I appreciate you reading and the thoughtfulness of your response. I just respectfully disagree on every point.
“Nobody owes anybody a job.” No kidding. You make it sound like it’s benevolence that brings employment, and not necessity. Employers hire people because they need people to work with them in building their businesses. They need people to serve, to innovate, to manufacture, to sell, to market, to build.
The government doesn’t “make jobs more expensive” and jobs are not “given out” — jobs are agreements between employees and employers. As I wrote in the post, the problem is that the balance of the agreement has fallen disproportionately to favor the employer.
The government doesn’t make jobs more expensive, they protect the rights of the people against potential oversteps of our economic system. Thanks to the undue influence corporations and businesses have been able to have on policy, the minimum wage hasn’t even kept up with inflation. Workers aren’t asking for premium wages, they’re asking for living wages — what they need to get by.
As for the constant, impending threat that if wages are increased, the great and benevolent job creators will automate or outsource jobs overseas: That’s entirely unAmerican. A) Automation is already happening. It is happening without higher wages. And I, for one, think it’s a good thing, as long as we can keep up with training for new skills, not systematically deskilling workers to take advantage. B) I believe the government should step in on outsourcing as well. American businesses should have American workers and pay American wages. C) Wages often remain unnaturally low overseas due to American intervention.
If you have an American business and you don’t want that business to benefit the people of America, you shouldn’t be an American business owner. We see corporations beg this exception on their effective tax rates as well as on the mass outsourcing of American jobs (and the subsequent exploitative policy interventions and morally bankrupt trade deals that follow).
I’m so glad you brought up productivity, because it’s something I forgot to add. American workers are already far more productive than they were 50 years ago in a time of economic prosperity. If the minimum wage had simply followed U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour. (Bloomberg)
I understand the vast majority of businesses fail in the first five years. Our business is less than five years old and time will tell if our success stays with us. I work long hours, long nights, long weekends.
I have an issue with the argument that focusing on successes isn’t a fair way to determine wages — because it’s essentially allowing entrepreneurs to socialize the risks of their ventures on the backs of American workers who aren’t guaranteed to gain anything if the company succeeds. They’re to make below living wages because business is hard and a business might not be able to succeed if it has to pay people enough to live. Too bad. If a company can’t be profitable and pay its people living wages, it shouldn’t be in the market. Plenty of companies can do and have done it.
And as far as hurting the overall economy, higher wages do not hurt the economy more than 3.3 million workers who don’t make enough to live.
I do believe there should be some exceptions for small and mid-size businesses — however, wages aren’t one of those exceptions.
These are American principles — we can’t have the touted American Dream if businesses can continue paying people starvation wages they help set the standard for. And again, there will be no one to purchase the goods and services of businesses if the middle class continues to disappear and more and more people become working poor. What happens to the economy then?
Here are a few articles if you want to read further:
http://robertreich.org/post/131476708345
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-06-19/the-capitalist-s-case-for-a-15-minimum-wage
