“The advocates of the minimum wage and its periodic boosting reply that all this is scare talk and that minimum wage rates do not and never have caused any unemployment. The proper riposte is to raise them one better; all right, if the minimum wage is such a wonderful anti-poverty measure, and can have no unemployment-raising effects, why are you such pikers? Why you are helping the working poor by such piddling amounts? Why stop at $4.55 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? $100? $1,000?”
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Samizdata quote of the dayAugust 3rd, 2016 |
 25 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Why not 1000?
Because Reductio ad absurdum.
But I DID just saw a spiffy piece about robots manufacturing Tesla battery packs!
$15/hr. ? Absolutely. I don’t think that’s too much to pay appointed “public service” administrators, college deans, or charitable foundation ancillaries. Just remember to punch your time cards in and out when you’re actually working.
Time spent on “thinking about International Feminism Dialogue Awareness”, while riding the bus between check-out scanner operator jobs,will NOT be deemed billable multi-tasking.
(Paralegal receptionists, home customer service re-directors, and “health care” encoders, please take note.)
The other reason that unions push so hard for minimum-wage laws is because so many of them contain fine print allowing workers represented by a union to be paid less than the supposed ‘minimum wage’. The benefits of union membership, it is alleged, more-than make up for the lower wages that they negotiate.
This gives unions an unbeatable advantage in labor negotiations – you can pay our members less! – and makes them the only ones who can break the illegal-employment barrier. And ensures a steady dues-paying membership. Employees are stuck – you can’t get hired at $15 an hour, but you can get hired at $13 an hour, as long as you pay union dues. It’s very close to a classic protection racket. Don Corleone would have loved it.
I would like to see a minimum-wage law tied to union membership – you can pay less than the minimum wage by an amount equal to the prevailing rate of union dues that the employee would pay if they were to join a union. Gives employees a choice – if union membership really is a such a tremendous benefit, employees would flock to unionize. The sit back and watch the unions scream.
llater,
llamas
If 1000 is “reductio ad absurdum” then what is “communal ownership of the means of production”? What is, “from each according to his abililty to each according to his need”? Socialists believe those are the goals, why wait? Why only 1000 even? It’s not absurd to ask minimum wagers that at all. Their goal is way beyond it and according to their thinking it is just another number. When everyone owns everything it will be as nothing.
I often wonder if the standards of cleanliness in busy public spaces – pavements, train stations etc – and likewise the freshness of paint on walls and hand-rails, has increased or decreased since the minimum wage act was passed in 1998.
Along the lines of bruce’s comment, when you have a government, such as the US, that has arguably a nonsensical accrual basis debt of $100,000,000,000,000, NOTHING is “reduced absurdity”. EVERY absurdity is on the table. The whole fucking kit and caboodle is absurd and NOTHING makes any calculable sense.
‘I would like to see a minimum-wage law tied to union membership’
llamas, what a WONDERFUL idea. It might actually wake up some people.
Someday I plan to ask a close relative ( and staunch union supporter ),
exactly what has that union done for YOU that you could not have done for yourself ??
Claiming “reductio ad absurdum” is no more an argument than is shouting “racism!”.
Remember, guys – the reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy.
It’s a valid argument (if done correctly; various fallacious things can look like the reductio at a glance).
“X logically requires or justifies Y; Y is untenably absurd, thus X is false/untenable as stated” is not invalid.
It’s not a proof of X’s falsity, as “untenably absurd” is always a matter of judgment, and the “justifies” part of the first section is also subjective … but that makes it merely of non-universal capacity, not fallacious. If people agree Y is absurd or untenable, it is logically correct that X must be abandoned to prevent it.
(An X modified to prohibit or not justify Y escapes the reductio … by becoming X’, a different claim.)
How about a return to the Bastiat example of service for service?
What is the “pricing mechanism” for the exchange of services?
Are “wages” part of that pricing mechanism?
If part of the pricing mechanism is disrupted by political externalities, what disruptions may be expected in the system of exchanges of services for services?
That takes us to the question of what are the purposes or economic functions of the political externalities that disrupt pricing mechanisms?
The absurdities lie in the functions of the political externalities. However, absurdity often enhances, and seldom seems to deter, a political career.
The important bit is that when the proponent says “don’t be absurd”, you press them.
Why is it absurd? At what level does it become absurd? How sure are you that it is at that level and not some other level?
Simon,
In answer to your question I think it has improved. Litter in London in the early 1990s was dreadful to the extent that it became an issue of National Concern. Similarly, train stations – in all regards – are vastly better than they were shortly after vertical fragmentation and franchising aka “privatisation”.
I don’t think either of these improvements has much to do with the minimum wage and rather more to lots of money being thrown at the problem.
If the “living wage”, which the minimum wage is supposed to represent, is £9/hour, then surely the tax free limit should be set at £16,000. It is the height of hypocrisy to morally claim a person needs a basic income and then take part of it away from them in tax.
The other reason that unions push so hard for minimum-wage laws is …
The other reason is the rent seeking non-jobs that unions keep alive need to be paid for by someone and they have to make sure they can afford it. Consider the recent unfolding tragedy that is Southern Rail, the unions are quick to point the blame on management, but the real reason is the high level of union member sickness and refusal to adopt modern commuter technology. Automated trains run 24/365, and don’t go sick or on strike or turn up late, and the aggregated well-above-average earnings of a driver who is no longer needed makes a substantial saving to be passed on to the public. But try getting that one past unions, they’d prefer legislation to make sure everyone has enough cash to give to their members.
Thankfully all the trains in Vancouver’s transit are fully automated.
Llamas
“The other reason that unions push so hard for minimum-wage laws is because so many of them contain fine print allowing workers represented by a union to be paid less than the supposed ‘minimum wage’.
For some perhaps…agricultural/hospitality? (I have NEVER seen that)
I HAVE seen (US)”Collective” bargaining, and “arbitration” Union contracts pegging the prevailing union hourly rate to a variable multiplier (200-400%)of “whatever the minimum wage “happens” to be.
I have NEVER seen Union “administrators” rate confined to a percentage of rank-and-file members rate.
Notarized citations not available.
CaptDMO – No, the union exemption from minimum wage laws is quite common – see, for example
http://www.economics21.org/html/why-unions-exempt-themselves-hard-fought-minimum-wage-hikes-1339.html
or from our own Tim Worstall
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/03/29/will-californias-15-an-hour-minimum-wage-include-that-scandalous-union-exemption/#2118a602508c
or for example
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/los-angeles-15-dollar-minimum-wage-unions
As you suggest, the most-common place for this has been in the ‘hospitality’ industry, but there’s no such restriction on the exemptions already in place and any worker could find themselves stuck in this trap – where the only way they can get a job at a wage that an employer is willing to pay is by joining a union, which then taps them for 2-4% of their income every paycheck, forever.
As a very small llama, I can still remember standing on the platform at Carshalton Beeches and asking my dear old Dad (MHRIP) why there was a man who was paid to take people’s tickets as they left the station. It was very confusing to me. I had seen train stations all over Europe, where you bought your ticket and then got on the train, got off at the other end and just walked away. There was no barrier, no ticket-collector. I remember asking why, if there was a man to take your ticket when you got off the train, why wasn’t there a man to take your ticket when you got off the bus?
I had to get several years older before I figured it out. And it would seem that little has changed.
llater,
llamas
Every discussion of the minimum wage should include the fact that it was invented by the original Progressives as a racist, sexist eugenics measure to destroy jobs for blacks and the disabled and to induce white women to stay home and have babies.
Because Reductio ad absurdum.
I keep seeing statements like this, which seem to imply that reductio ad absrudum is somehow a logical fallacy. It isn’t. Reductio ad absurdum is a very useful logical tool.
Many confuse reductio ad absurdum with strawman, which is a logical fallacy, then conclude that reductio ad absurdum is also a logical fallacy, actually committing the logical fallacy of strawman.
“Many confuse reductio ad absurdum with strawman, which is a logical fallacy, then conclude that reductio ad absurdum is also a logical fallacy, actually committing the logical fallacy of strawman.”
Hey, if it weren’t for the Straw Man, the Tu Quoque, and the Argument from Pity. socialists would have no arguments at all.
I get annoyed at the frequent misuse of “Tu Quoque.” If someone says: “Don’t vote for Trump because he’s a mammal,” and I respond that Hillary Clinton is a mammal, too, I have not committed a logical fallacy. I have merely shown your argument to be pointless and worthless.
Hmmm. Sadly, I seem to ask…..
If “Why stop at $4.55 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? $100? $1,000?” is not progressively attempting to reduce an “argument” to an absurd premise, and not a prima facie TROPHY of Reductio ad absurdum
then where might I go to be reeducated concerning recognition, and agreed definition of “what words mean” (this week)?
Is there a RE-APPROVED “translation” that I need to know about?
Same applies to (ie)”SHOVELS? Why not give them teaspoons?”
When Laird first chimed “Claiming “reductio ad absurdum” is no more an argument than is shouting “racism!”.’ I gave the benefit of doubt that an “irony” emoticon was simply forgotten.
No “irony emoticon” was omitted; the statement is a correct one and was meant to be taken at face value. I suggest that you read some of the other comments on this thread explaining why reductio ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy. Indeed, in this particular instance it is a tool used by Rothbard to expose a fallacy: that minimum wage laws somehow overrule the laws of supply and demand and thus create wealth out of nothing.
As long at the late Murray Newton Rothbard stuck to economics he was fine – when he got on to other subjects things went bad fast.
As for people who think that government should set prices (a wage is a price – the price of a service) – such people deny the most basic principles in economics, supply and demand.
What can one say to people who think that government edicts (such “minimum wage laws”) can violate supply-and-demand with no ill effects?
In the end one can say NOTHING to such people – one either destroys them or is destroyed by them.
Paul Marks wrote,
Exactly correct. Anyone who thinks markets require conscious “regulating” don’t understand that there is no such thing as an unregulated market. Where there is a demand, there will soon be a supply, and where there is supply and demand, there’s a market. And EVERY market is regulated via supply and demand. The only thing “regulators” can do is merely interfere with this natural process.
Alex wrote,
“which seem to imply that reductio ad absrudum is somehow a logical fallacy. It isn’t.”
The english language is full of false uses of language and phrases. To “have a temper” means that one loses it. (Temper actually means to be temperate). And of course there are no such things as unknown knowledge, unowned property, or honest democrats. (OK, joking on the last bit…kinda).
Nor does supernatural mean not-natural anymore than a super-power would suggest having no power, but it’s often misinterpreted that way. (Super isn’t an exclusionary term, it simply means the best, the exceptional of whatever one is considering).
Metaphysics too means to deal with univeral origins, first principles, the first causes of things. The idea that it means “the science of what is beyond the physical” is simply an age-old error that persists to this day. (Probably because of religion).
Thailover,
Exactly so!