A company doesn’t decide what to pay its employees and then determine the consumer price. That makes no sense.
A lot of your ideas are very subjective, especially the livable wage/working conditions ones. Good wages/working conditions are subjective to the specific economy and preferences of employers and employees. A livable wage to a Carthusian monk would be much different than that of a fedual lord.
It seems like you’re doing some preference-setting for people that would be doing it for themselves.
“I don’t really think a police force can uphold these types of laws.”
Then why do you need a government to provide a website where people can complain about their employers? Why not start one yourself, or just wait for someone else to do it? Why can’t the place where you complain about the employers be a regular website, paid for by those who wanted to create it?
I understand what you are saying. But I do think that every person on this planet would enjoy healthy living conditions: and this is not subjective. I also think that every person on this planet enjoys reduced cost of living… which can equate to more time spent doing things other than paying the costs of living.
You need the government to allow for people to work for less than minimum wage… because there are already laws regarding minimum wage. Everything else you suggest is fine… let individuals self-organize. Like I said earlier - it would be nice if I could build my own corporate empire in a country without minimum wage laws. And it would be nice if corporations begin heading down this route I have attempted to speak about. I truly think that discussing these ideas helps to bring them into reality.
I might concede that healthy living isn’t subjective, but some people may value something more than healthy living. You see real life examples of this all the time now as it is. How are you going to make people to value healthy living enough?
Again, I may concede this point, but a reduced cost of living is a technological goal towards which markets naturally gravitate. No need to plan or force it.
Forcing companies to pay a wage that adheres a minimum standard of living law, will create problems that are similar to the problems that minimum wage creates and new problems. One of the new problems is that a minimum standard of living is subjective.
But I thought that is exactly the justification for the minimum wage, to force companies to pay a “living wage” or a wage that people can live off.
I think the point of minimum wage laws are to placate criticism of authority from the left while effectively setting a minimum wage that does little or nothing as far as being a price floor or actually giving people a wage they can sustain themselves off of.
I don’t expect people to jointly value healthy living conditions and nothing else. I was just trying to describe my idea of a minimum standard of living.
I don’t think our current market is moving toward a reduced cost of living. The existence of minimum wage laws create price floors. So I am suggesting a new perspective where corporations can internally reduce the cost of living for their employees. The corporations who can provide the lowest cost of living will probably attract the better employees. So it is not a matter of planning or force - but a matter of providing opportunity.
I also see this idea as opportunity for micro-socialism to manifest internally within corporations. I think socialist economies have the potential of minimizing the cost of living moreso than capitalism. We just haven’t found a form of socialism that works. This approach allows corporations to experiment with a working socialist model internally while producing products and services within the external capitalist market.
I think you missed my point. The employees might not receive any wages. The employees obtain standards of living because the company is a self-sufficient community that does not require products and services from outside of the company’s assets.
I agree but I think the government might have used the living wage as a justification at some point in history and it most likely did increase some peoples wages at the time. But i stand to be corrected on that one. Thanks to inflation and central banking the days where you could live off the minimum wage are long gone. But then there could be a counter argument that the minimum standard of living has increased, to which the minimum wage has not increased at the same rate. So when the minimum wage was created it would sufficient to have a home with food and you were lucky to have a toilet in your house, electricity, a table to eat off etc. But these days a minimum standard of living includes an iphones and tvs and take out food etc.
Which is why the “livable wage” argument is nonsense. I can tell you right off the bat that my standard of living is very different than the guy a few cubes over from me. A “livable wage” is whatever politicians and state-meddlers say it is.
How do minimum wage laws affect business when the amount of businesses who give the minimum wage is in the lower single digit % bracket?>>>>
It prices all potential businesses that would use less valuable labor out of the market, period. It also forces the prices of goods and labor up, by instituting an artificial floor, therefore the cost of any good must necessarily rise. Fast food is more expensive and lower quality because the demand for fast food is sufficient to overcome the inefficiency of the minimum wage. The quality suffers as a result because artificially inflating the value of labor creates a sense of entitlement among the underclass. If the were making $2 an hour to start, they would really really want to get the order right so they could earn a raise.
I understand businesses being priced out of the market. But still, hardly anyone pays the minimum wage. It would seem it’s effects on the price of goods would be negligible since only a very small minority pays the minimum wage.
Unless that is just a marketing strategy to say they do not hire people at minimum wage.
Perhaps if there was no minimum wage limitations, one would see more competition. Once the competition gains market share, they may raise prices accordingly.
So much easier to argure that it is no one’s business to tell me what wage I should pay…
Things that are seen vs. Things that are not seen. When the government regulations make it impossible to have taxi service below a certain dollar amount, you dont see taxi service below a certain dollar amount.
Government will decrease as charity and volunteerism increase. The charitable organizations must become self-sufficient in their relationships with each other. The price floor in terms of currency price can become near zero as volunteers cooperate effectively.
I see this path of volunteerism and charity to be ideal as robots fix robots and politicians foolishly attempt to create more work. A rational organization is one that attempts to reduce the amount of work needed to provide a good or service.
Our markets see planned obsolescence, pollution, wasteful regulation, and general inefficiency because these practices end up benefiting a small group of people while placing costs on another group of people. The foundation of these wasteful tendencies lies in a lack of competition and a lack of awareness.
The job of the non-profit is to compete in the markets to provide goods and services at minimal costs. This disempowers the profit seekers who are willing to deceptively place costs on consumers as a means of increasing personal profit. The other job of the non-profit is to increase awareness of each individual concerning the consequences of their interactions within the economy.
As an individual - we can begin to engage the economy with renewed understanding that it is healthier for our economy to become conscientious consumers who do not always seek the lowest price because prices do NOT currently reflect ALL costs with regard to SUSTAINABILITY.
