If you put in 8 hours/day every week, should you receive a wage you can live upon?

[Moonbeam]

We live in a society where you have to have money to survive. We live in a society where most people acquire money by working. If there are insufficient jobs for the number of people who need money then surely, if we believe that we hold certain truths to be self evident, such as the right to life, than it is the government's job to provide the means to life that folk who can't find work will need to survive.

Because the way we have structured our society based on market principles, where supply and demand mean that many people are essentially worthless, we have a conflict between the various things we claim we believe.

Either we will have to euthanize the worthless to rectify the supply problem, or the government will have to create a system that may distort our market system. Perhaps we can preserve the market system for the winners, and have the losers paid to maintain and develop the kinds of new infrastructure for which sufficient private capital isn't available. We could, perhaps at government expense, build a modern city on empty land and move the whole population of some other city into it. Then we could tear that one down and rebuilt it. We could use the universities across the nation to plan and design it holistically from the ground up. Eventually we could transform the nation into a much more efficient place to live and do business in. We could connect the whole nation by pneumatic tube or mag-rail. We could have small efficient places for personal use and large communal areas where we could express our social apeness. The actual labor could be done by the jobless with private industry supplying the goods required, like the military industrial complex with the aim of a building rather than destruction.

 

[Geosurface]

I think it's part of a normal, healthy society for there to be some jobs which CANNOT sustain a person 100%, and cover all their bills, rent, food, etc. I think these jobs are an important stepping stone for teenagers and early 20's people to be able to cut their teeth and augment their finances while they're still living at home.

These jobs are not meant to be sustaining an adult let alone an adult and their family... the reason that people in our society now are trying to use them for that purpose, is tied in with numerous problems and bad directions we've taken as a society in the last 50 years or so.

EDIT: And btw, I voted "No" despite the provided options being woefully inadequate and simplistic. I wish there was a third option which said "It depends on the job"

 

[Lithium381]

We live in a society where you have to have money to survive. We live in a society where most people acquire money by working. If there are insufficient jobs for the number of people who need money then surely, if we believe that we hold certain truths to be self evident, such as the right to life, than it is the government's job to provide the means to life that folk who can't find work will need to survive.

Because the way we have structured our society based on market principles, where supply and demand mean that many people are essentially worthless, we have a conflict between the various things we claim we believe.

Either we will have to euthanize the worthless to rectify the supply problem, or the government will have to create a system that may distort our market system. Perhaps we can preserve the market system for the winners, and have the losers paid to maintain and develop the kinds of new infrastructure for which sufficient private capital isn't available. We could, perhaps at government expense, build a modern city on empty land and move the whole population of some other city into it. Then we could tear that one down and rebuilt it. We could use the universities across the nation to plan and design it holistically from the ground up. Eventually we could transform the nation into a much more efficient place to live and do business in. We could connect the whole nation by pneumatic tube or mag-rail. We could have small efficient places for personal use and large communal areas where we could express our social apeness. The actual labor could be done by the jobless with private industry supplying the goods required, like the military industrial complex with the aim of a building rather than destruction.

very statist of you. how will government do it? with force and coersion which violates your premise of a right to life.

 

[Atreus21]

We could easily arrive at a reasonable figure, per region, for what a living wage would be. It isn't the wage you want to make, it's a wage that would minimally sustain you.

I could be minimally sustained by begging. Homeless people are alive and thus minimally sustained.

 

[Jaskalas]

I think it's part of a normal, healthy society for there to be some jobs which CANNOT sustain a person 100%, and cover all their bills, rent, food, etc. I think these jobs are an important stepping stone for teenagers and early 20's people to be able to cut their teeth and augment their finances while they're still living at home.

These jobs are not meant to be sustaining an adult let alone an adult and their family... the reason that people in our society now are trying to use them for that purpose, is tied in with numerous problems and bad directions we've taken as a society in the last 50 years or so.

EDIT: And btw, I voted "No" despite the provided options being woefully inadequate and simplistic. I wish there was a third option which said "It depends on the job"

Though I voted yes, your logic is sound and you could convince me to vote for that third option.

 

[desy]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265501.php

The state of being poor undermines a person's ability to concentrate properly on the avenues they should follow to improve their standard of living.

The daily struggle to cope with the immediate effects of not having enough money - such as cutting costs, and begging and borrowing to pay bills - has a detrimental effect on cognitive function

Cmon poor folks just pull yourselves up!
slackers
However I agree what is a living wage? food clothing and shelter, somebody said single apt, what about roommates, family arrangements, oatmeal is nutritious and cheap, is Kellogg's on the menu instead? Really hard to nail down what a living wage is and as such corporations offload their wages and health care costs on the taxpayers as it is now with all the social assistance programs,

http://gawker.com/a-shocking-number-of-homeless-people-have-jobs-1341106397

, and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs." That means that there are tens of thousands of New Yorkers who work low wage jobs and go home to a bed in a shelter at night.

 

[BUnit1701]

By the time people have got a job flipping burgers, they've already been through school.

Not a high school diploma, Im talking about trade school/college/graduate school.

 

[glenn1]

What I am saying is remove all taxpayer funded aid such as food stamps, section 8 housing,Medicaid etc...

Don't think you'll find much objection from the conservatives on this proposal.

 

[Brovane]

You would have a point except that 9/10 jobs listed provide a livable wage for a single person.

We aren't subsidizing corporations. We are subsidizing women who pop out bastard children.

So you are taking a statistic from Minneapolis and it's surrounding suburbs and extrapolating it out to the entire nation?

 

[nehalem256]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265501.php

The state of being poor undermines a person's ability to concentrate properly on the avenues they should follow to improve their standard of living.

The daily struggle to cope with the immediate effects of not having enough money - such as cutting costs, and begging and borrowing to pay bills - has a detrimental effect on cognitive function

Seems like reality undermines liberalism.

If you have an ideology that worships individual choice, and says there is no right or wrong choice only "options"... it would seem that such an ideology relies upon people being able to make good decisions for themselves.

What you are saying is that those people least able to afford making bad choices are the ones most likely to make them. And in fact reality bares this out. As poor people are far more likely to pop out a couple of bastard kids, which changes surviving off low-skill jobs from relatively easy to nearly impossible.

Seems like the easiest way to fight poverty is to bring back values.

 

[Todd33]

I think it's part of a normal, healthy society for there to be some jobs which CANNOT sustain a person 100%, and cover all their bills, rent, food, etc. I think these jobs are an important stepping stone for teenagers and early 20's people to be able to cut their teeth and augment their finances while they're still living at home.

These jobs are not meant to be sustaining an adult let alone an adult and their family... the reason that people in our society now are trying to use them for that purpose, is tied in with numerous problems and bad directions we've taken as a society in the last 50 years or so.

EDIT: And btw, I voted "No" despite the provided options being woefully inadequate and simplistic. I wish there was a third option which said "It depends on the job"

So you have to assume a 20+ year old lives at home. That means adults. Teens in school with jobs work part time, not work for less, that means less benefits too (or none).

 

[boomerang]

Don't think you'll find much objection from the conservatives on this proposal.

Your brainwashing - it's been a complete success.

 

[nehalem256]

So you are taking a statistic from Minneapolis and it's surrounding suburbs and extrapolating it out to the entire nation?

I doubt many people in the US live in an area where a living where it is significantly enough cheaper to live for a reasonable minimum wage to be able to support a single mom with 2 kids.

It was provided as an illustrative example.

The site I linked to provides the same data for every county in the US. Feel free to pull the data for the county you live in, or any county you want, and prove me wrong if you can.

 

[First]

What an utterly stupid post.

You should see the rest of them.

 

[nehalem256]

So you have to assume a 20+ year old lives at home. That means adults. Teens in school with jobs work part time, not work for less, that means less benefits too (or none).

You don't have a right to a $40K/year job the moment you walk out of your HS graduation.

 

[Lithium381]

You don't have a right to a $40K/year job the moment you walk out of your HS graduation.

you NEVER have a right to ANY job.

 

[Incorruptible]

The government has no right to dictate the wages and should just stay out.

 

[nehalem256]

you NEVER have a right to ANY job.

Fair enough.

Perhaps it would be better put that you shouldn't be able to expect a $40K/year job just because you walked out of graduation.

 

[Tango]

As an economist, I see a lot of over-simplistic economics 101 concepts being thrown around in the political debate about labor in the US. It is quite puzzling, even after many years in the profession.

Usually the fairy tale goes like this: let the market fix it. Most often, it won't.

Free markets are a very, very, very good thing. But they are not perfect mechanisms, and do not suffice by themselves in reality, because reality is much more complex than college level economics models.

Faith in free markets is a very good guiding principle, provided we also understand market failures and the need to address them. Otherwise we end up at equilibria that not only look and feel awful and morally unjust, but also suffer greatly in terms of economic results because of the terrible negative externalities generated.

This is why Scandinavian countries, with their oh-my-god horrendous tax pressures, extremely high minimum wages and large government programs are in fact at the very top of world's charts not only in quality of life and development indexes, but also productivity, innovation and GDP/capita.

People who struggle to make ends meet every single week do a poor job. They are not creative, they cannot afford risk-taking, they do not have time and resources to acquire new skills, they are emotionally upset, unhappy, prone to crime and social deviation. All things that not only make their life miserable, but also cost the society money because of their negative economic externalities generated by these situations.

The funniest thing, is that the country where more people think it's ok to let somebody who works 40 hr/week be poor is the country where it could be the easiest to fix this problem: the United States of America, with its tremendous pool of resources and talent; a lot of which are literally wasted to maintain some sort of bizarre faith in Introduction to Economics concepts.

Economic models are based on assumptions that greatly impact their results. Over-simplified models serve the purpose of explaining basic concepts in a clear way to people who do not yet have more complex instruments. They should not be used to claim anything outside of a basic economics class. That's what advanced economic analysis conducted at the frontier of research is for, and even then the results are often muddy and inconclusive.

 

[BoberFett]

http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/27053

Oh someone came up with a hard number
$9.69/hr for a single adult
$26.09/hr for a single mom with 2 kids

Since the same people whining about a "living wage" usually are referring to a living wage for a single mom it should be obvious why they are so reluctant to give a hard number.

Again, living wage has to do with the value created. Unless the single mom can flip three times as many burgers per hour than a single adult with no dependents, she isn't worth three times as much. A person's situation has ZERO bearing on what their job is worth. Now THAT'S an unfortunate truth.

 

[BoberFett]

What happens when because of that exchange the corporations are able to pay a low wage that results in the person applying for government assistance so we are then indirectly subsidizing the corporations ability to pay a low wage? I kind of feel as part of that exchange now because my tax dollars are subsidizing it.

That's where the potential of a minimum income system almost makes some sense. From a global economy standpoint, raising minimum wage simply raises the cost of our exports to the point where our products are not price competitive with developing nations. All the same, it is important that working people are able to survive. With taxation set at an appropriate level to support a minimum wage, then corporations themselves can keep labor costs where they need to be, while those who are actually enriched by that labor are paying those wages one way or another, either directly through wages or through taxes used to make up the difference between wages and the minimum income. The idea has plenty of holes, and is ripe for abuse, but it's an interesting concept.

 

[Geosurface]

As they say, incentivize something and you will get more of it.

Our society has incentivized producing children out of wedlock, even if only by eliminating the negative consequences (in large part) doing so used to have attached to it. And we have plenty of studies connecting out of wedlock births with all manner of dysfunction being increased.

And it isn't just having children out of wedlock, there are plenty of other bad life choices (racking up too much debt, getting an expensive drug habit or any other sort of habit like buying too many electronics beyond what you can really afford, whatever) - all of these are effectively incentivized by erecting this big social safety net. Perhaps such a safety net could be justified if our society had robot labor and infinite resources, but we still live in a world where the money required to finance peoples' bad life choices has to come from somewhere.

 

[BoberFett]

I think that there should be no such thing as the "working poor." If you are willing to work, then you should receive enough salary to live without 24/7 financial stress.

I want a mansion and a Lamborghini. Now provide that to me without stress please. I'm willing to work, but not very much, and the job should be pretty easy.

 

[Moonbeam]

very statist of you. how will government do it? with force and coersion which violates your premise of a right to life.

Then you would prefer we euthanize those who have no jobs. Keeping them alive is already costing me my liberty by government theft of my income in the form of taxes. I am simply proposing that we get something back for the investment we are already making. If we cut them off we will have to kill them because they will kill us trying to get something to eat, no?

My apologies if all the complications you sweep under the rug are too much for you to deal with.

 

[HumblePie]

Define

"live upon?"

Food, water, shelter, transportation access, and electricity? Can do with minimum wage in most places.

Want an iphone, laptop, 3 cars, steak every night, and martinis? Work harder to afford those at a better job that is in more of a demand than a menial labor job.