[Quote = Futureincoming]
Fantasea quoted: "Well, there are Scenarios and then there are Scenarios.
Can you agree that any Scenario in which population rises in exact synchronization with production-of-goods is perfectly equivalent to the initially static Scenario above? If so, can you then agree that WHENEVER population happens to rise faster than goods-production (regardless of whether the cause be a spurt in population growth or a breakdown in production), then wages tend to suffer and prices tend to rise? Have you noticed the Historical tendency for businesses to seek to monopolize a market, just so goods-production can be restricted to the highest-profit-margin point? And have you noticed that when one company buys out another, the total number of jobs always goes down?"
What I have noticed is that in countries in which people are free to engage in business and commerce with minimal governmental interference and reasonable taxation, the natural economic laws operate to raise the living standards of all who wish to avail themselves of the extant opportunities to participate. Barring disability, those who decide to opt out get exactly that to which they are entitled.
It is the efforts of businesses to expand and prosper which has created the enormous pool of ever better jobs which are available to those who have prepared themselves for them. As has been often observed, “When one door closes, another opens.”
Fantasea wrote: "Irrespective of all you have written, consider this. The number of jobs in the US continues to increase. The living standard in the US continues to increase. The life expectancy in the US continues to increase."
FutureIncoming replies: "How interesting that you chose to begin your remarks with "irrespective", thereby indicating you want to ignore what you quoted, as if no facts were present. Anyway, the US is not a simple Scenario. You are comparing apples and oranges. I will clarify, however the quoted thing I wrote about jobs. I was referring to the total jobs that previously existed within the two companies, before one bought the other. Some of the employees will have to compete for the retained jobs.
The use of the word ‘irrespective” indicates I have noted your comments and consider them to be outweighed by mine.
What you are stating is a basic fact of economics. Progress requires change. Change requires disruption. Disruption can be for better or for worse, depending upon the way it is managed. Businesses come and go.
Well established, well managed, major corporations have been driven out of business by a single incident. Do the names PanAm Airways and TWA ring a bell? Pan Am flight 103, which disintegrated over Lockerbie, Scotland and TWA flight 800 disintegrated off Long Island, New York. Both companies were gone within a year after their “incidents” because the public stopped buying tickets due to a perception that terrorist activity was involved.
In each case, overall air travel did not decrease, the other carriers expanded, hiring from the former Pan Am and TWA employees.
The oil crisis during the Carter Administration decimated the US automobile business and changed forever the retail petroleum industry.
The proliferation of automobiles and the expansion of the federal highway system doomed the railroads.
There are hundreds of similar stories. However, despite all of the economic “horrors”, a line graph of the US economy , the US standard of living, and the US prosperity, from 1940 to the present, while resembling the teeth of a saw, has been pointing ever upward. This is a tribute to American business savvy.
Something you wrote in a prior message, about how a good worker doesn't need a Minimum Wage, doesn't always ring true when the Law of Supply and Demand is added. In the situation where an acquired company dumps some workers, it is easy to think that some of those workers were as competent as the ones who were retained. So, which will the company prefer to keep, when competency is equivalent? Ignoring seniority, the answer is, "the ones who will accept the lesser wage!!!" THAT's what I meant when I wrote (not quoted here) something about how extra people puts pressure on wages, to drop.
In the grand scheme, (an expression I am borrowing) it’s up to workers to prepare themselves, apply themselves diligently and make themselves desirable. If they do, they are either the ones who are retained or who quickly find equal or better employment elsewhere.
We are all acquainted with the type of employee who deserves to be “dumped”.
I should apologize for not mentioning that the Scenarios I described had inflation deliberately excluded from them; I simply forgot to actually say so. Thank you for accepting it as an assumption (by also not saying anything). In the ordinary world, of course, wages don't go down all that often, because of inflation. But if the Scenarios had included inflation, then I would have written something like, "prices would go up at a rate in comparison to which inflating-of-wages is left behind", or "overall buying power goes down".
I don’t believe that prices and wages are the true test. The true test is the standard of living enabled by working. For example, in many countries, one can never improve his standard above subsistence or climb the economic ladder, while in the US, within reason, the limits are self-imposed.
Fantasea wrote: "Two incomes are required to afford two new cars, multiple cell phones, homes, furnishings, clothing, and, in general, a preferred lifestyle far above the basics."
FutureIncoming replies: "Generally true, but that is not what a Minimum Wage is about. It is about the fact that if someone gets a job, the employer generally wants the employee to BE ABLE to show up as scheduled. How is this physically possible if the job pays a wage so low that the basics cannot be met? It seems to me that if {A} "Human Life Is Valuable", then the wage should be able to cover the basics. But if {B} "Human Life is Not Valuable", then the logical things for an employer to do are (1) Pay as tiny a wage as possible, (2) Say to the starving employee who requests a raise, "There's plenty more where YOU came from, who'd be glad to have your job!", and (3) Actively oppose abortion, to help ensure that plenty more people enter the competition for jobs, and allowing continuation of policies (1) and (2).
Guess which of {A} or {B} that employers seem to be seeking to do the most, out there in today's economy.
Are you arguing the case for socialism? It would seem so.
You note that the goal of business is to maximize profits. Paying workers more than their labor is worth would prevent achieving that goal, would discourage investment, and would have the effect of reducing the number of jobs available. What good would that do?
On the other hand, those who wish to improve their worth to an employer and merit greater incomes find it relatively easy to do so.
Minimum wage flies in the face of supply and demand. It is simply a means to enable high school kids to earn some pocket money flipping burgers or packing out grocery shelves, or to for employers to purchase low quality labor from those who cannot or will not offer more. Anyone who believes that the minimum wage should support a family is sorely mistaken.
Suppose, for the moment, that the minimum wage was raised to $20 per hour, roughly $40,000 per year. I contend that there would be two results.
First, now a single wage earner could support a family of four or five.
Second, 90% of the jobs which formerly paid less than that would disappear.
What would be the benefit?