor costs, you need to use some other method to reduce labor costs. Wielding control of immigration status is one tool to incent cheaper labor.