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Should we abolish national minimum wage?
I posed the question to a professor and she screamed “No, we should increase it to help poor people”. So let’s increase minimum wage to, say 100 Pounds per hour. How do you suppose businesses will respond to that? If you work with Tescos supermarket for a wage of 7 pounds an hour you’d lose your job. Why? – is it because Tescos cannot afford to pay 100 pounds? Not at all – it is due to the fact that your productivity level is not up to 100 pounds so it will be an act of charity to keep you employed (Employers don’t pay on the bases of what they can afford – they pay you from what you produce. Just like you don’t buy an item on the bases of what you can afford but the value).
A friend of mine earns about 150 Pounds an hour; she wouldn’t lose her job in a system of 100 pounds minimum wage because she produces more than the MW.
If you understand minimum wage this way then, surely, a MW of 4 pounds could be properly defined as ‘if you cannot produce 4 pounds an hour you don’t deserve a job.’ There is no other way to describe it – if you deny this then you should be in favour of increasing the national minimum wage to 500 pounds -why not?
It is not the doctor or the engineer that is affected by minimum wage. It is the unskilled and poor worker with low productivity - the very group the minimum wage is created to protect.
On the other hand, some giant corporations would not have existed if there was a minimum wage system when they came into existence – so the policy also prevent potential entrepreneurs with low financial capacity from setting up.
If you study minimum wage from any angle you’d realise that it is only the poor that is affected. The poor skilled man, the poor entrepreneur and the poor consumer (YES it affect consumer but that is not my focus).
Off-licenses in the UK (your regular corner shop) cannot take up staffs in a system of minimum wage because it means no profit for them - same for local food stores. In a society of mass unemployed teenagers
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John Moonstroller 20+
The basic, primary “Goal” of each individual is to survive. By joining together as a group this goal becomes easier to achieve. Once the group has organized itself to easily survive, they can expand the primary goal to: surviving with a level of comfort. Once this is achieved, you have a society living in harmony.
To maintain harmony within a group, individuals they must perceive that the demands required of them are equal to the demands placed on the other members of the group.
In a pure Capitalist society some individuals perceive themselves as being more valuable than other members of the group. They feel they need to be compensated at a higher level of comfort (less work and more recreation). When an individual expects to live at a higher level of comfort within the group, dissonance is introduced into the group. Dissonance is a natural consequence of trying to live in a pure Capitalist society.
In a pure Socialist society, all profits created by group endeavors are divided equally among all group members, regardless of the hardship imposed on some individuals to produce products necessary to support the group at the level of comfort. Dissonance is a natural consequence of trying to live in a Pure Socialist society.
By attaching a bonus value to tasks requiring more individual effort, such as less work time and more recreational time, dissonance can be avoided and harmony maintained. To determine the value of the bonus, a leader, or the entire group, should vote what that value should be.
Minimum wage should not be abolished but should be reevaluated as to it's relevant value in today's work force..
pat gilbert 50+
Perception doesn't have anything to do with it. It sounds like you are saying Bill Gates made more money because of his self perception. Not the case he simply created something that everyone wanted. It was a win win all the way.
"To determine the value of the bonus, a leader, or the entire group, should vote what that value should be."
Why not just have everyone vote with their wallet? The Google boys sure did get a lot of votes as did the Koch brothers, as did Stephen Jobs, as did Sam Walton. What did they do that got so many votes? you said it in your opening paragraph they helped their fellow earthlings survive better. The Google boys made everyone smarter a lot smarter, the Koch brothers gave everyone cheaper energy, Stephen Jobs gave everyone an easier friendlier computer. Sam Walton gave everyone more crap for less money. Don't you think they deserve more votes?
"Minimum wage should not be abolished but should be reevaluated as to it's relevant value in today's work force.."
Who would this individual be? No one is that smart. Again let each individual vote by agreement on what they are worth and what the employers think they are worth. Simply put by agreeing on an exchange.
Most people fail to realize the importance of the inspection the quality of the exchange. It requires that the exchange be inspected many times per day per individual. When this has been erroneously attempted in communist countries it has resulted in failure:
A turning point in Yeltsin’s intellectual development occurred during his first visit to the United States in September 1989, more specifically his first visit to an American supermarket, in Houston, Texas. The sight of aisle after aisle of shelves neatly stacked with every conceivable type of foodstuff and household item, each in a dozen varieties, both amazed and depressed him. For Yeltsin, like many other first-time Russian visitors to America, this was infinitely more impressive
pat gilbert 50+
“What we saw in that supermarket was no less amazing than America itself,” recalled Lev Sukhanov, who accompanied Yeltsin on his trip to the United States and shared his sense of shock and dismay at the gap in living standards between the two superpowers.
What does work is the individual deciding for himself what is in his best interest.