I Cringe When I Hear The Term "living Wage."

[arfink]

I'm sure you posted this while my post was still in the works, but the problem is that you're assuming this restaurant is highly profitable with those $5 daily wages rather than scraping by. Paying real adult salaries may cause expenses to be higher than revenue, which would force a price increase on goods/services which may cause customer decline which puts the business back in the position of higher expenses than revenue.

 

Your $5 daily example is a bit extreme, but the same could be said with $7.25 hourly wages with no benefit package (a subway or mcdonald's family owned franchise, mom and pop grocery store/restaurant/retail store).

 

I feel real bad for businesses that need labor that cheap to keep their model going. And I also feel very bad that a large portion of our economy needs to be based on such businesses.

[Aloysius]

models like subway do not need labor that cheap to keep their business models going.  their business models work just fine in countries where minimum wage is much higher.  Belgium's minimum wage is over 9 euros ($12.25), and I can eat there all the time no problem, they're earning their money.  actually if I think about it, from anectdotal experience alone, I think I generally pay about a single hours worth of minimum wage to get a footlong meal in the US, and about a euro less than their minimum wage for a footlong meal here... lol... that doesn't really prove anything though does it.

 

$5 per day is definitely an extreme example, I took it ad absurdum to illustrate the point.  I really intended that as an aside to point out that there is a problem if we have a system in which adults who do need to provide for their subsistence are displaced from jobs by a workforce full of people who are dependents and who do not need to provide for their subsistence.  of course there are jobs in which it makes sense to have underage people who are dependents working... but there must be a balance that ensures we're not displacing potential jobs from people who have subsistence obligations by exploiting those who don't at minimum cost.  the point is that if there is someone who is a dependent just getting a summer job during high school, you should certainly be able to pay them less, but that you can't allow that to be done at the expense of those who do have subsistence obligations being able to get jobs.

[NotreDame]

 

NotreDame,

"neoliberal" is a term commonly used outside of the USA to refer to all unregulated free-market-absolutism doctrines.

 it's used throughout Europe and the popes would certainly be familiar with it and use it in that way.  

 

I apologize if it seems like I'm projecting again, but it shouldn't be insulting because the term is entirely synonymous with American Libertarianism/Conservativism... if you do not identify your ideology as either of those terms then perhaps I have gotten the wrong impression from you... at this point it's probably not as much projection as it would be confusing your position for Pliny's, since you're both my sparring partners in this thread.

 

Google "neoliberal."  It does not mean exactly what you think it means... 

 

As for this...

 

"I realize you have a deeply ingrained economic ideology that seems like a kind of "natural" economics to you (which is what is called "neoliberalism""

 

You are saying this shouldn't be insulting?  Telling someone that they have a "deeply ingrained ideology" is akin to accusing them of lacking the ability to be objective or - at an extreme - to think for themselves... You don't see how that would be insulting to anyone?

 

And I do believe the Austrians have it right in terms of the business cycle, but adhering to an economic theory is different than an ideology.  You understand that, right? 

[Slappo]

I feel real bad for businesses that need labor that cheap to keep their model going. And I also feel very bad that a large portion of our economy needs to be based on such businesses.

Really arfink this is just riddled with ignorance about the dynamics of different businesses.

 

A mom and pop small town grocery store may have minimum wage bag boys (or girls to be PC) that provide extra services to the stores patrons by speeding up the checkout process and being able to carry groceries out to someones vehicle for them. That service can't be offered if the employer has to pay the bagger $10 an hour with health insurance and paid sick leave as the service doesn't generate enough extra business to support those personal services costs. That service may generate enough extra business to pay $7.25 an hour with no benefits package though.

 

The store could either drop the position because they can't afford a just wage for an adult, or they could retain the position and pay a high school kid minimum wage so he can save up for that new bike he wants or take his girlfriend to the movies. That's just the reality of the value of the service and doesn't even have to do with a business keeping the model going or the particular economical situation of our country.

[NotreDame]

I feel real bad for businesses that need labor that cheap to keep their model going. And I also feel very bad that a large portion of our economy needs to be based on such businesses.

 

yeah, this is pretty silly.  You just insulted every place I ever worked until the age of 21, which is a long time considering I worked non-stop from the age of 12.
 

Edited February 13, 2014 by NotreDame

[Slappo]

I'm jumping all over the place with my examples and I have to study, so I'm bowing out as I can't commit to intelligent arguments right now.

 

I don't disagree with the concept of everyone being able to make enough to provide for their families, but there's not some simple solution, and I think we have to be extremely careful laying blame on who or what is at fault for this. Part of it is our own sinfulness and imprudence. People make really REALLY bad financial decisions that can have life long impacts. Ideally everyone would be financially savvy to be able to spend and invest wisely, but the reality is there are people who are not smart enough to understand finances, or are mentally disabled, or have fallen into drug/alcohol/sexual addictions, or are prideful, greedy, stubborn, lazy etc... it makes any solution impossible. Literally. Jesus said that we will always have the poor. We should work as hard as we can to prevent there from being poor, but there is no solution that we can actually achieve with the fallen nature of man.

[Aloysius]

ND, all economic theories/systems are ideologies.  we all have ideologies.  I have my own deeply engrained ideology.  doesn't mean I can't think critically about it, nor does it mean you can't.  failing to recognize that all theories/systems of economics are ideological makes one presume that their theory is "natural".  I wish you'd spare me your taking offense here, nothing was intended as insulting... a good manly debate should be direct and confrontational, feel free to call me out and accuse me of some deeply ingrained ideology that is skewing my interpretation if you think I am reading any quote with a bias.  I googled the term neoliberal just to humor you, as I see it, it means exactly what I said it means, and it is indeed rather synonymous with US conservative free market ideologies (or should I call them "economic theories"?) as it is used in Europe, etc, though of course there are disputes and arguments out there about what it really means.  if you'd prefer I not use the term to apply to your ideology (or theory) I will stop.

 

slappo, of course there is no solution.  my proposition is merely to state that it is unjust if people are unable to work to obtain their subsistence and that we should enforce justice--there is no perfect solution.  there are many things that could help IMO, we can't just say don't do anything just because nothing will make a perfect system.  the injustice is systemic... though there are definitely and without question particular situations in which one could indeed assign blame to greedy individuals or corporations.

[NotreDame]

ND, all economic theories/systems are ideologies.

 

No they aren't... those three things (theories, systems, and ideologies) are each distinct in very important ways:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ideology
 

 

[Aloysius]

there is plenty of work done showing that explanatory models are in themselves ideological... but there's a huge debate that rages about all that, and we can only settle so many things in a single thread, so perhaps we can agree to disagree on that point.  Personally I do believe that explanatory models themselves are inherently ideological as well, and perhaps our divergence in the use of those terms contributed to the offense between us.

 

anyway I was just getting ready to go to class and was thinking about it, and I probably dug my heels in far too adversarially from the beginning of entering this thread, as it was mostly my intention to establish "living wages" as a principle of Catholic social justice doctrines and leave it to you to contend with how to fit that into your systems, as the Church does not say that there is only one system that would be best.  

 

ultimately we seem to have come to the point that the principle of subsistence wages in Catholic social justice is what justifies social safety nets making up for people who can't afford basic levels of subsistence... I'd like to explore whether the folks here do indeed agree on that point because that'd be a fine application of Catholic social justice in which one could indeed argue against raising the minimum wage, so long as one also argued for that.  

 

ultimately I do look forward to hearing your thoughts on some of these encyclicals you are reading and hope that they are edifying for you, and I apologize for any labels you felt were inaccurate or rash judgments or presumptions about your biases... was caught up in the midst of the debate perhaps.  let's all beat up on Hasan in some other thread together some time.

 

anyway, we should let the free market decide, so if you have liked my contributions to this thread so far, please send doge coins to: 
D7oxTvNUmE37Yh7TJyJkMsxCrVdeUWkdwY

[attachment=3255:dogecoin.jpg]

:P

[NotreDame]

anyway I was just getting ready to go to class and was thinking about it, and I probably dug my heels in far too adversarially from the beginning of entering this thread, as it was mostly my intention to establish "living wages" as a principle of Catholic social justice doctrines and leave it to you to contend with how to fit that into your systems, as the Church does not say that there is only one system that would be best.  

 

ultimately we seem to have come to the point that the principle of subsistence wages in Catholic social justice is what justifies social safety nets making up for people who can't afford basic levels of subsistence... I'd like to explore whether the folks here do indeed agree on that point because that'd be a fine application of Catholic social justice in which one could indeed argue against raising the minimum wage, so long as one also argued for that. 

 

Well, this is why I was trying to get anyone here to actually define a living wage and show where that was explicitly part of Church teaching... 

 

Because if a living wage is catholic doctrine, period, which is what I interpreted you as saying for most of the thread, then subsidizing below subsistence wages with social safety nets is not ok, because it would not be a living wage and it would be immoral. 

 

But here you are saying that paying below-subsistence wages is a fine application of Catholic social justice if it's combined with social subsidies, which seems to contradict what you said earlier. 
 

[Aloysius]

a living wage is Catholic social teaching in the sense that any system in which people are not capable of obtaining a living wage is unjust.  justice demands a living wage.  the fact that the state must supplement people up to the level of their subsistence even though they are working is a reflection of that injustice.  we should work to make it less necessary for the state to have to correct that injustice by working on trying to make it so that people are able to obtain their basic level of necessary subsistence at least when they are willing to work.

 

personally I don't think I've contradicted myself, but I'm happy to agree here if we've come to a point of agreement.  the point is that justice demands living/subsistence/family wages... because in Catholic moral usage, people have rights to the means by which to fulfill their duties, so if they have duties to provide subsistence to their family, they have a right to access to such; any system or situation in which people find it not possible to do so is unjust.

[4588686]

NO NO NO

 

This makes me want to cry.

 

Whenever someone is knocked out of a job, that frees him to be in the labor pool for other employers to bid on his services.

 

 

 

In your view of the labor market do employers really 'bid' on workers?  I think that you are taking some models that are taught in Econ 101 that just really don't hold up when you get into the nitty-gritty of the economic research.  

[NotreDame]

the fact of the matter is, we could eliminate TONS of "jobs" from our economy and be no worse off for it except insofar as the system we have CONSTRUCTED would still operate.  we choose to have a consumerist economy in which there are a lot of rather useless jobs feeding a bunch of other rather useless jobs that from a certain broad perspective are just as useless as a government hiring people to dig holes and then hiring people to fill them.  I'm not proposing a solution to that, but the system itself is flawed and unjust when people cannot work for a wage that earns their subsistence.  that's unjust.  would a higher minimum wage fix that?  argue your case that it won't, but don't tell me the other situation is not unjust.  because it is.  and it cries out to heaven for vengeance against the greedy of the world who benefit from it.

 

a "living wage" related to Catholic doctrine is a subsistence wage... that kid mowing your lawn is getting his subsistence just fine.

 

there are enough resources for everyone to live and eat comfortably on our "desert island"--that's the accurate picture of the earth.  so we ought to have a system in which everyone willing to work can get their subsistence.  the freedom to make contracts is subservient to the natural law, as the Compendium on Social Doctrine points out.  how is that system best organized?  I couldn't tell you.  I could tell that the system we have now is not "natural"--that it is based on artificial constructs that do not need to be this way.  I could agree with Hasan that there is no such thing as market forces that can be studied like physicists study gravity.... but ultimately, the point is that a just wage is a subsistence wage--make it happen.  you want it to happen through free markets, fine, but something somewhere needs to make sure that Betty Sue Singlemom can work 40 hours a week and she and her children will be able to live on it.  that's a living wage.  that's justice, according to Catholic social teaching.  justice according to Catholic teaching and justice according to neoliberal economics, however, are two entirely separate things.

 

you can rail against government waste all you want, you can say we'll have more people getting living wages if we got rid of the minimum wage altogether, and then people would argue against you surely.  but as a Catholic you can't say it's okay that people willing to work can't make their subsistence, you can't say that's not unjust--it definitely is.

 

the idea of a living wage does not say that is unjust... at least not a Catholic idea of a living wage, which is often referred to as a "subsistence wage" or a "family wage"... the point is that if someone is working they must be capable of providing for their subsistence.  to hire someone at less than the wage that would be required for them to meet their subsistence obligations is unjust... though generally we might say that the system in which that can happen is unjust rather than specifically the employer himself doing something sinful or unjust (though he could be doing so, he is not necessarily doing so, especially if he himself is just trying to fulfill his obligations and provide for the well being of his family and cannot afford to pay more than that... but a system in which jobs that would pay people less than they are capable of subsisting on are the only things available to some people is definitively unjust)

 

living wage/subsistence wage/family wage is defined.  just because there's not a universal number for it doesn't mean that it is not.  one could dehumanize the whole thing and complain about whether the living wage included modern technological comfort, or one could take the Popes and the social magisterium for what they actually say and recognize that a living wage is based upon the basic duties (and therefore rights to the means by which they can fulfill those duties, in thomistic terms, as the Popes since Leo XIII have applied the term) of people as well as their inherent dignity as an end in and of themselves, and not as something that can be morally used by others as a means to an end.

 

 

Free market economics is not synonymous with Catholicism. The fact that some Catholics adhere to the former is an unfortunate by product of union between the Church and so called right-wing/conservative/republican factions in order to preserve proper moral and social teachings.

 

For all you conservative party Catholics, keep in mind that defrauding the laboring and not providing a just wage is ALSO a SIN that cries out to heaven, and not merely sodomy.

 

That everyone should have access to a job that can support themselves/ their family isn't optional, it's Catholic doctrine.  HOW that happens is up for a question, but you should not cringe at the term "living wage"--because as Catholics we believe everyone who is willing to work SHOULD get a living wage.  work it into your political ideology however you like, Leo XIII insisted it should be enforced by unions, guilds, etc, protected in their existence by the state but providing a means to avoid necessitating state interference.  by the time we get to John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, the suggestions tend to be more along the line of some increased regulation by governments to make it happen.  the one thing that is consistent is that it OUGHT to happen and that it is UNJUST when it doesn't.  When someone is willing to work and they are unable to earn the amount that they and their families need to live on (ie a "living wage") it is unjust.  in fact, Leo XIII referenced "depriving workers of their just wages" as "one of the sins that cry out to heaven for VENGEANCE" when he talked about how people were not getting a living wage for their work.

 

So at various points above you say multiple times that it is unjust when someone who needs X amount to live and can't go get a job that pays X.

 

Mortify calls this a SIN, implying that the employer would be culpable.  You say this only one or two places aloysius, maybe the last place it's unintentional because you are quoting Leo XIII, so I won't hold you to the idea that an employer offer less than X is always committing a sin - but you can see where I'd be confused and have trouble answer what you believed if I was asked "is this employer committing a sin or is this simply a case of broader injustice?"

 

anyway I was just getting ready to go to class and was thinking about it, and I probably dug my heels in far too adversarially from the beginning of entering this thread, as it was mostly my intention to establish "living wages" as a principle of Catholic social justice doctrines and leave it to you to contend with how to fit that into your systems, as the Church does not say that there is only one system that would be best.  

 

ultimately we seem to have come to the point that the principle of subsistence wages in Catholic social justice is what justifies social safety nets making up for people who can't afford basic levels of subsistence... I'd like to explore whether the folks here do indeed agree on that point because that'd be a fine application of Catholic social justice in which one could indeed argue against raising the minimum wage, so long as one also argued for that.  

 

Now here you are above saying that it would be a fine application of social justice if someone wasn't paid subsistence wages as long as it were made up by social welfare, which implies that it's just, but then I now notice in your later posts that you are backtracking on this a bit saying "the fact that the state must supplement people up to the level of their subsistence even though they are working is a reflection of that injustice"

 

So did you contradict yourself?  Honestly, I don't know at this point because it's not clear to me what you believe catholic doctrine actually is.  I do think you've contradicted yourself in words, but perhaps not in intent - if only because you are comfortable applying much more fluid meaning to words than I am.

 

I will say that I genuinely don't think you guys actually understand this doctrine, at least not well enough to communicate it to others.  I also think that there's a degree of fluidity to your point of view that would be consistent more with opinion than church doctrine. 

 

If we were just arguing economics or leg-shaving, all of this would be ok, but when you get to the subject of church doctrine it needs to be dealt with a little more reverently - at least that's my opinion.

 

As far as this thread goes, I think at this point it's lost any instructive value, which it should have if it's going to be talking about doctrine.  I do promise that I will finish reading the encyclicals and in the next few months I'll post on them, explaining why I am currently finding them consistent with most (but not all) "conservative" or "neoliberal" theories, ideologies, and systems.

 

I will say that I agree with Mortify that Catholiciscm is not synonymous with these ideologies.   I personally don't think my faith is synonymous with any economic or politicial ideology.  I take Christ quite literally when he said that His Kingdom is not of this world and to give to caesar what is caesar's and God what is God's. 

 

My personal view is that since this is a fallen world with fallen men, no human ideology will deliver any sort of utopia.  After all, that's the trap of the Marxists (which is a theory/ideology/system that the church does explicitly condemn.)   I think there are some theories that are more accurate than others.  I think there are some ideologies and systems that would be more likely to lead to a free and just society or to one where there was a higher availability of gainful employment, but none would be perfect or permanent.  

[Aloysius]

well it can be a sin not to provide a living wage, as justice demands... but it can certainly be instead the result of a broader injustice, and this certainly doesn't imply that employers have to base people's salaries on how large their families are.

 

I can't say I explain it perfectly, but I also don't think I entirely deserve the blame for you not understanding the way I explained it, as it is quite straight forward (though you insist upon making certain distinctions that are generally not made in the Church's teaching on the subject, and therefore finding yourself lost when what I have argued doesn't answer those), it comes from the difference between mindsets relating to the economy, and I am squarely representing the mindset that the Popes have favored, found in writings such as those of Heinrich Pesch and his students who were hugely influential in the solidarist economics of the popes... I think my statements you've quoted, as well as mortify's, are all entirely and perfectly consistent with each other.  the state intervenes to correct injustice, but a just system would be one in which living wages happen.  if it is necessary for the state to intervene, that means there is an injustice.  if an employer is capable of paying those people the living wages that are justly due them for their work, as Catholic social teaching specifies that a just wage is a subsistence wage, and they do not do so, then that employer is committing a sin by using people as a means to an end rather than treating them with their human dignity as ends in themselves.  I think the confusion came when you misread me before when I said that was a fine application of Catholic social justice principles, as you thought I was saying that the fact of there not being a living wage in the first place wasn't unjust.  if there is a murder, it justifies the state intervening to take the murderer off the streets--the murder was unjust, the state intervening was the state enforcing justice.  in the same way if there is someone working who cannot make their subsistence, the state intervenes to enforce justice by ensuring they receive their subsistence.

[NotreDame]

Well, again, in my opinion, the confidence you have in your position is not proportional to the clarity of your position, nor the support you've referenced for your position.  Your latest post is in my view an example of this.  

 

I will start a thread on this subject in the future, but - as I alluded to earlier - largely because of what I view as the fluidity in your views and opinions, I don't see how further conversation in this thread would help in clarifying anything or be instructive in any way.