Minimum Wage Laws

[Anomaly]

[b]71. We therefore consider it Our duty to reaffirm that the remuneration of work is not something that can be left to the laws of the marketplace; nor should it be a decision left to the will of the more powerful. It must be determined in accordance with justice and equity; which means that workers must be paid a wage which allows them to live a truly human life and [u]to fulfill their family obligations [/u]in a worthy manner. O[u]ther factors too enter into the assessment of a just wage: namely, the effective contribution which each individual makes to the economic effort, the financial state of the company for which he works, the requirements of the general good of the particular country—having regard especially to the repercussions on the overall employment of the working force in the country as a whole—and finally the requirements of the common good of the universal family of nations of every kind, both large and small.[/u][/b]


And above is the crux of the contention. If you're going to quote Church Documents, read the whole thing.
1- A just wage is tied with fulfiling family obligations. [i]If you're a teen, a part-timer, etc., working for extra cash, according the Church, you are not entitled to the same pay as someone who is supporting a family.[/i]

2- Other factors are to be considered. A-the effective contribution the individual makes to the economic effort. ([i]poor effort earns poor pay[/i]
) B-The financial state of the economy. ([i]hello[/i]!)
C-effect on the overall emplyment of the workforce. ([i]eliminating jobs for families than need 'supplemntal' income[/i])
D-common good of the family of nations. ([i]artificially high pay in US destroying families in Mexico[/i])

[dairygirl4u2c]

on the point of laws. we make laws when the rights of others are being infringed upon. the basic rights to basic wages is being infringed upon. it's not just the government coming in to randomly impose its arbitrary will on the masses of employers, as if the people are demanding anything unreasonable or unjust- it's not like they're saying "get me a big screen TV punks" etc, it's going back to the fundamentals, only.

----

it seems like it's pretty clear, that the oppositition's primary concern is with 1. interferring with contracts 2. not willig to let even the possibility that someone might not be able to find a job, even if it means so much with others etc

the person who is willingly taking a dollar an hour, is only doing so cause they have no other options. that employers have empiriacally paid only what is required shows that they would pay beans too. and that that's what the vast majority of people on the minimum wage would get.
it might be "freely" entered into, but it's still coersive. perhaps exploitative isn't the right word, i think it is, just as much as coercive is. it's only as free as the coercion that exists there, what a moral system.

i dont see how the second paragraph wouldnt trump the first.. it seems obviously the just and moral thing to require.

[King's Rook's Pawn]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' date='29 October 2009 - 07:13 PM' timestamp='1256854430' post='1993542']on the point of laws. we make laws when the rights of others are being infringed upon. the basic rights to basic wages is being infringed upon.[/quote]

There are no "positive" rights, like the right to be provided given a wage, healthcare, Saturdays off, or whatever. This concept was made up in the ill-named Progressive Era, and its a nonsensical concept. Rights are simply freedoms, based on the individual's sovereign authority over his own mind, his own body, and his own legitimately-obtained property. So to say you have a "right to a basic wage" is simply to say that you have the freedom to have a basic wage, which no one denies. But no one should legally obligated to give you a basic wage, at threat of imprisonment. What defines "basic" anyway? Characteristically, these "positive" rights all come with ambiguous qualifiers: "the right to a [i]reasonable[/i] wage" or "the right to a [i]decent[/i] education." Huh?

[quote]it might be "freely" entered into, but it's still coersive. perhaps exploitative isn't the right word, i think it is, just as much as coercive is. it's only as free as the coercion that exists there, what a moral system.[/quote]

Coercion involves the initiation of violence or fraud. Passively not doing what someone wants, like hiring them or hiring them for a certain wage, [i]may[/i] be uncharitable, but it's not aggressive.

What about self-employed individuals? Many of them struggle to feed their families. Should we mandate that their customers have to pay them above a certain amount for their services, so that they can better support themselves? If we buy a hot dog from a corner vendor, for example, should we be compelled by law to pay him at least seven dollars for it? That we ensure that the vendor would make enough profits to support himself, wouldn't it?

[quote]it seems obviously the just and moral thing to require.[/quote]

It's impossible to "require" such a thing. The more you raise a price floor, the more you create a glut in that sector. Raise the price of labor, create a glut of idle labor (i.e. unemployment). You can't bring about prosperity through fiat.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='rkwright' date='29 October 2009 - 04:14 PM' timestamp='1256850852' post='1993509']
Nihil I'll leave with two parts of John XXIII's encyclical Mater et Magistra. I hope this will help educate on the Church's position on the matter.
[/quote]
Just to clarify, I haven't stated one way or another that minimum wage laws should exist. I'm going to continue to refuse to do so, because I don't consider myself qualified. I'm just addressing a purely economic question, from a purely economic standpoint, morals notwithstanding.

[Aloysius]

rights can indeed be positive; your conception of "rights" is, in fact, an Enlightenment novelty and is alien to the Catholic understanding.

St. Thomas Aquinas held that a right is a moral power to have the means necessary to fulfill a duty, or a moral obligation. therefore, as a father has the moral obligation to feed his family, he has the right to the means necessary to feed his family-- ie a living wage.

everyone has the right to everything necessary to fulfill their moral obligations. THAT is the Catholic understanding of rights, vis a vis the Angelic Doctor.

[Aloysius]

Heinrich Pesch, the economist who is most responsible for influencing the economic thought of the popes since Pius XI (including John Paul II and Benedict XVI), held that if an industry is incapable of providing its services and also providing employees a living wage, then it is clear that that industry is not in high enough demand to exist. If your product is not in high enough demand that you can afford to provide your employees with a living wage, your product is not in high enough demand for you to be in the business of selling it.

you can see some pages of his argument which is summed up pretty well by the chapter title "The Just Wage as the Economically Correct Wage": http://books.google.com/books?id=htpXgf5dyS4C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA231#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[Nihil Obstat]

This is just coming off the top of my head, but is it responsible for a man to marry and have kids if he doesn't make a wage necessary to support them with decent conditions?
Obviously I realize that some people fall on hard times too.

[Aloysius]

Any man called to marriage has the duty to marry and have kids, it is a Divine command; be fruitful and multiply. He has the right to marry and have kids because he has the duty to it; and then he has the right to have the means to support them.

IMO, all that is necessary is the willingness to work to support one's wife and children to give one the moral right to marry and have children.

Sadly, the current economic situation does not recognize these positive rights of man. Because our society does not recognize these rights, a man must take that into consideration and it may be a moral consideration that he should not have children without being able to support them. But he does so because his rights have already been infringed upon, not because he doesn't possess the right.

[kamiller42]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='29 October 2009 - 07:49 PM' timestamp='1256860147' post='1993586']
St. Thomas Aquinas held that a right is a moral power to have the means necessary to fulfill a duty, or a moral obligation. therefore, as a father has the moral obligation to feed his family, he has the right to the means necessary to feed his family-- ie a living wage.
[/quote]
Along the lines of Nihil has said, if I became a father to 24 kids, I have a right to a wage to sustain 24 kids. And if the market does not provide adequate wages, then it is denying me of a right!

I think "rights" are being mixed with "guarantees" and "license." I think the Church would say the father has a right to obtain a wage to sustain the 24 kids, but there is no guarantee he'll get it. The only responsibility of the government is to ensure his access to an adequate wage is unhindered.

[Aloysius]

[quote]What about self-employed individuals? Many of them struggle to feed their families. Should we mandate that their customers have to pay them above a certain amount for their services, so that they can better support themselves? If we buy a hot dog from a corner vendor, for example, should we be compelled by law to pay him at least seven dollars for it? That we ensure that the vendor would make enough profits to support himself, wouldn't it?[/quote]

These issues are also dealt with by Pesch: http://books.google.com/books?id=htpXgf5dyS4C&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=Heinrich+Pesch+minimum+wage+laws&source=bl&ots=NuXTU1ngA4&sig=B7lzEFkFoXDRroiu1Rm2NfCQYeA&hl=en&ei=RA3qSsuzN4nilAeW9cX_BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

ie, just like there is a "just wage" there is also such a thing as a "just price"; places like WalMart often violate both just wages and just prices... "always [unjustly] low prices, always."... actually, it is necessary to violate just wages in order to violate just prices.. many places do both.

the hot dog vendor should be able to support himself by the price of his hot dogs quite well... but it's hard since some major corporate hot dog shop might violate just prices and thus push him so that he is uncompetitive. the hot dog vendor himself has no option to violate just wages so that he can push his prices low... he necessarily needs a certain price in order to survive. would that all employers treated their employees by such a golden rule!

[Nihil Obstat]

What if a man's work is substandard against market quality?

[Aloysius]

[quote name='kamiller42' date='29 October 2009 - 09:35 PM' timestamp='1256862951' post='1993614']
Along the lines of Nihil has said, if I became a father to 24 kids, I have a right to a wage to sustain 24 kids. And if the market does not provide adequate wages, then it is denying me of a right!

I think "rights" are being mixed with "guarantees" and "license." I think the Church would say the father has a right to obtain a wage to sustain the 24 kids, but there is no guarantee he'll get it. The only responsibility of the government is to ensure his access to an adequate wage is unhindered.
[/quote]
actually, YES, a father of 24 kids has the right to a wage that sustains 24 kids so long as he is willing to work; a right which should be defended by the state. this is a right which INDEED must be defended. if he is unable to get a wage which supports 24 kids, he is certainly being deprived of a right: of a means to support 24 kids, which is his moral obligation.

I'm not confusing the word "right" in the sense that the Church sees the term, in the sense that the Angelic Doctor sees the term. This is what the term means: we do indeed have the right to have the means necessary to perform our duties. Now, we must indeed act upon these means; but if the means themselves are not presented to us, then we have been deprived of a right and that is indeed an injustice. If a father of 24 is not completely able to easily find work that can sustain those 24 kids, then his rights are being infringed.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='29 October 2009 - 07:53 PM' timestamp='1256860395' post='1993588']
Heinrich Pesch, the economist who is most responsible for influencing the economic thought of the popes since Pius XI (including John Paul II and Benedict XVI), held that if an industry is incapable of providing its services and also providing employees a living wage, then it is clear that that industry is not in high enough demand to exist. If your product is not in high enough demand that you can afford to provide your employees with a living wage, your product is not in high enough demand for you to be in the business of selling it.
[/quote]
Won't the free market take care of this problem by itself?
A company that can't make a profit and can't afford to pay competitive wages will go out of business in a free market.
The government forcing unprofitable businesses to close would be redundant.

And the government forcibly shutting down low-wage businesses, or demanding that every business pay an artificially-high "living wage" to all of its employers would in reality accomplish nothing.
One less low-paying employer would just mean one less employer.
If the government forcibly shut the low-wage company down, the lot of its employees would not be improved; they would just be out of a job, period.
More unemployed people does not equal a more just society.

My own economics professor (who has years of hands-on business management experience) agrees that minimum wage laws actually hurt the lowest-skill set of workers and increase chronic unemployment.
When the minimum wage is raised, employers will not hire the lowest skilled people, but hire the next step up. Thus a whole set of people is denied access to the career ladder, period.

What would "living wage" laws entail?
The government demanding that the neighborhood lemonade stand pay its workers enough to support a family of twelve?

Edited October 30, 2009 by Socrates

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' date='29 October 2009 - 09:41 PM' timestamp='1256863289' post='1993618']
What if a man's work is substandard against market quality?
[/quote]
then maybe he should find a different line of work. maybe he should be fired, depending on how bad his work is...

there is some level of meritocracy; but it is a level of meritocracy in which the lowest level is work that one is able to sustain his living off of... even when that lowest level of work is something that could be done by trained monkeys. so someone who's got no special abilities should be able to find a low level monkey work that at least fulfills his rights.

the point is that all should have access to subsistence-sustaining work. if you're too unskilled to do something adequately, obviously you'd better either get better at it or do something else.

[Nihil Obstat]

(Is it rude of me to ask questions, and not respond to the points you make in response?)