Labor reform...not going well

[yyy]

@finley

@yyy

@finley

I’m reminding you that a minimum wage, evidently, applies only to people at the bottom of the heap.

There was a proverb, once upon a time, about a rising tide. I wonder what happened to that.

I agree that the ‘rising tide’ is a gross oversimplification. Yet in one of your subsequent posts you imply that a minimum wage does indeed create a ‘rising tide’. In other words, you’re suggesting that lawyers have solved a problem that development economists have struggled with for well over a century. Clever chaps, it seems.

Lawyers created the minimum wage? I guess I need to review my history books.

Minimum wage | History

Let’s step back a bit. Exactly what is your goal in implementing a minimum wage, what do you suppose is the mechanism by which this goal is achieved, and have you considered alternative possibilities for reaching it?

Sorry, I don’t have time to re-invent the wheel for the sake of this discussion. The wiki article has a nice quote from Churchill, fwiw. I’m sure you would object on the grounds of twittiness, but at least he’s not a middle class twit like your lawyers.

What a novel idea, free education. Of course, such a thing would not exist in Finleyndia, as you’ve told us before.

I just said it should be freely available (not free, ie., paid for from taxes). Of course, there are lots of laws about who may provide education, to whom, and on what basis. Governments generally don’t like the plebs receiving real, useful education; they start getting ideas above their station.

We’ve had this conversation before. If you get a time machine and want to go back to the Dickensian era, I won’t stop you. Farewell, Mr. Finley.

Actually, it’s a broad term that includes the minimum wage, working hours, holidays, leave, health & safety, etc., as you can see in Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act.

Sez lawyers, who end up getting their undies in an awful snarl-up. Meanwhile, corporations usually draw lines between financial strategy, HRM, health&safety, and QC … because they’re utterly different things.

Lawyers created not just the minimum wage but the concept of labor standards? Wow, I have so much to learn from the Finleyndian education system, if only I could aford it.

You’re the one saying regulation of payment in kind = command economy.

Fine, a planned economy then. What do you call it when a government sets price levels of goods and services? You do realise, I hope, that when a government sets the price of (say) bread, they’ve automatically set the baker’s salary, the level of subsidies for wheat, the profit margin for millers, the relative desirability of more nutritious food, and so on and so on?

Oh no, we can’t have economic planning!

Even the Americanized, 21st century GOP-ized version of Hayek in Jotham’s rap video was in favor of economic planning. “But who plans for whom? I want plans by the many, not plans by the few.”

As for the price of bread, you don’t mind if the baker is forced to accept the bread he bakes in lieu of cash, regardless of whether it’s calculated at the wholesale price, the retail price, or any other price. I think most bakers would prefer to have some kind of regulation. (NB I am talking about the baker as an employee, which appears to be the default situation in this era of international bakery chains.)

I know which trade-off I prefer, even if it comes with a horrible, horrible tax system.

Eh? You prefer the third world?

One hallmark of a developed nation is a tax system that’s simple to understand and easy to comply with. Third-world countries always have a tax system that’s so byzantine and draconian that people avoid it like the plague, and they do this by the simple expedient of not earning anything.

In my experience it’s the other way around, but I suppose we’re not using the same exemplars of each “world”.

No-one knows more about a contract than the parties who signed it, so they should judge their own dispute. What do you do if the two parties reach opposing judgements?

Well, obviously, the contract doesn’t get signed in the first place. You seem to be getting confused with issues of interpretation, say in the case of breach-of-contract.

Oh, geez. If you don’t like it, just leave! If that means leaving the planet, so be it!

Even when the parties agree (or claim to agree), as some Uber drivers do, society deems it proper to prevent people from signing away their rights. This is elementary.

In other words, we’re back to We Know What’s Best For You.

If it’s wrong for the government to forbid selling your kidney as part of an employment contract, surely it’s twice as wrong for the government to forbid selling both your kidneys. It massively abrogates Darwin’s law.

Or does it? Which society is stronger, the one where half the population walks around with a missing kidney and the other half is already dead, or the one where the government does its job by regulating things?

Here’s a three part series explaining one aspect of what I’m talking about. It’s not only a labor issue.

Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice (Published 2015)

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to apply for a credit card, use a cellphone, get cable or Internet service, or shop online without agreeing to private arbitration. The same applies to getting a job, renting a car or placing a relative in a nursing home.

In Arbitration, a ‘Privatization of the Justice System’ (Published 2015)

Over the last 10 years, thousands of businesses across the country — from big corporations to storefront shops — have used arbitration to create an alternate system of justice. There, rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients, The Times found.

The change has been swift and virtually unnoticed, even though it has meant that tens of millions of Americans have lost a fundamental right: their day in court.

In Religious Arbitration, Scripture Is the Rule of Law (Published 2015)

It’s a little more complicated than that. I think WTF is with Britons? is beyond the scope of this thread.

Want to start another thread on it?

Others have already explained it far more succinctly than I ever could, so I defer to them.

I will, however, share one more clip with you.

- YouTube

If that doesn’t crack you up, nothing I can say will ever make sense to you.