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from the suppresion-of-the-proletariat dept.
Analysis of a study (PDF) carried by UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education shows that isn't the poor people won't work but the work they do can't sustain them. As a blog on WaPo puts it:
We often make assumptions about people on public assistance, about the woman in the checkout line with an EBT card, or the family who lives in public housing. [...] We assume, at our most skeptical, that poor people need help above all because they haven't tried to help themselves — they haven't bothered to find work.
The reality, though, is that a tremendous share of people who rely on government programs designed for the poor in fact work — they just don't make enough at it to cover their basic living expenses. According to the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, 73 percent of people who benefit from major public assistance programs in the U.S. live in a working family where at least one adult earns the household some money.
This picture casts the culprit in a different light: Taxpayers are spending a lot of money subsidizing not people who won't work, but industries that don't pay their workers a living wage. Through these four programs alone [food stamps, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, income supports through welfare], federal and state governments spend about $150 billion a year aiding working families, according to the analysis (the authors define people who are working here as those who worked at least 10 hours a week, at least half the year).
The workers relying the most on social programs: Fast Food (52%), Home Care (48%), Child Care (46%) and Part-time college students (25%).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 15 2015, @10:25PM
The problem though is that these businesses generally can afford to pay their workers a living wage, but they're using that money to give record bonuses to the executives and higher profits to the shareholders (which in most cases means even more bonuses to the executives, since they're generally shareholders too).
Where's the evidence that a "living wage" is affordable? Or for that matter, that it is better for society to force businesses to choose between paying a so-called "living wage" and just not employing those people or possibly even staying in business, for that matter. I notice that there has been complaints before about how automation replaces workers. Pushing the cost of a low skilled worker to the point where it is cheaper to automate the job is one of the more obvious ways the "living wage" thing can backfire.
There was *just* an article right here on Soylent showing how many of these very same corporations don't pay a dime in taxes -- and often get tax refunds even -- despite having millions or even billions in profits.
I don't see a good case for any business with workers to pay taxes. IMHO they're just too important to society for what they take out of the economy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:32AM
Society would continue on just fine without parasitic, exploitative capitalist businesses fucking everyone over. In fact, society would be far better off if they were gone and replaced with cooperatives, which actually rewarded hard work and good work ethic.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:44AM
Society would continue on just fine without parasitic, exploitative capitalist businesses fucking everyone over. In fact, society would be far better off if they were gone and replaced with cooperatives, which actually rewarded hard work and good work ethic.
If it's so easy to do, then why doesn't most of humanity do that now? My view is that in the absence of parasitic exploitive capitalist businesses (or their analogues in other belief systems), 90 to 99% of humanity has the skill set to starve to death messily. And a cooperative is just another variation of a parasitic exploitive capitalist business.
This whole argument is just dumb. Show me this system works on a societal scale, and then we'll have something to talk about.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 16 2015, @01:11PM
How large does it need to be to be a "societal scale"? Because it works for the tenth largest Spanish company [wikipedia.org], employing 75,000 workers with trillions of euros in revenue...I'd call that a societal scale....
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 16 2015, @01:20PM
According to Forbes, McDonald's could afford to *double* the wages they're currently paying their employees -- and they could probably do it without raising prices a single cent.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/02/the-real-change-in-the-cost-of-a-big-mac-if-mcdonalds-workers-were-paid-15-an-hour-nothing/ [forbes.com]
And automation replacing workers is a great thing. People used to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week. Now we mostly work 8 hours, 5 days, thanks to automation. Let's get that down to 6 hours and 3 days.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 17 2015, @01:28AM
According to Forbes, McDonald's could afford to *double* the wages they're currently paying their employees -- and they could probably do it without raising prices a single cent.
Notice the second paragraph:
My amusement rather is about the fact that a doubling of, or a halving of, or any other change in, the wages of McDonald's workers will have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the price of a Big Mac or the dollar menu. For prices are not set by the cost of production of something, but by the supply and demand for that item.
The author instantly dived into dumbshit territory. A big increase in the cost of a Big Mac drops supply particularly when the cost of the Big Mac exceeds what McDonalds gets as payment (meaning the business is losing money on selling that Big Mac in that situation). Not every McDonalds location will magically have enough profit margin to soak up this increase in cost. That means a closing of some locations.
There's also a secondary effect in that higher costs of Big Macs would reduce investment in work automation capital which the author notes is necessary to justify the expense of employing expensive workers in the fast food industry. To claim that doesn't happen and that McDonald's will continue to supply hamburgers no matter how costly they become to produce completely ignores economics. Then the author glibly speaks of the substitution of capital for labor, ignoring once again another important economic effect, a drop in the demand for labor below the proposed minimum wage due to this substitution (he does note that increased unemployment would happen, ventures the uninformed opinion that he doesn't think it would be as big as the "alarmists" claim, but then talks about it no more). McDonalds and other employers like it aren't magically going to employ more people just because they have to invest in capital in order to justify the cost of employment. Instead, they will employ less.
And automation replacing workers is a great thing. People used to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week. Now we mostly work 8 hours, 5 days, thanks to automation. Let's get that down to 6 hours and 3 days.
I want automation to happen because we're making people more valuable not because we're punishing employers and driving up the cost of employing people without any gain as a result.