Long Article, Worth the Time
A well-written, diligently-researched article on the plight of employees in the retail industry is hard to find. A great one was produced earlier this year: https://www.racked.com/2017/6/20/15817988/retail-workers-unions-american-jobs
This is a topic that I consider to be "murky waters" in general. It is very easy to paint an incomplete picture in order to create pretty much whatever impression one wants to. Also, whatever legitimate grievances labor may have about their plight, I am very skeptical towards suggestions of government intervention as a solution. I mean generally speaking. I know too little about economics and labor issues to be specific, but one thing I am confident of is that government intervention can often make things even worse. And again as you navigate the literature on these issues, it can be a real house of mirrors. I just skimmed through that article and honestly so much of it just came across as "whiny" to me.
ReplyDeleteI have plenty to say in response to this, but before I do, I was wondering if you would care to elaborate on what you have in mind when you mention the harmful effects of government intervention?
DeleteThere are numerous articles online for and against economic interventionism. My sympathies are with the ones that call for less intervention. And honestly that is really all I can say about my position on this issue at this point. Even though I hold a firm position on this issue I don't feel equipped enough to speak all that specifically on it. I can point to the articles arguing for less government intervention and that is about it. It is not an area that interests me a whole lot, although I did take a 300 level macro-economics course in college (made an A) and it only reinforced by position. I am not for total non-government intervention but at this point I think we have enough and any calls for more would strike me as, to use the word I used before, "whiny". I don't have any real arguments or specifics beyond that. Sorry :)
DeleteI'll get together some more specific thoughts on this. There are schools of thought on this issue that have influenced me a great deal at the more philosophical level and before I would say anything specific I would want to show a list of thinkers who have made the most sense to me on this issue. Of course Milton Friedman would be one. Thomas Sowell, George Gilder, William F Buckly jr., special mention Deirdre McCloskey, there are others. What is called the Chicago school. Also Nobel prize winner Friedrich Hayek (as opposed to John Maynard Keynes). I am not just name dropping because I just looked them up. I didn't. These are all economists that have had a profound influence on my position. So it would seem I should be able to respond more specifically right? :)
DeleteHere is an overview on a view about minimum wage that I am more and more tending to agree with:
DeleteWhat's the Right Minimum Wage?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j01L69eXdI
To a degree, I get the comment about the complaints sounding whiny. It's something I'm always questioning myself about in my own complaints about my experiences.
ReplyDeleteI think in this context it's important to keep in mind that, at least in my view of it, the whole discussion is 90% about wage and health benefits. Other criticisms of low-wage worker business practices are peripheral. And I on that note I would just say that I don't think it's whiny to raise one's voice for higher wages. If the ability for people to live off of what they earn isn't worth speaking up for, I don't know what is.
About the effect on unemployment, that's a matter that seems far from settled as to whether there is any correlation at all between unemployment and minimum wage. There's a lot more reading I need to do to be knowledgeable, but there certainly seem to be plenty of difficulty in discovering a correlation. Seattle and San Francisco currently have two of the highest minimum wages in the country, and unemployment rates there sit well below the national average.
On the topic of employers responding to wage hikes by cutting labor costs in other ways, that has absolutely happened. But I don't see any argument showing evidence that no minimum wage is a better alternative. And I think businesses are shooting themselves in the foot by slashing labor and benefits, and the detrimental effects will hopefully spark some course-correction.
Lastly, I do want to clarify that I believe that negotiations between employers and the workforce IS preferable to government mandate. But at the same time, laws protecting the right to labor organization is very necessary part of the dynamic. Without legal protections, low-wage workers would be utterly powerless to effect any kind of change on their own.
Well stated. In terms of issues like minimum wage, that is not really where my strongest focus would be were I to develop an active interest in economic problems. My interest would be more in mAcroeconomic philosophy. By contrast, "labor economics" falls under the category of MIcroeconomics which is also a noble worthwhile field of interest and activism. Also when I say "whiny" I am prepared that this might be a distortion occurring in my own prejudicial ear. One of the problems for me is that calls for wage mandates is very often packaged together with a host of other leftist causes that I am much more categorically opposed to than the wage issue itself. But that is the nature of politics in general. I do stand by my assertion that I do not think that minimum wage should (within a certain definition of the term) be a "living wage". It would take some degree of defining and parsing to explain further which I won't do at present.
DeleteOn another note, regarding Adam Smith, he is very often misunderstood and left unread by both the right and the left. He was not a cold Benthamite by any stretch and was critical of brute self-interest(Ayn Rand style) as a guiding economic principle and I could easily see him being for something like a governmentally mandated minimum wage.
I had to read Adam Smith once for a college class and my experience of him stands out among all my readings of philosophers throughout history. And I have gone back to read him many times over the years. He is indeed the paradigm for Western free-market economic thinking.