As catholics should we believe in the efficacy or/and justice of min. wage?

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fakename

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just a question prompted by reading (some) the compendium of social teaching. I refuse to read more though since it confuses me way more than just asking on these forums.

Sorry if it seems like such a basic question, I know technical matters are not the forte of the church but whether or not something is just is.

Is the justice of something in anyway determined though, by its non-ethical technical properties?
 
I think minimum wage actually prevents a fair wage from being paid. Instead of allowing workers to sell their services, there is one low level for companies to follow and many do the bare minimum. Not only does it prevent workers for underselling but it prevents workers from going for a higher wage because the companies can offer the minimum take it or leave it. The people who have less skills that would normally under sell themselves to be more attractive to a more skilled worker now have the edge since this kind of competition is at the bottom of the scale all but gone. Hence, I do not believe minimum wage actually helps the poor but rather encourages people with less skills to stay at the same low paying job because of the security while the better skilled workers move on to more lucrative industries. This is why we have the widening gap between wealthy and poor.
 
fakename said:
just a question prompted by reading (some) the compendium of social teaching. I refuse to read more though since it confuses me way more than just asking on these forums.

Sorry if it seems like such a basic question, I know technical matters are not the forte of the church but whether or not something is just is.

Is the justice of something in anyway determined though, by its non-ethical technical properties?
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Keep reading the Compendium or Catholicism for Dummies or the like. These forums are handy but while all of us are willing to offer opinions none of us has an imprimatur like the Compendium.

As for “technical properties” I assume you mean does the morality of things like min. wage depend on what economists tell us about the effects? No.
The Church doesn’t, and can’t, tie herself to any particular system or ideology but says such things as min. wage, prison sentences, health care, &c are for the “prudential judgment” of the authorities.
mjs1987 said:
I think minimum wage actually prevents a fair wage from being paid. Instead of allowing workers to sell their services, there is one low level for companies to follow and many do the bare minimum. . . . . .
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Oh, goody. Knee-jerk capitalist response #17. And if we abolish government and let the Laws of Supply and Demand wave their magical wand everybody will live happily ever after.

Read some history. Back when there was no minimum wage employers had no compunctions about slashing wages to near starvation levels, playing ethnic groups off against each other in your vaunted “underselling” process, or using hired thugs or state and sometimes federal troops to kill workers who tried to organise.

Capitalism, like communism or any other secular ideology is anti-Christian. The Church teaches that workers are entitled to dignity and respect, something that capitalism would trample if left to itself.
 
Too many workers are putting in so little effort in their job, paying them minimum wage is unfair to the employer. We should be paid per performance, bottom line, we don’t get that with a fixed starting wage.

We also don’t get companies advancing because they are held back by that bottom line of retired on the job workers that are forced to milk at the company tit, per say, while others that perform well cannot get paid better because the funds have been dried up to allow it to do so. It’s a communistic approach in my book, it’s not to say there would be no employers that would exploit this type of system, but they would soon be out of business when all of their skilled staff leave to work for a company that advanced their staff because they don’t have to drag around the dead weight. This is why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the rich, if you look down the chain, are making their profits directly or indirectly due to cheap unregulated and typically exploited foreign labor with little to no governmental control.

Eliminating fixed wages would also require stricter regulations along only the top paying employees, for they are the ones with the most potential to abuse the system.
 
fakename said:
just a question prompted by reading (some) the compendium of social teaching. I refuse to read more though since it confuses me way more than just asking on these forums.

Sorry if it seems like such a basic question, I know technical matters are not the forte of the church but whether or not something is just is.

Is the justice of something in anyway determined though, by its non-ethical technical properties?
Click to expand...
**The minimum wage causes unemployment among unskilled workers and teenagers. **There is over 50 years of solid economic research to support this statement.

I was willing to hire young and unskilled workers; however it was illegal to pay them what they were worth in the marketplace. The government makes it illegal to pay wages that are below the minimum wage.

The minimum wage is a floor on wages that causes a surplus of young and unskilled workers if the minimum wage is above what employers are willing to pay (the equilibrium wage). Why should I hire unskilled and teenage workers when I can hire skilled and older workers for the same minimum wage?

About 70% of economists surveyed agree that the minimum wage is responsible for an increase in unemployment among the young and unskilled laborers IF that wage is above the equilibrium wage. The minimum wage would have no effect on unemployment if the minimum wage were below the equilibrium wage.

As an employer I experienced a surplus of unskilled workers seeking jobs when Clinton and Congress rapidly increased the minimum wage above the equilibrium level. I did not hire any of these unskilled workers because they were not eworth the minimum wage. I was able to hire graduates of a technical school for the minimum wage.

Government is only capable of producing surpluses of young and unskilled workers through a price floor such as the minimum wage. Additionally, government is only able to produce shortages through price ceilings.

Government is a parasite. It is only able to produce a shortage or surplus of resources through socialist meddling in the economy. Government meddling in the economy is the cause of the misallocation of resources. I am not aware of government producing much good. In the gospel, God told the people of Israel through Samuel something to that effect when they asked for a king. There is no such thing as a free lunch!
 
The question of minimum wage is a fun one for me.

First, we know the minimum wage is not equivalent to a real-world living wage. Some who make arguments will say the minimum wage is plenty of money; they should try it on for themselves!

Second, economists fall all over the place on the issue of raising the minimum wage. Different political groups pull out different economists: some say disasters will occur if the wage is raised. The past 3-4 increases that I have seen in recent years show virtually no impact on the economy. . . since the raise usually doesn’t increase over the natural increase in the economy.

Third, we need to keep focus on the living wage. This is justice. The whole libertarian stuff is simplistic shamming.
 
The answer to your question is typically overwhelmed by responses supporting or opposing the minimum wage, responses that may be interesting but are irrelevant to the question.

A Catholic has no moral obligation to support any particular position on the minimum wage. It is no more a moral issue than choosing between Weed-B-Gone and Roundup.

Ender
 
"The answer to your question is typically overwhelmed by responses supporting or opposing the minimum wage, responses that may be interesting but are irrelevant to the question.

A Catholic has no moral obligation to support any particular position on the minimum wage. It is no more a moral issue than choosing between Weed-B-Gone and Roundup."

Thanks, and other posts helped too.

But in theory, although we don’t have to believe in anything like the min. wage, (and I think this ties in with the church not being tied to any secular ideology) still wouldn’t the magisterium have the authority to say “it is right to have min. wages” since they are speaking about ethics and what to do with one’s money and not about technical cause and effect?
 
fakename said:
But in theory, although we don’t have to believe in anything like the min. wage, (and I think this ties in with the church not being tied to any secular ideology) still wouldn’t the magisterium have the authority to say “it is right to have min. wages” since they are speaking about ethics and what to do with one’s money and not about technical cause and effect?
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No, I don’t think so. As you can see from the other posts, the argument over the minimum wage is about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing; that is, whether it is in the main helpful or harmful. The Magisterium speaking out on this wouldn’t make it a moral issue since the decision about increasing or eliminating the wage is always based on the expected outcome. It’s like every other decision we have to make: will choice A yield better results than choice B? With regard to the minimum wage the Magisterium has no more insight than anyone else; they would be talking about cause and effect.

A mistake that is too often made is believing that issues that significantly affect people’s lives are therefore moral questions but this is almost never the case. Abortion is a moral issue because the action is an intrinsic evil; immigration is not a moral issue because the disagreement - just as with the minimum wage - is over what actions will lead to the best outcome.

Ender
 
"A mistake that is too often made is believing that issues that significantly affect people’s lives are therefore moral questions but this is almost never the case. "

Wow, that’s an eye opener.

So let me phrase it a different way so that I could understand it.

Some things that significantly affect people’s lives are moral but not all things that significantly affect people’s lives are moral issues?

So some moral issues do not significantly affect people’s lives?

And in the end: If, for something, it is a moral issue then it significantly affects someone’s life but never the other way around for everything?
 
didymus said:
Oh, goody. Knee-jerk capitalist response #17. And if we abolish government and let the Laws of Supply and Demand wave their magical wand everybody will live happily ever after.

Read some history. Back when there was no minimum wage employers had no compunctions about slashing wages to near starvation levels, playing ethnic groups off against each other in your vaunted “underselling” process, or using hired thugs or state and sometimes federal troops to kill workers who tried to organise.

Capitalism, like communism or any other secular ideology is anti-Christian. The Church teaches that workers are entitled to dignity and respect, something that capitalism would trample if left to itself.
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Oh goody. knee-jerk Socialist response # who cares. No one ever said to abolish the government, so quit trying to derail this thread. Second, the Church doesn’t teach, either, your little idea of a socialist utopia (which is also against Chruch teaching), so please do not sit here and pontificate to us.
 
Captain_America said:
First, we know the minimum wage is not equivalent to a real-world living wage. Some who make arguments will say the minimum wage is plenty of money; they should try it on for themselves!
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Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage; it was only went to give a “level” playing field to those entering the job market. This idea that a majority of those earning minimum wage are raising families off of it is a myth. I think mjs1987 gave the most well reasoned response on minimum wage I’ve read to date.
 
wabrams said:
Oh goody. knee-jerk Socialist response # who cares. No one ever said to abolish the government, so quit trying to derail this thread. Second, the Church doesn’t teach, either, your little idea of a socialist utopia (which is also against Chruch teaching), so please do not sit here and pontificate to us.
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I’m not a socialist, I’m a Republican.
 
Minimum wage is a lie. It hurts the very people that it purports to help. Minimum wage hurts the young and unskilled workers when the minimum wage is above what I am willing to pay. I am not willing to teach young people a skill when I can get skilled people at the same minimum wage.

Minimum wage came from the Socialist platform of 1928, along with Social Security. Nothing in the Socialist platform of 1928 has worked. This country went bankrupt trying to make socialism work.

“The politicians in Washington tell us the economy is recovering. Well, maybe so … as long as you don’t need a job. The problems facing this country — in debt, energy, lost jobs, unbalanced budgets and more — continue to mount. In short, I think we’re headed for a head-on collision with hard times (Sean Brodrick ).”
 
I think the ‘minimum wage’ in practice can be problematic. The minumum wage has been reduced to a very small amount under business lobbying in many countries and there does seem to be a large underclass of underpaid ‘working poor’ who cannot sustain themselves or their families on the so called ‘minimum wage.’ Businesses can also often cynically sack workers at will for fairly trivial reasons under employment contracts paying the minumum wage, and in principle and practice this ‘freedom of contract’ in the workplace can lead to extremely unjust outcomes for the poor and their dependents.

I think the concept of ‘living wage’, a wage that is sufficient to sustain the worker and their dependants to attain an adequate standard of living and to access the basic needs (i.e. to housing, to pay bills, to afford decent food, clothing and education for oneself and one’s children) is better, and this in my view is what the Popes were getting at in their encyclicals on the issue. Unfortunately this concept has been taken over by the market rationalist ideal of paying employees the smallest amount possible to reduce costs to buisness and to maximise the ability to compete in the market, which unfortunately results in miserable poverty for many.
 
fakename said:
So let me phrase it a different way so that I could understand it.

Some things that significantly affect people’s lives are moral but not all things that significantly affect people’s lives are moral issues?
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True.
So some moral issues do not significantly affect people’s lives?
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This is not a conclusion you can logically draw either from my comments or your restatement of them.
And in the end: If, for something, it is a moral issue then it significantly affects someone’s life but never the other way around for everything?
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I’m not sure I understand this. There are issues both large and small that present us with both moral and amoral dilemmas. It would be helpful if you chose a significant topic, said whether or not you believe it to be a moral question, and then explained why.

Ender
 
Greg27 said:
I think the concept of ‘living wage’, a wage that is sufficient to sustain the worker and their dependants to attain an adequate standard of living and to access the basic needs (i.e. to housing, to pay bills, to afford decent food, clothing and education for oneself and one’s children) is better, and this in my view is what the Popes were getting at in their encyclicals on the issue.
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Our individual views on the benefits of a minimum wage are irrelevant to the topic. We were asked what the Catholic responsibility was toward the minimum wage - so this is the part of your response that is relevant.

I think your reading of the encyclicals is fairly typical (I mean, the bishops seem to do it all the time), but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong. What the Church teaches, and what the popes were getting at in (whatever) encyclicals are the goals toward which we are to work, but they do not specify the means we are to use to accomplish those goals. The minimum wage is a means, not an end, and we may disagree about what means we believe will be most effective. The fact that we are told to feed the poor does not mean that the minimum wage is the best way to do that. The Church has a very strong position on feeding the poor but she has none at all on the minimum wage.

Ender
 
to ender:

How are we to interpret the church’s stance in favor of private property? It seems to reason thus -private property provides incentives towards a more efficient use of resources so therefore it is good.

but I think you say the church can’t reason this way since I interpret your writings to say, “If it is a technical matter, a matter of cause and effect, then the church can’t talk about it”. Yet they seem to use cause-effect rationales in justifying property?

As for the thing I said that was hard to understand here’s what I meant:

For some arbitrary situation, x, If x presents a moral issue then it significantly affects someone’s life. But it is not true that for all situations,x, If x significantly affects someone’s life then it is a moral issue.
 
mjs1987 said:
I think minimum wage actually prevents a fair wage from being paid. Instead of allowing workers to sell their services, there is one low level for companies to follow and many do the bare minimum. Not only does it prevent workers for underselling but it prevents workers from going for a higher wage because the companies can offer the minimum take it or leave it.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that minimum wage is just that; a minimum platform to start; if the employee is worth more and can convince the employer that he/she is worth more, the employer will pay more. Being that we live in a capitalistic society, most employers don’t want to pay any more then they have to pay. Additionally the minimum wage also prevents unscrupulous employers from taking advantage of teenagers, many of who are easily intimadated by adults and might be hoodwinked into working for sub-par wages.
 
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