How can we protect people's social class?

[LilyM]

The ‘deniers’ who doubt that artificially raising wages for some jobs soon leads to fewer of those jobs, are often the same people who demand that taxes be added to certain products to discourage use of them.

Who says wages are being artificially raised? The average McDonalds worker here in Australia, I’d venture to guess, gives exactly as much value in return for his or her labour as the average McDonalds worker in America, yet is paid substantially more, and McDonald’s here is not exactly a weak or ailing business by any stretch.

So by whose measure are our wages artificially high? Its just as reasonable to say that US wages are kept artificially low.

 

[Bill_7154]

An excellent point. Almost no-one here would rather be on welfare, because welfare is so miserable compared to even the minimum wage. At a rough guess unemployment is probably half of the minimum wage in real terms (ie allowing for the travel concessions, health concessions etc that welfare recepients get) if not less.

So why exactly do you think it’s a good and healthy thing to make minimum wage jobs so completely unattractive by comparison to welfare? All you’re doing by going that route is forcing people (including plenty who actually do want to work) onto welfare, since some who want to work still will not be able to reasonably live on the average minimum wage if they did?

I’m confused by your post here. When I said welfare (in it’s various forms) what I am talking about is people who collect SSI or SSDI from the soc security admin and also get section 8 housing and also get food stamps and also get free healthcare (well, they pay $2-$3 co-pays for meds, no co-pays for any dr’s visits, hospital stays, etc). Add all that up and you WAY ABOVE min wage.

Unemployment is 1/2 min wage? Isn’t it something like 60% of your previous income?

Why do you think it’s a good and healthy thing to make welfare (paid 52 week vacation every year, cash and non cash benefits far surpass minimum wage) so attractive when compared to the minimum wage? Why encourage and reward people for turning their noses up at earning and honest days work? Why do you think all the illegal immigrants are working the min wage jobs? Because able bodied citizens prefer to live off of your and my taxes and do so with a better lifestyle on a permanent vaction to boot!

Reward bad behavior much?

 

[Edward_H]

Who says wages are being artificially raised? The average McDonalds worker here in Australia, I’d venture to guess, gives exactly as much value in return for his or her labour as the average McDonalds worker in America, yet is paid substantially more, and McDonald’s here is not exactly a weak or ailing business by any stretch.

So by whose measure are our wages artificially high? Its just as reasonable to say that US wages are kept artificially low.

If a billion individual transactions over the years between various employers and workers doesn’t substantiate a wage to its core value, and it instead takes a single edict/transaction to adjust the wage to what some group of surrogate decision makers removed from the actual economic exchange think is correct, then I say there is supra-abundant evidence that the wage has become artificial.

In other words, it’s the make-work of a government, not the result of embedded information that gets naturally accumulated in a free exchange market.

 

[LilyM]

I’m confused by your post here. When I said welfare (in it’s various forms) what I am talking about is people who collect SSI or SSDI from the soc security admin and also get section 8 housing and also get food stamps and also get free healthcare (well, they pay $2-$3 co-pays for meds, no co-pays for any dr’s visits, hospital stays, etc). Add all that up and you WAY ABOVE min wage.

Unemployment is 1/2 min wage? Isn’t it something like 60% of your previous income?

Why do you think it’s a good and healthy thing to make welfare (paid 52 week vacation every year, cash and non cash benefits far surpass minimum wage) so attractive when compared to the minimum wage? Why encourage and reward people for turning their noses up at earning and honest days work? Why do you think all the illegal immigrants are working the min wage jobs? Because able bodied citizens prefer to live off of your and my taxes and do so with a better lifestyle on a permanent vaction to boot!

Reward bad behavior much?

I’m talking about my Australian welfare system - I have mentioned numerous times in yhis thread, incliding my very last post) that I am Australian. OUR unemployment is the one that is probably half the minimum wage, even including the other concessions. A high minimum wage relative to welfare is an excellent incentive towards the good behaviour (ie getting a job) and an excellent incentive to avoid the undesirable (ie staying on welfare when able to work). One reason among many that our unemployment rate is only 5%. There seem to be plenty of jobs here for most of those who want em despite our evil much higher minimum wage.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

I don’t think even having a minimum wage established by a government is a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, I think there should be a minimum wage enforced, but that wage should be decided upon by employers and employees.

 

[LilyM]

If a billion individual transactions over the years between various employers and workers doesn’t substantiate a wage to its core value, and it instead takes a single edict/transaction to adjust the wage to what some group of surrogate decision makers removed from the actual economic exchange think is correct, then I say there is supra-abundant evidence that the wage has become artificial.

In other words, it’s the make-work of a government, not the result of embedded information that gets naturally accumulated in a free exchange market.

So why are your wages so much higher than those of workers doing comparable work in China and Africa?

As a lawyer, I can do literally, precisely, the exact same task as one of my paralegals. If he or she does it the client pays significantly less than if I do it. Correspondingly a lawyer senior to myself can do the precise same exact task as both of us and the client will pay still more. It matters not at all that the paralegal may have done that task hundreds more times than myself or the senior and correspondingly do a better and quicker job at it.

Same goes for other professions - eg when I get a pap smear or a flu shot done by a nurse rather than a doctor. Same deal - the nurse may be more experinced and do a better job.

This is possible because there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ value of labour - the price thereof is wholly and solely determined by what the consumer perceives it (rightly or wrongly) to be worth and are accordingly willing to pay for it. Every purchase of goods or services involves, albeit often subconsciously and instantaneously, the same considerations and factors that go into a government determining a living wage. Both are artificially set, the latter is just more overtly so.

 

[Edward_H]

So why are your wages so much higher than those of workers doing comparable work in China and Africa?

As a lawyer, I can do literally, precisely, the exact same task as one of my paralegals. If he or she does it the client pays significantly less than if I do it. Correspondingly a lawyer senior to myself can do the precise same exact task as both of us and the client will pay still more. It matters not at all that the paralegal may have done that task hundreds more times than myself or the senior and correspondingly do a better and quicker job at it.

Same goes for other professions - eg when I get a pap smear or a flu shot done by a nurse rather than a doctor. Same deal - the nurse may be more experinced and do a better job.

This is possible because there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ value of labour - the price thereof is wholly and solely determined by what the consumer perceives it (rightly or wrongly) to be worth and are accordingly willing to pay for it. Every purchase of goods or services involves, albeit often subconsciously and instantaneously, the same considerations and factors that go into a government determining a living wage. Both are artificially set, the latter is just more overtly so.

Correct. There is no natural value of labor. It’s all relative to the available market, and assuming no other entity puts their finger in the middle of the exchange (fixing of wages, tariffs on import of goods made with labor in other countries, etc). When there is an increase in the labor pool there is a drop in the “price” (wage) for labor.

Legal work may have some barriers to entry…but most computer work is going to move off shore at a rate far faster than manufacturing work. It’s already happening. The slow down on h1b visas only encouraged companies to move the work off shore far faster.

 

[Bill_7154]

I’m talking about my Australian welfare system - I have mentioned numerous times in yhis thread, incliding my very last post) that I am Australian. OUR unemployment is the one that is probably half the minimum wage, even including the other concessions. A high minimum wage relative to welfare is an excellent incentive towards the good behaviour (ie getting a job) and an excellent incentive to avoid the undesirable (ie staying on welfare when able to work). One reason among many that our unemployment rate is only 5%. There seem to be plenty of jobs here for most of those who want em despite our evil much higher minimum wage.

Hi Lily,
I’m a little slow I guess. I forgot you were from Australia, it took me a while to remember. Here in the USA people who get assistance with rent and cash from one place or another and food stamps and free healthcare wind up with probably close to 3x what minimum wage is if their income (cash and non cash) were compared to the gross income of someone who works for a living.

And there is also the incentive of not having to work at all. I’m pretty that a value can be put on that as well. I realize that students in medical school are not dropping out to get on the USA’s welfare (again, I use this term loosely to include any of the various cash and/or non cash benefits from taxspayers) gravy train. But to a person who was raised in a home where the family lived off of taxpayers their whole life, well I’ll just say that I’m willing to bet that more than a small minority of these children get on the welfare rolls as adults and stay there. It’s what they know. And as inflation continues to rise getting on ‘the dole’ is going to seem more and more attractive to working poor people. Most will probably continue to work as they have a work ethic, but to anyone who can’t hold a job for whatever reason and anyone raised in a home run by other people’s tax dollars, or those raised by the state in youth group homes or whatever…my guess is that more and more are going to be going for the various types of ‘welfare’.

We have in the usa something called ‘section 8’. It’s a progam for poor people to help them pay their rent. They pay 30% of their income towards rent, taxes pick up the rest paying the landlord the difference to equate to full market value. Anyone is eligible if they have a low enough income, but the wait lists are extremely long (like 10 years)… EXCEPT for people who have ‘special criteria’ which will move them up the list and make their wait times much shorter. If someone is homeless, diisabled (that is a term that is misunderstood IMO- my father is ‘disabled’ because he has back and heart problems- but you would not know it if you met him- which is true of many ‘disabled’ in the usa, you would not know or suspect they are disabled.

People who live in homeless shelters for months typically wind up applying for disability, and typically wind up getting approved. This gives them a check for about $750/month if they have no work history. If they have worked for at least a few years in their life they will get more, if they had a high paying job, they will get substantially more. What I find very interesting is that many of these people now qualify for special status in at least 2 catagories: homeless and disabled, allowing their wait for housing (a 1BR apt to themself) to be shortened…not sure but think less than a year. They would pay $225 for an apartment that runs over $1,000 and would still have $525/month cash to get by on. Many are very interested in this and go for it. But there are also many who are addicted to drugs and refuse to go for that because they would prefer to have the extra $225/month for drugs and continue to live in the homeless shelter rather than having a nice $1,000- $1,150 (Boston, MA rents are on the high side compared to country wide is my understanding- these would be the cheapest available) a month apartment which they would only have to pay $225 to live in. So they go on, month after month, year after year, living in homeless shelters and jail spending the $750 within the first 5 days of the month and then beg, borrow, and steal the rest of the month to get money for drugs. It’s a sad situation and since the cash is from an entitlement program that won’t be held back as an incentive for them to get treatment for drug addiction, since their are ‘wet’ shelters (people can come in as drunk or high as they want, they just have to be able to make it to their bed and there is no time limit on staying and no requirements like even making their bed or flushing the toilet after themselves… let alone being polite, volunteering to clean the shelter, whatever…go to job training…

I think it’s very sad, enabling terribly destructive behavior when people in those circumstances are supposed to be ‘getting help’. And as each month, each year passes, any potential habilitation is going to be more difficult. After about a decade or so it will be next to impossible, depending on their age.

 

[Julia_Mae]

… well, I guess there’s no reason to continue here because you’re a hopeless cause.

Nice. Very “charitable” and Catholic. Am I supposed to respond with an insult in return? Perhaps flood the thread with complex formulas trying to show how dumb you are? Wait…

Why do you think banks were being reckless with people’s money after Glass was repealed?

Do you have any idea what Glass did and what it stopped doing? And why no terribly erudite response to the fact that the bankers withdrew about a third of our money from circulation? Srsly, you think you need a more complex smoking gun for a depression?

I believe I’ll be agreeing at least with your adjective. Sorry I bothered.

 

[fakename]

I disagree. People have free will and it is dignified to use one’s own judgement to make decisions as to where you will work and how much money you will accept (or turn down the job).

There is a phrase I have heard before, one I am fond of. It is: “The dignity of work”. People who collect welfare (in one or more of it’s various forms), and do so where they collect much more in cash and other goods and services, are missing out on the dignity of work. They are not feeling that dignity, and are disconnected from those in society who do work and experience the dignity of work. The government is the culprit denying these people the dignity of work by having ‘entitlement’ programs where people get money and or goods/services and are ‘entitled’ to them. There is no incentive for them to work towards achieving the dignity of work. Quite the contrary, there are DIS-incentives, working to steer them clear of seeking and finding employment.

I have a question: If one is capable of working, but is living off of other people’s money via taxes, are they living with dignity? What if they go around with an attitude of entitlement, complaining they don’t get enough and should get more? I wonder if they would experience more dignity if they did some sort of volunteer work for the community as a condition of receiving a free living from taxpayers? I wonder if more people would think of them as poeple with dignity than the way that people think of them now.

Well you have a point as far as (barring certain circumstances) people should perform some labor when they are living off of taxes (of course that is not to say that aristocrats or clergy don’t labor).

But I think that dignity, in the moral sense, is determined by more things than just the exercise of one’s power (for instance, through some laborious occupation). Dignity comes from exercising power for the sake of a worthy end and in a way that allows you to not forgo a greater end.

 

[Bill_7154]

Well you have a point as far as (barring certain circumstances) people should perform some labor when they are living off of taxes (of course that is not to say that aristocrats or clergy don’t labor).

But I think that dignity, in the moral sense, is determined by more things than just the exercise of one’s power (for instance, through some laborious occupation). Dignity comes from exercising power for the sake of a worthy end and in a way that allows you to not forgo a greater end.

Would you feel as dignity if you lived off of someone else? Assuming you work for a living, and have done so for many years, would you feel the same sense of dignity and self worth if you lived off of the hand outs from others for the rest of your days and didn’t reciprocate in some way in return?

 

[JIB]

Nice. Very “charitable” and Catholic. Am I supposed to respond with an insult in return? Perhaps flood the thread with complex formulas trying to show how dumb you are? Wait…

Do you have any idea what Glass did and what it stopped doing? And why no terribly erudite response to the fact that the bankers withdrew about a third of our money from circulation? Srsly, you think you need a more complex smoking gun for a depression?

I believe I’ll be agreeing at least with your adjective. Sorry I bothered.

Repealing Glass-Steagall allowed one holding company to act as both a commercial bank and an investment bank.

However, most of the banks that were in trouble several years ago were not in trouble due to the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Bear Sterns was did not go under because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall. It was an investment bank that did not get into the commercial banking business.

AIG was an insurance company. So it had nothing to do with Glass-Steagall either.

Wachovia got into trouble due to home loans, not investment banking. Same for WaMu.

I’m not actually trying to change your mind, but I hope anyone reading these posts doesn’t come to the conclusion that repealing Glass-Steagall was the reason we’re in the mess we’re in. It wasn’t. I think I’ve given some fairly decent evidence to prove my point.

 

[fakename]

Would you feel as dignity if you lived off of someone else? Assuming you work for a living, and have done so for many years, would you feel the same sense of dignity and self worth if you lived off of the hand outs from others for the rest of your days and didn’t reciprocate in some way in return?

It ,depends on what you mean by not reciprocating. Obviously you should reciprocate in some way, perhaps not even equally though. But I can see that a person retains their dignity if they cannot at all reciprocate their benefactors. For instance, if someone is really poor then there is no need to reciprocate since they are simply getting what is theirs to begin with. Also, the state which to some degree lives off of taxes, doesn’t have to reciprocate since it is also getting what is its own (of course to the extent that it needs to do good in order to get taxes then yes it does need reciprocate).

So if I were these people then I would necessarily feel like I needed to reciprocate in the sense that two equals reciprocate each other. But I would feel the need to reciprocate in that a superior must serve his inferiors in order to be worthy of having their property.

 

[Bill_7154]

It ,depends on what you mean by not reciprocating. Obviously you should reciprocate in some way, perhaps not even equally though. But I can see that a person retains their dignity if they cannot at all reciprocate their benefactors. For instance, if someone is really poor then there is no need to reciprocate since they are simply getting what is theirs to begin with. Also, the state which to some degree lives off of taxes, doesn’t have to reciprocate since it is also getting what is its own (of course to the extent that it needs to do good in order to get taxes then yes it does need reciprocate).

We simply have fundamental disagreements here. Part of my life experiece comes with it being poor, being mentally ill, living in homelesss shelters, etc. Not only that, but I work full time with the poor and have for the past 2 decades. Does any of your life experience come with such difficulties and challenges? I’m curious.

 

[fakename]

We simply have fundamental disagreements here. Part of my life experiece comes with it being poor, being mentally ill, living in homelesss shelters, etc. Not only that, but I work full time with the poor and have for the past 2 decades. Does any of your life experience come with such difficulties and challenges? I’m curious.

No.

 

[Bill_7154]

No.

Do you find it at all curious, why someone like me who was severely abused and neglected and wound up turing to a homeless shelter for help in learning how to live… and who was directed toward ‘getting on the dole’ as most homeless are directed to do…hold the views that I have re: giving something back?

And this includes the chronically mentally ill who live in group homes. I work with these people and have for the past couple of decades (as well as many other groups of the ‘most needy’).

It is because I believe that it HELPS THEM. In fact I KNOW it does. I have seen it in action, and implemented it in my work for many years. There are exceptions to every rule, but by and large people who are struggling and desperate, who learn to find value in helping another, improve themselves.

My motives have nothing to do with making poor people pay into the system because they have been taking from the system. NOTHING to do with that. What it has to do with is habilitation. One man helping another, forming a chain of men all working together for the common good of helping the group.

 

[ringil]

Social class is proper station in life. More precisely, from what I’ve read, “proper station” is both objective and subjective-relative. The relative part is defined as how people see you and how you feel you are seen by others. It may be summed up in what I think most people call “pride” or “dignity” (for when someone apparently acts beneath their station others will say “have some dignity” or when someone says that their pay is “beneath them” what they refer to as their standard is their “pride” or “dignity”). So dignity is something that is a relation between others and yourself. From whence it follows that it damages someone’s pride if they alone are reduced but it damages it less when themselves and everyone else is reduced in dignity.

The second part of dignity and pride is the objective part, for when someone is a hero he is necessarily honored with greater dignity and if someone is a monk, it doesn’t matter that he lacks worldly goods, he still has greater dignity than a non-monk and this is because of his virtue. Also, whatever is nobler is given more dignity for the wise men are more admired then the manual workmen because of their respective objects; philosophy is more human and leisurely than plumbing.

So a proper balance b/t these two parts creates an effect which is called “becoming”.

But the market, let us assume, by allowing people to be fired and hired at any price essentially destroys the whole concept of dignity because the market assumes that there is no price at which a person would not accept work because it is beneath him. Hence dignity is sacrificed for trifling amounts of money. From this POV we must ask how we can theoretically square the market with the concept of social honor.

Your post is utter bunk.

 

[fakename]

Do you find it at all curious, why someone like me who was severely abused and neglected and wound up turing to a homeless shelter for help in learning how to live… and who was directed toward ‘getting on the dole’ as most homeless are directed to do…hold the views that I have re: giving something back?

And this includes the chronically mentally ill who live in group homes. I work with these people and have for the past couple of decades (as well as many other groups of the ‘most needy’).

It is because I believe that it HELPS THEM. In fact I KNOW it does. I have seen it in action, and implemented it in my work for many years. There are exceptions to every rule, but by and large people who are struggling and desperate, who learn to find value in helping another, improve themselves.

My motives have nothing to do with making poor people pay into the system because they have been taking from the system. NOTHING to do with that. What it has to do with is habilitation. One man helping another, forming a chain of men all working together for the common good of helping the group.

Well if that’s your experience I’ll defer to it somewhat.

 

[Graubo3]

Yup, that’s the party line. Of every party. Of course, raising the minimum wage has never actually* had* any of these consequences. But people do keep repeating the arguments as if they were backed up by hard data.

Funny, there is hard data but you didn’t see or hear the tree fall or MSM doesn’t speak of it.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574402820278669840.html

 

[Bill_7154]

Well if that’s your experience I’ll defer to it somewhat.

I sincerely appreciate you being open minded on the subject. I do the work I do because…but there for the grace of God go I. And my life is a struggle. I am a working poor person. But I am greatful that I got out of the system before it got it’s clutches on me. If I were raised in a home where my parents were living off of the goverment I am pretty positive I wouldn’t have sought to habilitate myself and would have jumped on the system myself.

Sometimes people are too caught up in their own problems to see any way out. But if you show them someone worse off than themselves, and give/direct them towards helping that person, even in a very small way, it can be a way out of the darkness that they know as their life.

It’s how societies functioned in the early days of the human race. Everyone had some role to play. Some came with higher status than others. And in the European model of working with the mentally ill they find that it is key for the person to have some role in society in order for them to get better. The role that our mentally ill have in the usa is being ‘sick and helpless’, being a full-time, professional patient. Thankfully this is beginning to change.

I have heard it said, words to the effect of… if your in a cancer ward and one patient is talking to the other they may talk of themselves as having colon cancer.

In a psychiatric ward people talk of themselves as ‘being’ schizophrenic.

People in cancer wards don’t talk of themselves as ‘being’ a cancerous spleen.

It’s a mindset that is instilled in people where they view themselves as their illness. They need to recognize they are human beings with many potential different roles, who may happen to also have a mental illness. By helping others, by adopting different roles in society, by doing for themselves and others they grow to be more than their illness in their own minds and hearts. This is a good thing.