Are all the people who work for minimum wage doing work of equal value?

CEOs? I'd say, by and large, that the person making minimum probably works a heck of a lot harder than most CEOs.

Below, I attempt to state the poll question more clearly (at the cost of being less concise):

Suppose that you pick arbitrary person P who is paid minimum wage and arbitrary person Q who is paid minimum wage. Regardless of how you picked P and Q, will it always be a fact that P and Q perform work of equal value?

before I felt left hanging, not sure to whom you were comparing minimum wage workers. My comment was that I think those who work for low wages generally tend to work harder than those in the top executive positions--I was comparing minimum wage workers with CEOs.

Now that understand your question, the answer is obviously no, because you have an absolute ("always") in there. Even without it, though, it would still be no, because minimum wage jobs vary so greately some would have greater value than others, and would depend upon the situation. For example, my boss bid in a job that had to be done in a certain amount of time. Prep work turned out to be more than our regular techs could handle, so he hired a kid at minimum wage to do it. The work that kid did on that particular job was of very great value; without it, we would have lost the contract. Yet that very same kid could do that very same work on another job where time wasn't critical and be doing a job of less value.

It has replaced the notion that workers should share in the profits of an enterprise. As the manufacturing process and modern life increases in complexity, it becomes more difficult to calculate what an individual share in an enterprise should be. On a 17th century trading vessel or even on a modern crab boat, when the ship returns to port and offloads, a value can be placed on the cargo and it is pretty easy to apportion shares of the profit from the voyage.

However, when it was time for factory workers to ask for their fair share, they and their unions fell into the trap of asking for it based on the number of hours worked. Capitalists and management were more than happy to concede to this demand, for it left the profits of the enterprise untouched. Once workers were paid by the hour, a floor could be established and called the "minimum wage" and the employee could be treated as a cost of production, similar to the cost of running the air conditioning, or the mileage cost of a fleet vehicle.

In any profitable business, the people who are being paid minimum wage are, by definition, doing work of higher value than what they are being paid. All the surplus value that they create goes to the capitalist owning the business. Some create more surplus value than others, and they are the ones who are singled out as "employee of the month" or some other (non-monetary) honor. Some workers who stand out as particular liabilities don't even produce work of minimum wage value, and they are the ones who can't keep a job and keep getting fired from a succession of minimum wage jobs.

Minimum wage is a concept which tries to honor work by placing a minimum value on a worker's time. Unfortunately, its logical counterpart, the maximum wage, has not been established. One knows intuitively that this number exists, for if there is a level below which the pay is an insult, there has to be a level above which, the pay is shameful greed. Right now it is around $70/hour, or about 10 times the minimum wage. Anyone who is making more than $70/hour ($140K per year) only receives that compensation because the capitalist in charge has agreed to share the capital in the venture with him. After all, he could easily be offshored or outsourced if the venture really cared about cutting costs.

In summary, valuing work by the hour is a trap of the capitalists' making that ensnares the common worker. They have been conditioned to be docile and think by the hour instead of by the job and ask "what is my fair share in the accomplishment of this job?"

You've opened my eyes on the concept of wages. Thank you!

If the rest of the thread seems merely pointless to you, then there should be no significant conflict between nominating this thread (what you can do) and what you want to, but cannot, do.

When thinking over the problems of the modern world, sometimes it is valuable to go back to history and ask if it was always so. The 17th century sailing ship is a good example, but I had to dig it out of obscure books about the history of the spice trade, and even then, the topic of worker's wages was a footnote. Of course the captain got the biggest wage, and of course the cabin boy the lowest, but since they had no way of knowing how long the voyage would take, it would never occur to them to pay the crew by the hour. Once a voyage was done, the pay was for the whole voyage since the members of the crew could sign on again, go home, go to a different ship, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the captain's take was 10 times the take of the cabin boy (or more), since even the most primitive of human associations has a hierarchy. So they had their minimum and maximum wages, after a fashion. I doubt though, that the captain got several hundred times the cabin boy's take, like CEOs are wont to do now.

Thank you, that is a great post

Temporarily ignoring the expense of wages, are you assuming that every organization that has employees always generates -- for every month of the year -- more revenues than expenses? How many employees are willing to accept less than minimum wage when their employer is experiencing economic problems that might be temporary and might not be temporary?

As for sharing of profits, did it occur to you that a significant minority of employees work for governments and non-profit organizations?

Suppose that some municipal bureaucrats anticipate higher tax revenues if a block of contiguous private residences were demolished and replaced with big-box retailers that might attract consumers who have driver's licenses and cars and who live outside the municipality. Suppose that the owners of those private residences resided in them and didn't want to sell. The municipal bureaucrats do the work of explaining their idea to the local municipal politicians and lobbying for the politicians to make the change. The municipal politicians use eminent domain to force the owners to sell. If big-box retailers do set up shop and property tax revenues increase, then how much of the increase should be shared among the municipal bureaucrats who contributed to that increase?

Let's not even get into techniques for increasing revenue that might be used by health care workers.

as a student of economics I can hardly believe I've never actually stopped to question the notion of measuring the value of labor on an hourly basis.

Pretty much any able bodied person of nominal intelligence can execute a minimum wage job.

That's why those jobs pay what they pay.

Want more money? Bring better skills. About 30 months ago two of my workers stopped me in the hall and asked for a bump. "How much" I asked. Hmmmmm... 'bout fifty cents.... so at the time I had a calculator in hand and I showed them that fifty cents would work out to around 13 dollars a week after taxes. They were shocked.

Anyway I said no on the bump but suggested a way for each of them to increase their wage by about 12.00/ hour. One sad nawwww. The other said maybe, Then yes. She went back to the local community college and enrolled in an LPN program.

I've rehired the one who sad yes into an LPN position at 19/hr. She graduated in May08 having gone back to school in August06.

The other is still with me having been increased twice at 2.5%. Now she makes 8.96/hr. Two people, similarly situated. Two choices.

I don't suppose it occurred to you that the employee who shunned going to college had reasons for it. Maybe she had children and couldn't afford the childcare while she was in class. Maybe she has a learning disability that makes school difficult.

Furthermore, just because the level of skill required to do a particular job isn't that high doesn't mean the job itself isn't difficult, nor that it doesn't bring a lot of value to the employer. I'm guessing that the employees that you (stingily) refused to give a raise to were some kind of health care aides. I happen to think they do very important work that not everyone can do and ought to be making more than the poverty wages you are paying them.

TY for responding. I appreciate that you read what I posted.

You don't have to make a payroll on a regular basis, correct? My business skill provides jobs for 150 people. Do you think money to build and run businesses just materializes out of thin air and coalesces around people at random? It certainly does not.

Is there any mechanism to determine wage? Should there be? I say yes and it should be the market. Otherwise you'll have the equivalent of the DMV up your ass trying to compare apples and oranges. It isn't perfect but whatever is in second place is a receding speck in the rear view mirror. And if, especially if, in this country, you can't reinvent yourself to improve your station then, by and large, you just aren't trying. I earn my keep.

On edit- Medicaid and Medicare are the life blood of healthcare. Want workers there to have more money? Then improve the system. Or we could always just raise taxes.....

Didya check that profile?

Hobby
Real Estate. I'll get some "hobbies" later. Like when I'm near death.

Comment
Got a boat at the shore.
Camaro in the garage.
Life is fuckin good.

Gosh. I wonder how somebody with that sentiment and the views expressed here will be voting?


As for the particular situation -- I guess that if bimbo #2 had gone off to community college, why, the minimum-wage job would have just disappeared ... and everybody in the company would now have college diplomas and be making $20/hour. Which, by the way, works out to $400/week before taxes etc., if it's a 40-hour week. Which works out to $20,800/year (assuming pay for 52 weeks/year, i.e. that vacation is provided and paid for).

Wonder who rears a family on that wage in Philadelphia these days.

Figure working 40 hrs/wk for 50 weeks is 2000 hrs. I agree with the rest of your post.

2x2=?

;)


(I mean -- 2x4! Dunnit again.)

For example, suppose somebody had looked for gaps in the reasoning in Euclid's Elements and had published, in the mid-1800s, an essay that described some potential gaps in the reasoning in Euclid's Elements. Suppose that "Are there gaps in Euclid's reasoning?" was the title of the essay. If Moritz Pasch (1843-1930) had chosen to read the essay, then would he have been justified in considering the author of the essay to be a troublemaker?

That's my answer.