labor
and minimum wages
Doesn't
capitalism lead to the lower labor wages?
No. Under capitalism ones wages depend on how much one
can produce. That is why Michael Jordan--or a
doctor--gets paid millions of dollars more then the
minimum wage. It depends on how well and how much they
produce.
Isn't the solution to low wages minimum wage laws?
If passing minimum wage laws are the secret to
raising wages, then why doesn't the government make
everybody rich by setting the wage to a million dollars?
Would this solve poverty in third world countries, or
would this make everyone--who produces less then the
million dollar minimum wage--unemployable?
The truth is that those who don't produce enough to
merit the minimum wage will become unemployed by such
laws, and those who do produce more then the minimum
wage don't need such laws.
The reason why factory laborers receive more wages in
America is because they are rendered more productive by
productive use of capital.
If a laborer--say Michael Jordan--is not paid enough for
what he produces, then someone else will hire him an pay
him more. It is competition for labor--that
produces--that pushes wages up.
What sets prices of labor under capitalism?
The same system that sets prices. Not any particular
businessman, but the free-market. It is competition
between businesses for labor that pushes wages up; it is
competition between laborers that pushes wages down (to
reduce this competition between laborers unions create
"union shops" which prevent non-union members
from competing with them, by banning non-union members
from working in the unionized field).
Don't laborers have a right to a share of the
capitalist's profits, in addition to their wages?
Why are the laborers who demand a share in the
capitalist's profits,
silent in demanding their "share" when he
incurs losses? Why don't they cry out and demand that
they get to receive a share in those losses? If labor is
the sole cause of all profit, then is it not also the
sole cause of all losses? A moments reflection will
point out that laborers are only responsible for their
job description-- they are not directly responsible for
the losses of a business--and that the cause of an
enterprise's losses lies essentially with the owner, as
do the profits.
That a businessmen pays a worker less wages than the
worker feels he deserves is not exploitation,
as the worker is free to leave his job and look
elsewhere for a higher paying one, if he thinks that
someone can give him a better job for a better wage. Let
any worker in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or Communist
China try to attempt such a feat as leaving his job
without permission of the state, and he will soon find
what exploitation really means.
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