Minimum Rage
“Well said, Jessica. Even $5/hour leaves someone working 40 hours a week with $200 to live off - near-impossible as a single person, let alone someone supporting a family.” - miss-r
Q: What about the homeless guy who can’t get hired for the $5/hour minimum wage job, but would be qualified for a $3 an hour job?
A: He will have no job, because no $3 jobs exist. He will dig through trash cans for empty bottles and pizza crusts.
Q: But that’s not fair. It is my belief that no one should have to dig through trash cans.
A: Then why do you advocate laws that make digging through trash cans inevitable? Why do you eliminate the role of the least skilled people in the economy? Why do you insist that the ladder have no bottom rung?
Q: Nobody’s talking about ladders. I’m talking about the basic human right of a well-paying job.
A: What about the right to earn a living that, while meager, is better than no living at all?
Q: Easy for you to say! You’ve made plenty of money — you’re just trying to squeeze every last penny out of the underpriviledged!
A: I’ve made plenty of money because I’m good at evaluating complex systems and understanding how they could be made more efficient. There is an inefficiency here that hurts everyone. It bothers me because it could so easily be reversed, because it causes so much misery, and because it makes the economy worse off for me! But nobody wants to learn basic economics, so they go on repeating the same reality-denying mistakes that have been made, putting forth an agenda that cannot work but sure does sound nice.
Q: What do you want?
A: I want an economist to refute my arguments with facts derived from reality, not with implausible hypotheticals about tomatoes.
Q: Do you think the girls who attack you on their tumblrs have crushes on you?
A: No comment, you’re adding an unnecessary distraction to this post.
Q: Ok, one more question, what’s your take on this debacle?
A: GOOD NIGHT.
I really can’t tell what the argument is over anymore, whether it’s over the minimum wage or the merits of unpaid internships. I think though the answer is the same to both: Let the market decide. If you don’t think that unpaid internships are right, then you shouldn’t take one. If everyone stops taking unpaid internships, then maybe the company will be forced to pay someone to do that work. But the reality is that good unpaid internships are fought over, so it obviously provides value for both the employer and intern. Again, if you don’t like it, then either don’t take one, or don’t offer one- that’s the beauty of our marketplace. And if you don’t like that reality, then the U.S. is the last country you should be living in.
The same goes for the minimum wage. While it sounds great to offer everyone a living wage, it’s just not the reality. If there’s someone out there willing to work for $3/hour, then the employer should be able to pay $3/hour. If the going rate for said job is $5/hour, then the employer will be forced to pay $5/hour. It’s that simple. The market makes the decision. The decision of what to pay an employee should be a decision negotiated between employee and employer, not between Representative and Senator.
Another note: I’ve read a few Tumblr responses, and I think people mistake economics for arithmetic. Economics is a social science that studies the give and take of goods and services in a marketplace. It studies cause and effect. To call someone stupid and proclaim that you understand economics better than someone else, then go through a series of addition and multiplication to show that you can’t live on X amount of dollars just proves that you know even less. I don’t pretend to be an expert, I’m actually rather a novice, and I don’t claim to be anything but. I recommend following the words of Bill S. Preston, Esquire- “The only true wisdom consists of knowing that you know nothing.”
2 years ago - read more...
