Living-wage movement takes root across nation

USA Today ^ | July 23, 2002 | Stephanie Armour

[discostu]

But it is the gov'ts job, and has been for millenia, to set minimum wages

Really. Then why is it the minimum wage didn't start here until 1938? ( http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/chart.htm )

England (generally considered to be a more socialist nation than the US) did get one until 1999 ( http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/nmw/nmwhist.htm )

Actually I can't find any indication that anywhere had a minimum wage before FDR got the stupid idea in his pointy little commie head.

In short, clearly history (and the Constitution) show that the minimum wage is NOT a legitimate function of government.

[thmiley]

Great! Talk those California high-tech businesses into relocating to Michigan. Preferably the Kalamazoo area, if you please. :^)

[Red Jones]

I read yesterday on a thread here, an article written by an economist, he said that for 80% of americans (the lower 80%) their real standard of living as measured by their ability to purchase a basket of goods is declining by 1-2% each and ever year. That means very dramatic declines over time.

We as a nation are becoming much less able to pay for medicaire and social security as time goes on. Each new generation now is finding that they have to work more hours and at lower pay to be able to afford families.

The Republicans like Bush are absolute fools not to see that government has had a negative effect on the population over the last 30 years. If the Republicans serve the population, then they will do something about it. Otherwise, they will be wash out. Bush is doing nothing but continuing the failed policies of the past. At the same time the republican cheerleaders think they are immune on these issues, they are not.

The day will come when both the republicans and the democrats will be held accountable for what they've done.

[Crusher138]

I'm gonna type slow so you can keep up.

Let's talk about 1965 first, since you use that as a turning point year. In 1965 Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, was President. Both the House and the Senate were controlled by Democrats. How, pray tell, did Republicans change the unemployment rates?

Economics and employment are fluid. If unemployment is too low, wages go up because of increase competition for workers. If business have to pay more for the same work, they have to charge more to pay for it. If prices go up, then the increased wages don't buy as much. If a business cannot charge more for their product, they contract and hire fewer people. It is always good for the economy, and totally unavoidable, to have a certain percentage of the population unemployed.

Most people who are unemployed are only in such a state temporarily. They find new jobs, often at higher wages.

BTW, I believe that Greenspan is a registered Democrat. As to your statement that "Big corps don't produce jobs," what planet are you on? All companies, large and small, create jobs.

[dasein64]

Now Parsi the impossible---you indicated on a previous thread that you had no use for Walmart. Therefore I deduced that you did not patronize their establishment. Your taxes are safe from big business.

[parsifal]

I think your link is goobered up. I must have punched it a hundred times and it didn't go nowhere. parsy the lost.

[parsifal]

We've had them since the days of Hammurabi. They may not have been called minwages, but they were. Sometimesthey were disquised as price controls. parsy.

[discostu]

Source it. You've made the assertion, I researched it and found nothing before 1938, find me one before then and we'll talk. Oh and price controls are NOT the same thing, so don't give me any gipsy switch BS on that front. Find me a historical reference to minimum wages MILLENIUMS ago.

[discostu]

And don't forget to show us where in the Constitution the US federal government is given such jurisdiction.

[parsifal]

All rightsmarty pants: Here's one, cutted and pasted:

This code was found carved on a black diorite column seven feet high in the ruins of Susa in 1901. A conqueror of Babylon about 1100 BC had stolen it and carried it off to the hills. On the upper part of it is a figure of Hammurabi in an attitude of worship before the sun-god, Shamash. The king says he made the code himself.

The sentiment of justice which inspires the code is remarkable. People who imagine that these pagan nations lived in darkness and the shadow of death will read the clauses of the code with astonishment. Every conceivable kind of injury or injustice has its separate clause, and the fine or other punishment is assigned in proportion to the delinquency. The relations of husbands and wives are regulated, in a series of forty clauses, with a sense of justice that wives never experienced in Christian Europe. Slaves are protected against injury, and the rights of the wife against a concubine are carefully prescribed.

Four thousand years ago this code of law laid down a minimum wage for every class of workers in the kingdom,in contrast to the indifference of Christian law to its workers in fifteen centuries. Every manual worker, skilled or unskilled, had his wage fixed by law. The agricultural workers were paid in corn, and the artisans had from four to six grains of silver.

You can find lots of other such things under a google search: hammurabi minimum wage OR simply refer to the Code of Hammurabi. The Old Babylonians even regulated business and had "tort laws." ( Actually, there were minwage laws BEFORE even Hammurabi, but I will have to find those if you want.) You could also look at an article I posted here way back.If I can find it, I'll ping you,and if not, I will plop it in from copy on harddrive. parsy.

[parsifal]

Here is a link to the Free Republic article:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b7c777e3bd2.htm

[discostu]

Gosh you're lazy. At least I gave you links. OK, Hammurabi had something that's arugably a minimum wage. Anybody else? Or did it just skip forth from way before Christ to 1938. And then there's that little constitutional issue. Then there's the fact that Smith clearly shows how market forces will handle this better than the government could ever hope to.

Give up Parsy. Minimum wage are stupid and screw things up. You still haven't answered my question on whether you've evered worked for minimum, do you actually know what it's like or are you just reading books by social justice bedwetters?

[No Left Turn]

That's not wage control; that's collectivism, if you can even believe the example. Is that what you're hanging your hat on?

[discostu]

A link to more of your rubish doesn't count.

[backhoe]

I call this "yet another poison idea..."

What's a poison idea?

It's an idea so laden with twisted reasoning that once you swallow it, it makes you so sick that you can no longer reason your way out of the semantic trap it has set for you.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I do wish the people who make these living wage laws would slow down a bit. We people in areas that don't have these silly a$$ed laws won't be able to absorb the businesses fleeing them fast enough.

[parsifal]

Lazy! I been going thru Blackstone and History of American Law trying to find something that would satisfy you. But try this little tidbit I found on the net. I suggest you read the last paragraph very carefully.The existence of "welfare" tended to cause employers to scale back the wage. Hmmmmm. :

In the year 1536 was passed an Act of Parliament abolishing the mendicant’s right to solicit public alms. Under a penalty of twenty shillings a month for every case of default, the parochial authorities were bound to provide work for the able-bodied. A poor’s-rate, as we now understand the term, was not then thought of, the money required for pauper relief being chiefly derived from collections in the churches, a system that to a limited extent enabled the clergy to exercise their pious influences as in the old times, and before the destruction of monasteries and religious houses by Henry VIII. It was the wholesale spoliation in question, that occurred immediately after the Reformation, that first made known to the people at large the vast numbers of beg­gars that were amongst them. The Act of 27 Henry VIII. c. 25, prohibited indiscriminate almsgiving.

What the charitable townsman had to give, he was bound to dis­tribute within the boundaries of the parish in which he resided. Under the old and looser condition of affairs the beggar derived the greater part of his gettings from the traveller; but the obnox­ious Act effectually cut off from him this fruitful source of supply, since it provided that any parishioner or townsman who distributed alms out of his proper district, should forfeit to the State ten times the amount given. Whether the recipient of the bounty was in a position to act as “informer,” with the customary advantage of receiving half the penalty, is not stated.

Against sturdy beggars the law was especially severe. On his first conviction he was whipped, the second led to the slicing-off of his right ear, and if after that he was deaf to the law’s tender admoni­tions, sentence of death was executed on him.

This savage law, however, remained in force not more than ten years; one of the earliest Acts of Edward VI. was to mitigate the penalties attaching to beggary. Even under this humane King’s ruling, however, a beggar’s punishment was something very far beyond a joke. Every person able to work, and not willing, and declining a “job,” though for no more tempting wages than his bare meat and drink, was liable to be branded on the shoulder, and any man willing to undertake the troublesome charge might claim the man as his slave for two years. His scale of diet during that time was more meagre than that allotted to the pauper in our own times. If the slave’s master was a generous man, he might bestow on him the scraps from his table, or such meat-offal as his dogs had no relish for; but in law he was only bound to provide him with a sufficiency of bread and water. If such hot feeding did not provoke him to arouse and set to work with a will, his master might chain him and flog him to death’s door; and so long as he did not drive him beyond that, the law would hold him harmless.

Sometimes the poor wretch so goaded would run away, but in the event of his being recaptured, he was branded on the cheek, and condemned to lifelong servitude; and if this did not cure his pro­pensity for “skedaddling,” he was hanged offhand. Any employer having a fancy for such a commodity as an incorrigible runaway might have the man so condemned as his slave for life; but if no one offered, he was chained at the legs and set to work to keep the highways in repair.

It was speedily found, however, that under such mild laws it was impossible to keep the begging fraternity in a proper frame of mind; and after a trial of it for three years the old Act of Henry was restored in full force.

In 1551 there dawned symptoms of the system that has taken more than three hundred years to develop and even now can scarcely lay claim to perfection. Collectors were appointed whose duty it was to make record of the name, residence, and occupation of all who apparently were able to give, as well as of those whose helpless distress entitled them to relief. In the words of the ancient enactment, the said collectors were to “gently ask every man and woman, that they of their charity will give weekly to the relief of the poor.” To give, however, was optional, and not compulsory; no more severe pressure was brought to bear against a grudger than that the minister or churchwardens were sent to him to exhort him to charity; but so many curmudgeons remained inexorable that the voluntary system remained in force no longer than twelve years; and then the statute regulating poor’s relief was remodelled, and it was declared good law that any person able to contribute, and declining to do so, might be summoned before a justice, who would tax him according to his discretion, and commit him to gaol if he still remained obdurate.

This last Act was passed in 1563, but nine years afterwards, we find the Government once again urged to repair what evidently had all this time remained an unsatisfactory business. It is evident that the arrangements made for the support of the impotent poor tended to loosen the shackles invented for the suppression of the professional beggar. The last-mentioned individual was found to be flourishing again, and it was deemed advisable to make still shorter his restricted tether. A law was passed enacting that “all persons whole and mighty in body, able to labour, not having land or master, nor using any lawful merchandise, craft, or mystery, and all common labourers, able in body, loitering and refusing to work for such reasonable wage as is commonly given, should for the first offence be grievously whipped, and burned through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about.”

This mild and moderate mandate was promulgated under the sanction of the virgin Queen Elizabeth, and it is to be observed that during the same beneficent reign were passed laws in connec­tion with labour and labourers that, were they revived, would go hard with trade-unionists and strikers in general. By the statutes 39 of Elizabeth, cap. 3 and 4 (1598), to refuse to work at the recognised and ordinary wages subjected the malcontent to be “openly whipped until his body should be bloody, and forthwith sent from parish to parish, the most straight way to the parish where he was born, there to put himself to labour, as a true sub­ject ought to do.” Under the same Acts of Elizabeth, the overseers of the poor in every parish were empowered to raise by “taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes, mines, &c., such sums of money as they shall require for providing a sufficient stock of flax, hemp, wool, and other ware or stuff to set the poor on work, and also compe­tent sums for relief of lame, blind, old, and impotent persons.” By virtue of the Acts in question, justices were empowered to commit to prison the able-bodied who would not work; and church-wardens and overseers were charged to build suitable houses, at the cost of the parish, for the reception of the impotent poor only.

As, however, is observed by Mr. Halliday (to whose excellent account of the Origin and History of the Poor-Laws I stand in­debted for much of the material employed in this summary) “these simple provisions were in course of time greatly perverted, and many abuses were introduced into the administration of the poor-law. One of the most mischievous practices was that which was established by the justices for the county of Berks in 1795, when, in order to meet the wants of the labouring population— caused by the high price of provisions—an allowance in proportion to the number of his family was made out of the parish fund to every labourer who applied for relief. This allowance fluctuated with the price of the gallon loaf of second flour, and the scale was so adjusted as to return to each family the sum which in a given number of loaves would cost beyond the price, in years of ordi­nary abundance. This plan was conceived in a spirit of benevolence, but the readiness with which it was adopted in all parts of England clearly shows the want of sound views on the subject. Under the allowance-system the labourer received a part of his means of sub­sistence in the form of a parish-gift, and as the fund out of which it was provided was raised from the contributions of those who did not employ labourers as well as of those who did, their em­ployer5~ being able in part to burden others with the payment for their labour, had a direct interest in perpetuating the system. Those who employed labourers looked upon the parish contribu­tion as part of the fund out of which they were to be paid, and accordingly lowered their rate of wages. The labourers also looked on the fund as a source of wage. The consequence was, that the labourer looked to the parish, and as a matter of right, without any regard to his real wants; and he received the wages of his labour as only one and a secondary source of the means of subsis­tence. His character as a labourer became of less value, his value as a labourer being thus diminished under the combined operation of these two causes.”

[BADROTOFINGER]

You have been going through Blackstone?!?!?!? Try Bentham...JFK

[backhoe]

These laws are pure poison for any and every business. Click my profile- I've been on both sides of "employer" and "employee."

There are things about business you will never hear discussed at Senate or Congressional hearings when they drag all the "expert witnesses" from business to testify- because they are afraid to speak the truth, or fearful of liability, or being sued.

But here's one truth- when they force higher wages on a business, the first thing that business does is look at their employees and ask, "Who isn't worth this? We could fire the worst, split the money saved between us and all the other good workers, and everyone will be happier..."
( Not those fired, of course! )

Another thing it does- businesses pass these increased costs on to-- customers! Everyone else pays.

It also gives a business an incentive to look for a cheaper location- like the next state or another country where the government isn't so hostile.