International minimum wage

It would seem that for the world to have (somewhat) uniformed sustained economic entitlement, an international minimum wage looks to be a pre-requisite. If we are to continue down our current path of globalization, the world's employers will migrate to anywhere they are able to pay workers with a bag of rice.

What are the chances of an international minimum wage happening? Are there any organized efforts to forward this idea? Has this been attempted yet?

But I'd bet it's a treaty the U.S. wouldn't sign.

However, would those standards apply to bilateral trade aggrements also?

was in favor of these, to be financed, if I rememeber correctly, by the Tobin tax

What currency would you put it in?

Say we agree everyone should have to be paid 1 EUR/hour. Then the dollar falls to where 20 USD = 1 EUR. Would employers in the US have to pay people 20 USD/hour or let them go?

Ok, maybe it won't happen in the US, but in BFE such currency devaluations happen. Argentina's fell about a factor 10 in thier meltdown. Imagine how much worse it would have been if nobody was allowed to work their jobs!

The other main problem I see is: How the hell do you enforce it?

Things cost more in Alaska, than they do in other cities, becase every thing has to be shipped up there. Plus, additionl needs with heating and other technical conserns for the cold.

How would this problem be tacked?

There's the small problem that setting an international minimum wage high enough to actually benefit advanced industrialized economies would price less-advanced countries out of the markets. The only advantage that less-advanced countries bring is their ability to work cheaply--and even that has a tradeoff in productivity, namely they are less productive--and if that advantage was somehow removed through an "international minimum wage" the whole system would go to hell. Matter of fact, it's the globalized sectors of the economy that might make the transition the BEST depending on how the wage was implemented--if it applied to the nontraded sectors as well, not a single domestic business would be able to stay afloat in many third-world countries--like, for instance, South Africa.

Through the process of globalization, one might assume that any nation faces a number of tests (like adoption of the euro) in which sustainable economic viability and adherence to any number of rules is requisite to becoming a trading partner. While this idea is, admittedly, far-flung with speculative interest it seems somewhat logical to me that any present (or emerging) industrialized nation should commit itself to any number of rules in order to be embraced by the rest of the world's economic community.

My chief concern is maintenance of a living wage that will ensure the dignity and economic entitlement of those who work in sweatshop industries.

Does implementation of a minimum wage seem reasonable if based on a fiat trading currency? Some nations do peg their currency to either the dollar or euro.

Including the right to organize a union.

That would go a long way toward raising wages, at the very least.

I have to agree with you that organizing is the answer but you have it backwards. Workers have to be organized then they will get their rights.

Enforcement?