To
understand the arguments of capitalists against the minimum wage, follow the
money. In all the thickets of pious reasoning about the merits of capitalism
and the market, and of freedom of contract, and of allowing this marvelous
mechanism to work its magic, and of what Adam Smith said, the key is the
dollar. The rest is fraud. Carefully
ignored is the question that will be crucial in coming decades: What to do
about an ever-increasing number of people for whom there is no work…….
(Full text
at link below)
……People
of IQ 130 and up tend to assume unconsciously–important word:
“unconsciously”–that you can do anything just by doing it. If they wanted to
learn Sanskrit, they would get a textbook and go for it. It would take time and
effort but the outcome would never be in doubt. Yes, of course they understand
that some people are smarter than others, but they often seem not to grasp how
much smarter, or what the consequences are. A large part of the population can’t learn-much of
anything. Not won’t. Can’t. Displaced auto workers cannot be retrained as IT
professionals.
Few of the
very bright have have ever had to make the unhappy calculation: Forty times a
low minimum wage minus bus fare to work, rent, food, medical care, and cable.
They have never had to choose between a winter coat and cable, their only
entertainment. They don’t really know that many people do. Out of sight, out of
mind.
Cognitive
stratification has political consequences. It leads liberals to think that
their client groups can go to college. It leads conservatives to think that
with hard work and determination…..
It ain’t
so. An economic system that
works reasonably well when there are lots of simple jobs doesn’t when there
aren’t. In particular, the large number of people at IQ 90 and below will
increasingly be simply unnecessary. If you are, say, a decent, honest young
woman of IQ 85, you probably read poorly, learn slowly and only simple things,.
Being promoted, or even hired, requires abilities that you do not have. This,
plus high (and federally concealed) unemployment allows employers to pay you
barely enough to stay alive. Here is the wondrous working of the market.
As the
stock market reaches new highs and the nation’s wealth concentrates in fewer
and fewer hands, we hear that a rising tide floats all boats. This is fine if
you have a boat. Maybe it only looks as though capitalists flourish while
the middle class sinks and the welfare rolls grow and kids have to live at home
and they will have no retirement. Well, some boats leak, I guess.
When the
theorists of free enterprise imagine that our dim-witted young lady should be
permitted the freedom to sell her labor for what it is worth, they do not worry
that her labor isn’t worth enough to feed her. Some who say this simply do not
understand what her life is going to be if she is paid what her labor is worth.
Others, with the lack of empathy that characterizes conservatives, don’t care.
If you look at the godawful conditions of their employees in the sweatshops of,
say, Bangladesh, you will see that not caring is common. Let them eat cake.
The question
arises: What does the country do with the large and growing number of people
whose labor is worth nothing? Or, perhaps more accurately, whose labor isn’t
needed? We see this in the cities today. An illiterate kid in Detroit has no
value at all in the market for labor. Assuming that he wants to work, a
questionable assumption, what then? Endlessly expanding welfare? What about the
literate, averagely intelligent kid for whom there are no jobs? If people
working in McDonald’s can barely live on their wages, and strike, or the state
institutes a higher minimum wage, McDonald’s will automate their jobs, is
automating their jobs, and conservatives will exult—the commie bastards got
what they asked for.
This is
capitalism in its perfection.
Full
text at: Capitalism
and the Minimum Wage: “I Got Mine, Screw You.” - The Unz Review
