Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

[paulclifford]

>>>An employee is an asset to her employer,

Very true. So why would anyone intentionally vote for a law that punished an employer for maintaining her important asset?

Does legal punishment (or the threat of legal punishment) inspire an employer to maintain more important assets? Or fewer?

Most importantly:

Since everyone is unique, why can't each individual employer and each individual employee decide between themselves voluntarily what "maintenance" consists of? Why "one size fits all?" Why must a third party (Uncle Sam) be brought in to make that decision for them?

No one here wants a third party brought in to decide what "marriage" is, or what "a sexual relationship" is; they want unfettered freedom there. But in the economic sphere, they want that third party to tell them and everyone else what "health insurance" is, and what a "wage" is.

Why not unfettered freedom in both economic relations *and* sexual relations?

[paulclifford]

>>>I groan inwardly that this thread is an open invitation to the zealot who posted endless screeds here a few months ago in praise of the theories of Ayn Rand.

It wasn't I who did that. But my question is: why do you object to having your ideas challenged?

A groan is not an argument.

>>The Kochs have worked some fine magic in America these past few years. Their pernicious impact is still being seen in the deadlock in Washington.

For example?

[trish]

Very true. So why would anyone intentionally vote for a law that punished an employer for maintaining her important asset?

There can be lots of reasons. At one time in the U.S. some of those assets were slaves. Even after slavery ended many workers were effectively entralled to their employers, laboring eighteen hours days six days a week, paid in tokens that could only be exchanged for necessities and goods at the company store. At one time those assess were very young children! Federal laws were required to thwart these immoral extravagancies of unfettered capitalism. Conservatives since Reagan have been working with corporate interests to dismantle unions returning us ultimately to the days of the robber barons.

[paulclifford]

http://www.dailyjobcuts.com

A "fun" site to check once or twice a week.

Over time, you'll see the effect minimum wages and Obamacare (to name but two destructive laws) have on workers.

You can also expect the following:

As minimum wage is increased (which it eventually will, since it's always politically popular), most chain stores that normally employ people at checkout counters — supermarkets, DuaneReade and CVS drug stores, etc. — will convert completely to automated checkout machines, employing only a person or two to keep an eye on things.

I don't think the people who were previously employed in these places — or those who will now remain unemployed because their assets to an employer are not worth $9 or $10 or $11 an hour — are going to be thankful for the minimum wage. The reason they won't be thankful is that even with a minimum wage of, let's say, $11.00/hour, it's obvious that $11.00/hour x 0 hours = $0.00.

Minimum wage zealots always forget that they can't force employers to hire people.

The main purpose of minimum wage laws cannot be to help the poor and the unskilled. The main purpose is to help those who propose it and vote for it — invariably middle-class and wealthy — feel good about themselves.

[trish]

So anyone holding an opposing position is a zealot?! Now we know where your coming from. People on minimum wage typically hold two or three minimum wage jobs without benefits and their children are raising themselves. If an employer doesn't pay a living wage, he is not likely to get quality labor for his dollar. It will eventually effect the quality of his product and his profits. If a significant portion of the labor force is not paid a living wage it negatively effects the economy and the quality of life for everyone in the nation.

[paulclifford]

>There can be lots of reasons.

Lots of reasons to punish employers for trying to maintain their assets? If you really liked workers, it would make more sense to ask "What can we do to make it *easier* for employers to hire more people?" rather than "How can we punish employers and make it for painful for them to hire more people?"

>At one time in the U.S. some of those assets were slaves.

But these "assets" were not *employees*, and the people maintaining them were not *employers*.

A "master" is not an "employer" and a "slave" is not an "employee."

>Even after slavery ended many workers were effectively entralled to their employers, laboring eighteen hours days six days a week,

Before slavery ended in the south, there were no employers and there were no employees. There were "masters" and "slaves." The master/slave arrangement is not a variation of the employer/employee arrangement; it's a completely different thing altogether: the first is based on coercion, and the second is based on contract.

>laboring eighteen hours days six days a week,

You hinted that they were already laboring eighteen hours a day, six days week previously as slaves (and under threat of physical abuse, too). After emancipation, they were still laboring eighteen hours a day, six days week, but now they were getting paid for it, there was no longer the threat of physical abuse, and — most important of all — they could leave at any time and seek work elsewhere (including in the northern industrialized states).

Blacks certainly saw it as a major improvement in their lives compared to what they had previously.

>paid in tokens that could only be exchanged for necessities and goods at the company store.

Many people, black and white, were paid in tokens or company scrip because the original currency of the Confederacy — the "greenback" — was worthless after the war. Blacks who moved north were paid in US dollars like everyone else.

>Federal laws were required to thwart these immoral extravagancies of unfettered capitalism.

Slavery itself was a product of legislation, not unfettered capitalism, and it was continually upheld by the Supreme Court. After the Civil War, additional legislation was passed — again undercutting unfettered capitalism — mandating into existence the racist "Jim Crow" laws. In a famous case decided by the Supreme Court ("Plessy vs. Feguson") the racist "Separate but Equal" laws (which upheld school segregation from the Jim Crow laws) were upheld by federal law.

Railroad owners in the south, for example, had no problem with black riders and white riders sitting in the same rail car together. It had nothing to do with their personal feelings toward blacks; they may or may not have been personally racist. They favored letting blacks and whites sit together in the same rail car for a very good reason: it was ***cheaper*** to place one rail car on the tracks than it was to put two rail cars (one for black passengers, one for whites). Yet the law required them to do the latter.

School segregation was completely the result of Jim Crow laws (not unfettered capitalism) and upheld in the "Separate But Equal" rulings by the Supreme Court in "Plessy." Even if someone had wanted to open a school for both white and black students, she would legally be prevented from doing so. This is not an example of "racist unfettered capitalism." These are cases of racism institutionalized by the State, and actually interfering with the voluntary arrangements that people would have made had there been "unfettered capitalism."

"Plessy" by the way was upheld by a predominantly Democratic Supreme Court. When it was finally overturned many years later (by a predominantly Republican Supreme Court) it was a rare case of government undoing something evil and stupid that it had done earlier.

Almost all blacks knew this, of course, which is why until the mid 1960s, most blacks voted Republican. All blacks knew it was the Democratic Party that had supported the master/slave system in the south; all blacks knew it was the Democratic Party that instituted and supported the racist "Jim Crow" laws; all blacks knew the insurgent group calling itself the "Ku Klux Klan" had been started by Democrats*; all blacks knew it was the Democratic Party that supported "Separate But Equal" in the Plessy case; all blacks were aware it was the Democratic Party which supported school segregation; all blacks knew that the white guys blocking the entranceways to white schools so that black children could not enter when school integration began — those white guys were Democrats and all blacks knew it!

And that's also why Martin Luther King, Jr. voted Republican his entire life.

Black contempt for the Democratic Party didn't end until Lyndon Johnson became president and implemented a series of social programs called "the Great Society" . . . most of which failed in their stated goal of improving the lives of blacks, but which played an impressive role in helping to break up black families by offering economic rewards for married couples NOT to stay together.

>Conservatives since Reagan have been working with corporate interests to dismantle unions returning us ultimately to the days of the robber barons.

Most of this is pop-leftist-mythology that evaporates quickly on doing a little historical research.

But let's cut to the chase: you don't like "corporate interests" or "robber barons"? Barack Obama is in complete thralldom to corporate interests and robber barons and always has been. Wall Street was the biggest contributor to his 2008 campaign, followed by unions and lawyers. Obamacare, in fact, is best viewed as a big taxpayer-subsidized payoff to the various interests that got him into power: Big Pharma, Big Health Insurance, Big Law, and Big Labor. High quality medical outcomes at low cost for YOU and other individuals have nothing to do with the program. That's just the sales pitch.

You believed all that "Hope & Change" rhetoric? That was simply a slogan — a mantra, in fact — to get people jumping up and down with excitement; because the more jumping one does, the less critical thinking one is likely to do.

*(The KKK's membership and leadership are still mainly Democratic. The late Robert Byrd, Democratic senator from West Virginia, had been a long-time member of the KKK, and, in fact, held high office in the group: his title was "Grand Kleagle," a kind of senior recruiting officer to bring in new members.)

[trish]

But these "assets" were not *employees*, and the people maintaining them were not *employers*.

Slaves were employed the way a miner employs a pick to break rock. But the choice of word is a mere matter of semantics. Slaves were assets whose acquisition involved some overhead but very little ongoing cost once acquired. They are the limiting case of what happens as wages go to zero relative to the cost of living.

So when did this become a discussion of Obama. Stay on target Luke Skywalker.

[trish]

BTW
http://www.politifact.com/tennessee/...er-king-jr-wa/

[paulclifford]

>So anyone holding an opposing position is a zealot?!

Since when is holding uncritical support of minimum wage an "opposing" position? It's the mainstream party-line.

>People on minimum wage typically hold two or three minimum wage jobs without benefits

And by forcing employers to pay 9, 10, 11, 12 dollars/hour, these people will lose one or more of their jobs, or they won't won't get hired at all. Minimum wage laws cannot force anyone to hire anyone else. As the minimum wage increases, those with few skill and little experience remain unemployed.

In any case, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the majority of minimum-wage job holders are teenagers who still live at home.

Their jobs are low-skill, low-productivity, low-experience, *entry-level* jobs whose purpose is to gain experience. The function of these jobs — mopping floors, cleaning dishes, slinging hash, etc. — will never be to provide someone with a "living wage" (whatever that is) because those jobs don't produce enough value to the employer to justify her paying someone that high a wage. The purpose of these kinds of jobs is for the employee to gain experience and then move on and move up to a better job. That's "economic reality" and that's the way it has always been. The idea that one can legislate reality away is fantasy. You might as well try to legislate away the law of gravity.

> If an employer doesn't pay a living wage, he is not likely to get quality labor for his dollar.

Better:

If an employer doesn't *offer* a living wage to *potential employees* — i.e., candidates who haven't been hired yet but are being interviewed for the job — the employer isn't likely to find high quality labor assets waiting in her office to be interviewed. Why would high quality labor assets waste their time sitting in an office waiting to be interviewed for a job that pays crap, right?

The crux is this: does an employer need "high quality" labor for every job duty that needs to be done in her business? Does she need someone with a Ph.D. in finance, or someone with a degree in marketing, or someone with entrepreneurial experience, just to perform a low-skill, low-productivity job like mopping floors?

The employer doesn't think so. She simply needs anyone who can handle a mop without poking a customer in the eye. She needs a "low quality" asset who is simply competent and reliable. That's it.

And if the law forces her to regard a low-quality asset *as if* it were actually a high-quality one, she'll fire the low-quality one, or won't hire him to begin with. That low-quality asset will then be unemployed.

How does any of that help the economy?

You're assuming that if she already has hired a low-quality asset to mop floors at, e.g., $5.00/hour, the low-quality asset automatically turns into a high-quality asset when legislation makes the employer pay him $9.00/hour. Not so. The mopper is no doubt *happier* that he's receiving a higher wage, but that doesn't turn him into a high-quality asset from the employer's point of view.

[trish]

What makes your support of not raising the minimum wage "critical" and those in opposition of your view "uncritical"?

The purpose of flipping hamburgers is to grill them evenly on both sides, it's not to gain experience at flipping hamburgers. By flipping those burgers the employee provides the product that the waiter shills to the customers. The workers produce the product and collect the revenue from which the employer makes his living and collects his profit. If an employer needs to hire people that earn for him a living income, then they too should earn a living wage. A waiter who is not holding down two other jobs and raising two kids on the side, is going to present a friendlier face to the customers and a chef who is not also holding down two other jobs might not spit in your salad.