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RE: Minimum Wages - To be or not to be...
I disagree in general. A lot of the arguments that you offer against a minimum wage are the very ones that employers offer when it's suggested. Mainly to avoid losing any profits. The average company make profit. If they don't they don't last long. They will do and say anything to protect their profit. Importantly profit is what is left after loans are repaid, r&d is done and maintenance costs. Profit is the money that is paid out to investors and shareholders to do with as they please.
People have a right to earn enough to live on. Employers will pay add little as they can get away with.
But, please don't be offended by my differing view after all if we all thought the same then the world would be a dull place!
Thanks for the feedback. But you have to employ fundamentals of understanding freedom and morality in order to understand the points objectively.
Using coercive governmental authoritarian control over our lives is not valid. Just because things are not "fair" is not a reason to engage in immoral conduct to try to correct it. I even mention that just because some big corps reap profits at the expense of employees, doesn't justify using immoral methodologies to force them to be more fair, and how it also hurts small businesses. People have the right to agree to work to be paid. They have freedom of choice. They agree to contracts. You seem to miss the whole point of the post. Especially how having a job is better than not having a job, no matter how little it provides you with an income, it's your choice to work or not and not survive.
Thing's aren't fair. We can correct things fairly if fair people create businesses and people go work for them, making their business a larger success, rather than working for the unfair employers. It's still freedom. I like cooperatives. It's up to us to fix our way of life by making alternatives that outcompete the unfair ways of life. But not use immoral justifications to make things "fair". The ends don't justify the means. The means are the end. Just because greedy selfish people use these points to continue to do what they do, doesn't negate or invalidate their validity and truth.
So what are you suggesting @meesterboom ? That a third party get involved in the agreement between two people and FORCE the company to pay the worker more, even though he/she may not be deserving of it? A company (no matter what company) should be free to pay what they want to pay. And the worker should be free to agree to whatever wage is offered. To force a person to pay what he doesn't want to pay is immoral. Curious to hear your thoughts.
Well there are two issues there. I am firmly of the opinion that if a person is not deserving of the wage that they are paid then they should be let go. Work is not charity, I am no bleeding heart in that respect. On the other hand I do believe that a company should pay a wage that it is reasonable that someone should be able to live on. If you let them they will happily pay peanuts and often way less than a particular job may be worth. I say this because i live in a country that implemented such a thing and it has worked well for pulling people out of poverty. If people want to work then surely it is only right that there is some kind of minimum that is deemed proper? In fact in my country we are now taking about implementing a "living" wage which goes beyond the minimum wage.
It's controversial certainly but in my view and I am not trying to force that view on anyone we shouldn't pretend that companies care for anything other than their bottom line. Why not force them? Poverty affects us all in different ways, even if you have a high paid job the impact of poverty on society impacts you. It may be seen as immoral to force a company to pay more than they want to but isn't it immoral to pay someone so little that they have to work 2 maybe 3 jobs? Some people, again through poverty do not have the options that some of us do. Anyway, I apologise, I am starting to sound like some kind of hippy which I blame firmly on the whisky. :0)