Because I’m sure he’ll appreciate whatever minimal traffic I can send him, I’ll comment on a blog post by Abdul suggesting that we use the free market to raise the minimum wage. In particular, he suggests that, if as a matter of policy, our individual preference is to see workers paid better, we should direct our business to those organizations that pay their employees well.
This is a fine idea, but not sufficient to address what amounts to a structural imbalance. Commercial efforts generate a certain amount of additional value. That additional value, the profit, gets split up among the people who produced the value — investors, management, and labor usually. The way the profit gets divided up is not necessarily in proportion to the value of the contributions of each party. Rather, it has to do with the bargaining power of the respective contributors as well.
The problem labor has in getting its share of the profit pie tends to be lack of organization and lack of leverage. An individual laborer lacks bargaining power because an individual laborer is usually easily replaceable. In addition, the individual laborer often has to have whatever he or she can get as a matter of necessity — to acquire or maintain food, shelter, and clothing. That necessity has a coercive effect on their bargaining position. It’s not quite a gun to the head, but it makes it much more difficult for the laborer to walk away from the table than it is for management or the investor who is much more likely to have his or her necessities squared away.
So, I think the minimum wage debate ends up being a decision. The policy decision is that, by fiat, we require a certain minimum to ensure that labor gets at least a certain baseline portion of the profit. The alternative, I suppose, would be to go a more socialist direction where more of life’s necessities were guaranteed whether a person worked or not. At that point, the negotiation between labor, management, and investors would be more of an arm’s length transaction and the price point of the wages would more accurately reflect the value of the labor.
I’m not necessarily advocating the more socialist approach. Culturally, we have a deep opposition to policies that condone idleness — our Puritan work ethic perhaps. But, I think that’s the policy alternative to the minimum wage if we want the free market to receive accurate signals about proper labor prices.
In the main, Republicans wouldn’t care if Indianapolis metro contained 4,000 sft Carmel homes for the owners and the slums of Mumbai for the employees, all the while having government require permits for every business and occupation and handing out subsidies to favored companies. Government meddling in the market is a neat system: it keeps out competitors, and it keeps labor costs low. Any employee that gets too lippy finds himself with license troubles and shut out of the industry.
Abdul is economically wrong; corporations that pay low wages force their employees to consume from the lowest-cost merchant, further ensuring that economic activity is steered toward other companies that pay low wages.
As corporate personhood is socialism, allowing a group of owners to band together for shared economic benefit and limited liability, I don’t see how corporations have a justifiable argument for opposing wage requirements. Indeed, wage requirements may be freely imposed on corporations as part of the bargain for receiving the benefits of the legal fiction. The sole proprietor, however, stands on much loftier footing.
Your complaint about “idleness” makes you sound like a Republican or a German. It’s not a Puritanical perspective, as the Puritans primarily worried about your moral activities, and it’s most certainly not a French perspective, despite your name. Concern with how hard you swing your hammer, all day, comes from farther east, from the land of schadenfreude. The Isles saw the hell the Industrial Revolution made of life. It wasn’t the United Kingdom that admonished: “Arbeit macht frei.”
The solution to “idleness” in the presence of a strong safety net is to make work interesting, rewarding and fulfilling. Humans did not evolve to, and it is not within our nature to want to work inside a factory, business or warehouse, all day.
I was raised Protestant and Republican with a family background that’s German, French, and English. Make of that what you will. My notion of the Puritan work ethic is apparently something I picked up third hand from Max Weber:
Dog, your great statement of the Wesleyian doctrine of election is well presented. I was early on brought up in a Wesleyian church before being dragged into Luterianism and the Mennoonite faith. I am now an agnostic/atheist, but I recall the doctrine of election. The Mennonites rejected it, but the Lutherans modestly accept it. The doctrine of election, among the faithful, is the litmus test that soon becomes a career goal. If I were to step wide and talk as a socialogist, I would call the doctrine of election if moderated by civic values.
“If I were to step wide and talk as a socialogist, I would call the doctrine of election if moderated by civic values.”
Please restate.
Bark.
The resident rambler posts his typical indecipherable gibberish, though he recently blamed his composition problems on his phone. Bearing in mind his excuse, I gave him the courtesy of allowing him to restate his nonsense. Instead of responding with restated text that could be understood, he responded rudely.
This isn’t a phone problem.
Keep barking.
Wow, an entire post with no spelling errors, but it was only two words. Be careful if you wade into deeper water by attempting a post with three words.
There’s a long night ahead of us.
Drink up. You should be uttering some timeless nonsense around 10, or so.
Historically, the Wesleyan doctrine is “free will”, or Arminian, which is common among Mennonites, while Calvinism, emphasizing the classical “predestination” viewpoint is more characteristic of Presbyterian, Reformed, Lutheran, “Regular Baptists” and, believe it or not, Catholics, who tend to focus on other issues besides the sovereignty of God. (Max Weber’s oversimplification notwithstanding). For that matter, Calvin’s main focus was not on predestination either, waiting until the final volume of his classic work to bring it up. In the end, the differences are actually subtle, and not usually a topic for people who really don’t care a lot about them. In the U.S., people don’t select churches based on subtle theological differences as they do stuff like “I feel welcomed there, and it’s near my house”. Many folks, as you know, will say stuff like “We used to attend a Presbyterian church, but we now go to a Methodist church because they have a great program for kids, and it’s nearer to our house. Or “I’m an agnostic, so I eat out on Sunday morning because the restaurant is near my house”.
“It is argued that Protestants, beginning with Martin Luther, had reconceptualized worldly work as a duty which benefits both the individual and society as a whole. Thus, the Catholic idea of good works was transformed into an obligation to consistently work diligently as a sign of grace.”
Run from this education.
Gotta love the Protestants for turning something on its head. The Catholics saw Christ creating an imperative to help others. The Protestants “reformed” that idea into an obligation to work with the greatest zeal to help oneself or the account of one’s master.
Anyway, those are not the ideas of America’s founding peoples. Obviously, some industry is necessary to keep the firewood in the hearth, but exalting work to a sacrament is Industrial Revolution bullshit designed to keep people lashed to their looms.
The true American ideal is to be freer, not richer.
“I’m not going anywhere in particular with this.”
I see. The technical skill and imagination of the mainline 80’s bands blows away one-chord Punk. Mister Mister, Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, Eurythmics, INXS, The Outfield, Azia, 80’s Yes and many others were unbelievable talents.
I forget that Indiana radio was stuck in the Dark Ages in the 80’s. I’ll play songs for Hoosiers that were huge elsewhere, and a Hoosier will never have heard it.
Punk isn’t really that aggressive. It’s loud and raw, but not terribly aggressive.
This is aggressive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhXUutpELRA
You ever watch the “Metal Evolution” documentary they show on VH1 quite a bit? I don’t have anything like the expertise to judge the quality, but I think it’s very enjoyable. A couple of things that come to mind from that series: he notes the reliance on riffs both in the blues and metal. And there is a discussion of just how skilled a lot of these metal musicians are, particularly the guitarists.
And, Iggy Pop had a memorable summation of jazz: “Most jazz is like poorly thought out masturbation.”
British Steel is viewed as the album that permanently severed the connection of Metal to Blues.
Metal musicians are almost more accurately considered athletes, so demanding and ambitious is their playing. That’s why Nirvana is so utterly despised. They followed on the heels of some of the most difficult popular music ever attempted, threw it all in the trash, and went on stage with flannel and indolence. Since Nirvana, new talent has had no pressure to be good, creative or masters of their instruments.
“One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.”
-Lou Reed