MINIMUM WAGE & ECONOMICS: AN ESSAY
By
Edward E. Rochon
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Minimum Wage & Economics: An Essay
Copyright © 2013 by Edward E. Rochon
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Some Other Works by the Author
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Jodie Foster Angst
Sex, Pain and Ethics: An Essay
Sex Wars
Super Intelligence: An Essay
Mechanical Acting: An Essay
Golden Age Essays
Reading Material
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Preface
Chapter 1: Pseudo-Science
Chapter 2: Fundamental Law of Property
Chapter 3: Minimum Wage Resolution
Chapter 4: Final Words
About the Author
Preface
The tiresome drone of economic ideologues buzzes in the ear decade after decade, spewing the various versions of their particular swindles. One of these droning arguments involves minimum wage. The capitalist seeks the ideal wage and ideal price for everything. Since these ideologues have abstracted ethics and compassion from the affairs of business, the ideal price for anything is zero when he is the purchaser, and all the money in the world when he is the seller. The skeptic might say that the same holds true for the laborer, who wants as much as he can get for his labor irrespective of any means of establishing its true worth. Moreover, he may punch out his coworkers when they were absent in exchange for reciprocal services on his behalf. And to be sure, the drone word of 'freedom' along with its co-conspirator word, rights, gets bandied around.
This essay offers a solution to this problem that will address both parties' grievances. Some preliminary comments need to be addressed before my minimum wage proposal is laid out. Back to Table of Content
Chapter 1: Pseudo-Science
Economics is a pseudo-science. This is as plain as the nose on your face. Economics is a liberal art to use the term for branches of knowledge other than the sciences. While the human body has minimum requirements for survival within a range around a statistical mean, supply and demand have so many irrational determining factors (whims, wars, unpredictable natural calamities, social strife and its irrational complexities, crime, conspiracies, greed) that this seesaw dance of supply and demand is outside the realm of reason. Add to this the demands of elementary justice waging war against criminal greed for money, power, sex and the rest, and so science flies out the classroom window. Idiots such as Isaac Asimov, Karl Marx and Milton Friedman can fantasize, philosophize and 'statistisize' about social determinism until hell freezes over and nothing will change. As for God, we can be confident statistical analysis has nothing to do with any prophecies he makes. And being God is in an excellent position to make history come out the way he wants. Is that playing fair?
This being said, there can never be a happy state of affairs in society based upon economics. The other factor that prohibits this is that economics is the analysis of proportioning out scarce resources. Scarce invariably means not enough to satisfy demand; this guarantees that no economic solution will resolve the problems of society. The answer to scarcity is plenty, and plenty makes economics moot. The factors involved in generating plenty are the three binary virtues: ethics and wisdom, frugality and bounty, military strength and peaceful behavior. Righteousness without wisdom dies before its time and usually succumbs to corruption. Wisdom without virtue is folly achieved through wiliness, and leads to folly as well as vice without any gain in the end. Knowledge of vice is not wisdom. Frugality increases bounty by eliminating waste, but frugality without bounty leads to death. You save by cutting to the bone and expect to live? Scarcity always leads to quarrels over wealth which leads to social unrest and war. Social unrest and war are waste in its most vicious form. Frugality is fine, but keep looking for a source of income to replace consumption. Pacifism leads to aggression and aids and abets murder. A weak defense encourages theft of wealth. A martial spirit promotes health and integrity. War does not promote these virtues (rather strains them) but martial arts and a sense of duty to defend your home does produce virtue. If you want peace, prepare for war, but this is not enough. You must so deploy your forces and defenses in a manner that dissuades your neighbors from believing you might use your strength to attack them. If you do not do this, the enemy might suppose you intend to attack and strike first in self-defense. You have war in spite of strength and because of your strength. Martial arts are virtuous and a peaceful demeanor is virtuous. Martial arts protect what you have and so is frugal. Peaceful demeanor prevents the waste of war and promotes the general prosperity and bounty. Back to Table of Content
Chapter 2: Fundamental Law of Property
No man, community or nation has any right to impair or prevent another man, community or nation from making an honest living. Property whether private or public cannot be justly used to this end. When it is used toward this end, the property is forfeit and must be equitably redistributed.
With respect to rights, honest men seek truth and justice. Dishonest men, criminals, seek freedom and rights, freedom to steal and rights to hide behind when brought to justice. When freedom is curtailed and the reason for doing so is just, the restricted person(s) have no cause to complain. If freedom is needful and is impaired unjustly, the restricted person(s) have cause to complain, not because of any violation of rights but because of injustice. In a land of justice, rights are superfluous. In a land of injustice, they are a mockery of justice. When a man is being railroaded in court, it does not matter whether his rights are respected. As to a right to a fair trial, what a joke. This is a matter of justice not rights. It is the duty of the prosecution to secure justice, of the judge to uphold justice and of the defendant to demand justice. If the defendant is guilty, he should plead guilty and forgo any so called right to plead innocent. Justice is a duty on all parties and not a right.
To allude to a historical question of rights, Esau's birthright was not a right at all. The Hebrew term, we are told, simply means: that which pertains to the eldest son (in so many words.) As a matter of law, the eldest son received a double portion of the estate upon the passing of the father. Moreover, the law forbids the father from infringing this law. It is a matter of law (unwritten law at the time of Jacob) and not rights. The eldest son may pass his property on during his life to whom he pleases, providing he does not defraud his eldest son in the inheritance after death. But the property passes to the eldest son to pay any debts owed. Jacob, greedy and under the spell of his detestable mother, was not satisfied with this, but stole his brother's blessing as well. Esau was not greedy it seems but resented hardship and deprivation of his father's blessing. Justly, Isaac should have taken back his bequeath but was under the spell of superstition. Clearly what is gained by dishonest means has no force of law. In a like manner, Jacob would have been justified in refusing Leah as his wife. But his uncle had him in a tight spot, so he allowed himself to be cheated just as he cheated his brother. Back to Table of Content
Chapter 3: Minimum Wage Resolution
No honorable prince nor honorable people can tolerate unemployment. There is absolutely no excuse for it. The idea that poverty and debts somehow justify or cause unemployment is absurd. It is greed and malfeasance that cause unemployment. Unemployment makes the worker subject to unfair treatment
at the hands of employers, jobs being scarce. Unemployment leads to cheap labor, relatively increasing the wealth of the rich at the expense of society (and ultimately at the absolute wealth of the rich.) Money is not the ultimate cause of this base behavior but perversion of the soul. To quote the soldier in Stanley Kubrick's film, they are “deviated preverts” who seek to act out their preversions at society's expense. Not happy with democracy, they seek an age of greater ignorance and oppression, of slavery and tighter oligarchic rule. They want to revert to these miserable eras. They like the prior version of society and so are preverts. After all, if jobs are plenty, the maid might repulse her sexual harasser and look for employment elsewhere. If she is raped, she might quit and file charges. If jobs are plentiful and wages high, so much the harder to bribe the police and courts. These people are despicable.
With respect to employment, anyone who works for any reason other than his health or the health of those under his charge is a fool and a threat to himself and society. Therefore, hard work is proscribed, except in cases of desperation. There is no work ethic, and the exultation of hard labor is folly and vice. The only ethical consideration regarding work is that every man should make an honest effort to support himself and the common good. Moreover, hard labor is often used to justify sloth. The worker uses every wile to avoid work to spare himself from being worked into the grave, leaving others to carry the load. From this, sloth is used to justify slavery and forced hard labor. This is cruelty and injustice. Sloth is not and cannot be a justification for slavery. Slavery is not and cannot be a justification for sloth. This is an evil con game.
As to the question of minimum wages, since the employer resists and resents having wages dictated to him on the one hand, and the state cannot be expected to tolerate unemployment and or hard labor for inadequate compensation, the state itself must guarantee the minimum required funds out of tax revenues. This means that the employer will pay what he can afford and the state will make up the difference to meet the minimum wage. If the employer pays $5, the state makes up the difference by supplementing by $3 to meet a wage of $8. Now this is tax money, but the labor force is employed and producing wealth. Ultimately, this produces taxable revenue at an increased level, allowing the state to keep the rate of taxation down by having increased overall revenues from a larger revenue stream. The state can also subsidize benefits when needed.
There should also be an upper maximum minimum wage to account for raises up to a certain level. The reason for this is as follows: If the employer wants to reward a good worker for learning his job well and being productive, he may give him $8 instead of $5/hr. But then the state would remove its subsidy and the employee would derive nothing for his effort, and the employer would reward nothing. By setting a range limit, let's say between $8 and $14, this would mean that the $3 dollar raise would be added to the subsidy of $3. The employee would have a wage of $11. The maximum wage could get out of hand. Beyond a point the state must withdraw subsidies. High wage earners should be exempt from minimum wage subsidies.
This subsidization is done indirectly when government rebates taxation to start-up companies in a community and supplies other forms of infrastructure assistance. Often the company folds or moves once the subsidy ends.
Now what if the employers keep dropping wages toward zero, knowing that the state will pay the minimum? If that is the case, so be it. The state cannot tolerate unemployment. It reduces the tax base, promotes social instability and vice, and is anathema to the personal glory, grandeur and honor of any prince or statesman who tolerates it. Never has any system of compensation existed that has not been corrupted by schemers. You might expect dummy companies that do not perform work and receive kickbacks from workers who give part of their subsidy to the fake employer in exchange for no work and time to work elsewhere. Corruption is corruption and the state must root it out. What else can be said? It is better than letting deviated preverts pervert society. Back to Table of Content
Chapter 4: Final Words
Except in cases where a competent autocrat has managed to seize the reigns of government from corrupt oligarchies for a while, the world has been ruled by these wretched cabals. In my childhood the world was divided between the corrupt oligarchies of communism and the corrupt oligarchies of the pseudo-democracies of the the capitalist world. Under capitalism the poor have available housing that they cannot afford; under socialism they have affordable housing that does not exist (or so substandard as to be little better than the street.) Under capitalism, the workers have available health care that they cannot afford. Under socialism, they have affordable healthcare that is inaccessible or hardly worth having. In both cases, disgruntled citizens can be effectively denied employment, housing, etc. by withholding these for covert or overt unjust reasons.
It should make no difference to the human race whether they are oppressed by an overt oppressive state under socialism or by a covert oppressive state under capitalism. The capitalist government is small but effectively the oligarchs in their clubs corrupt the government, use private agents, etc. to effectively smother the citizenry. It should make no difference to the human race whether they are ruled by an overt plutocracy under capitalism or by a covert plutocracy under socialism. The Communist Party was a cabal who achieved power undemocratically and effectively controlled the wealth of the countries they dominated.
Whether a man is honest or not, has nothing to do with whether he works for the state or a private firm. If he is honest he discharges his duties honestly. The suggestion of lying capitalists and socialist pundits to the contrary does not erase this evident truth. Most men do not care how much money the rich have as long as they are allowed to make an honest living and prosper. Unfortunately, the rich often subvert this and then whine about the consequences that their corrupt behavior produced. Milton Friedman tells us 25% of America became unemployed because the Federal Reserve restricted money supply. What a crock! Friedman also informs us that government regulation always fails because the regulated end up controlling the regulators. Well in that case, laissez-faire capitalism does not work according to its prophet Adam Smith. Smith noted that businesses always seek to control the economic playing field of supply and demand, and advised that the state must intervene to prevent these oligopolies from forming. In point of fact there is no such thing as an economic system that works. People manage to push on in spite of them.
A literary whore such as Ayn Rand sings the glories of robber barons who in fact impeded the prosperity of the United States by stealing the honest labor of the often silent engineers, thinkers and magnates that did produce it. Even Thomas Edison, the vaunted inventor, stole the credit for most of his inventions. And what he did invent, was in the process of being invented should Edison not have invented the little he did. What little talent Rand does have, she prostitutes by extolling parasites into the good graces of society, thugs, swindlers, con men, pseudo-philosophers like herself, traitors and malicious liars. Hold a coin in your hand; heads is Ayn Rand and tails is Lev Trotsky. Turn the coin around; heads is Trotsky and tails is Ayn Rand.
Both of these knaves use the same pseudo-science to support their ridiculous and evil remedies for the salvation of mankind. Shall we be ruled by a corrupt capitalist plutocracy or a corrupt socialist plutocracy to the detriment of the human race? A curse on all these wretched 'isms', political parties, and a curse on Camelot and Thomas Carlyle and their pig great men, frauds and liars hiding behind mendacious pretense. Ayn Rand wouldn't know a great man if she tripped over one. And if Rand and Trotsky found God, they would still be the scoundrels they have always been. After all, atheism is the ultimate religious fraud.
In ending, mankind has never prospered, to whatever extent they might, because of economic systems, but in spite of them. Back to Table of Content
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Other Works by the Author
(Available online)
Elements of Physics: Matter
Elements of Physics: Space br />
Elements of Physics: Time
Unified Field Theory: An Essay
Liar Enigma: An Essay
Golden Age Essays
Golden Age Essays II
Octopus Balls
Mars Squared Equals Earth: An Essay
About the Author
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