As we know, state regulations benefit some at the expense of others.
However, who is the main beneficiary group of maximum working hour regulation? Workers who value leisure time over productive time? And if yes, how do you explain this without offending social democrats?
You’re just going to have to offend them.
It benefits the more skilled over the less skilled. Highly skilled workers can get jobs more easily because their skills are often in high demand. However, unskilled workers suffer from worker-hour legislation, because entrepreneurs see that hiring these workers will be less profitable. This is similar to the minimum wage: the workers on the margin might just get the boot.
Is there any information available on special interest forces within the labor movement lobbying for this kind of regulation? Obviously, if your explanation’s true (and it sounds reasonable to me), all the public school preaching about working hour regulation being the end result of a “struggle between employers and employees” would appear pretty baseless.
Well don’t your school’s history textbooks teach you that valiant unions defeated the evil capitalists and established working hour regulations? Unions are usually made of skilled workers (i.e. the UAW is made of skilled autoworkers). I’m not sure if they intentionally lobby to limit competition from the less skilled or if they fall into the “good intentions but bad results” trap.
Even before reading Kevin Carson’s “Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital", when I read these myths of unions in High School, I thought it was a load of crap that somehow the unions themselves wouldn’t have their own agenda, & that somehow the possibility of unions being corruptible was glazed over & never given second thought.
(a bit off topic…)
I visibly remember getting points off on a response paper (which I had to edit down a page or two to 4 pages, instead of the minimum 2), to which I merely used this innacuracy as an example of the double standard of the cirriculum being taught to us. Ironically, I was suggested to read The Prince as extra credit in the comments left on my paper (go figure).
Interestingly enough, a friend of mine recently changed their views regarding unions as universally good when I suggested he watch “Hoffa” (1983; Jack Nicholson). Not exactly the most accurate educational material, obviously, but sadly it did confirm the cinematic appeal to emotion I was betting would motivate the change in thought.
As a matter of fact, my history textbooks taught me that “growing concern among Prussia’s ruling class” about the miserable living conditions of the proletariat prompted them to pass appropriate legislation.
I guess that’s even more statist than the union approach.
I use a similar topic as an “unsettler” when I want to set the table for future discussions.
Why are we still working 40 hour weeks almost 200 years after it’s inception? What a ridiculous notion of government enforced labour mandates. People should be willing to work as much (or as little) as they want. It is very hard to be competitive when you are using 2 century old labour practices forced on you by government!
This is easy. The competitors of these businesses who do not have the same regulatory burden benefit most. Keep in mind that the economy is world wide. If you burden businesses on one place then their cost structure is artificially higher than the cost structure somewhere else. For example, the US has a tax of 7.5% of income for workers and 7.5% for employers for a 15% total for the Social Security system which is neither social or secure. The Chinese workers do not have such a tax so a company can manufacture something in China and if all things are equal they have a 15% advantage. If you look at it from the worker side it is worse. Each worker must produce a profit from revenue minus their wages so the workers have to work 15% more just to break even.
Politicians that campaign using the issue to win votes benefit quite a bit.
Oh, and thanks for all your input. I found it very valuable. [:)]