jim rozen wrote:

In article , Pete C. says...

...I expect to be paid a wage that will provide for a standard of
living that I consider to be appropriate for the effort and skills I
bring to the job. ...

Appropriate - based on the job and where it is located, of course.

By 'appropriate' you mean, in line with what other folks doing the
same job, with the same skill set, in the same area, are being paid.

Also how motivated you are to move to another area, where the same
set of conditions results in a higher pay rate.

You just touched on the point I was trying to make. If I were to move to
a different area where the same job would net me an apparent higher
wage, the reality of the situation is that the cost of living in that
area would also be higher so the net result would be the same standard
of living for the same work.


I think the discussion of minimum wages are really a red herring here.
Most of the jobs we're talking about are skilled and have larger pay
rates associated with them. Minimum wage laws are one step short
of welfare rules - designed to see that somebody who works can actually
live on the wage.

Minimum wage laws are nothing more than politicians buying votes. Any
minimum wage increase results in a year or so of phony bubble in the
apparent standard of living while the market forces via inflation
re-balance the economy so that the net result is exactly the same work
to standard of living balance as before. The numbers go up in both the
wage and then cost of living, but the ratio remains the same.


I class them in with child labor laws.

Not even remotely similar.


You can make the same argument with them as with the minimum wage
laws: we should abolish them, it would make more jobs overall and provides
families with income.

The only argument I make minimum wage laws is that they are nothing
more than a political trick to buy votes from the gullible.


An employer might create a job if he could hire a laborer for $1 per hour
instead of being constrained by the $7 min wage rate.

Nope, the employer would simply drop wages for the existing workers to
the lowest level he can get away with. An employer will only create new
jobs when there is additional market for their products or services
*and* they can squeeze no more productivity from their existing workers.

An employer will pay as little as they can while being able to hire
workers who are able to do the job and don't have too high a rate of
turnover. An employer who tries to pay less than the area market demands
for a particular job will suffer with low worker productivity and high
turnover.

Jobs are not ever created simply because an employer can hire more
people for the same money. No business that lasts more than a few months
expands unless there is additional demand for their commodity.

By the same
token he would create a 50 cent per hour job for an 8-year old if
he weren't constrained by the child labor laws.

So we should repeal them, too, right?

An entirely different thing from wages.

Pete C.


Jim

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