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Current Events » in reply to re: What and how much is a living wage...

re: What and how much is a living wage...
Robert — (archived)

While I didn't answer the question in the subject line numerically, by stating some arbitrary dollar amount, I answered it substantively by describing market forces as the mechanism for determining a living wage. The cost of living varies wildly across the country, and national and even state minimum wage laws aren't fine-grained enough to adapt to local conditions.

"There’s a reason why some businesses don’t pay a living standard and I think you know it". Let's not play Battleship here--you can't read my mind and I can't read your mind. I don't know what you think the answer is. I got into this by asserting that a business that can't afford to pay a living wage is a marginal-to-failed business, and that if it weren't for government policies designed to ensure a steady supply of desperate people, those businesses would fail in the natural course of things. The government's propping up crappy businesses by sacrificing 5% of the workforce to keep the other 95% fat dumb and happy (only we're not so fat and happy these days, are we? Ask me about the dumb part after the election.).

Free markets always represent a gamble, and if the labor market were allowed to function without regulation, I'm sure we'd see a mix of positive and negative effects, as with the commercial market. Some labor costs would rise, some would fall. So, "you are just having fun throwing around jibe."...well, sort of, but to make the serious point that it's hypocritical to treat the business market (trade) as sacrosanct, while putting draconian restraints on the labor market by artificially maintaining unemployment. That amounts to rigging the game in favor of business.

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