Minimum wage as a standard

August 4, 2006 on 9:10 am | In Junk Drawer, Vote for ... |

I think most would agree that minimum wage should not be so excessively high as to hurt business but enough to allow the workers some level of protection against exploitation. Currently congress seems to use it as a political opportunity rather than a legitimate issue on it’s own merits. My solution would be to use minimum wage as a component of all government employee pay rates. That is let all government pay rates be some multiple of the current minimum wage. So if congress wants a pay increase for itself it would be required to raise minimum wage to affect their pay. Of course setting the multiplier would be an initial source of contention and provisions would need to be made for adjusting the multiplier. But once set the multiplier should have more hurdles to make an adjustment, perhaps a 2/3’s majority or someother measure such as adding to an election ballot. All factors that affect pay for government workers could be keyed from the minimum wage including, promotions, bonuses, annual increases etc.

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  1. Minimum wage as a standard

    nice..

    Trackback by jp35y — August 4, 2006 #

  2. Why not base pay rates for congress on minimum wage? If the pay rate for members of congress was based on some multiple of minimum wage I bet they would adjust it regularly. Basically if they want a raise they would have to increase the minimum wage. They vote themselves pay increases on the down low and nobody seems to notice or care. Tie it to the minimum wage and they would think twice about it. -Soulcast

    Comment by Wisdom — August 5, 2006 #

  3. Some would argue to just do away with the minimum wage altogether and let a free market set the “fair market” value. If we had a free and fair labor market, I would agree to let the marketplace determine minimum pay rates. Since “cheating” by employers is rampant by doing things such as exploiting cheap illegal workers and evading local unemployement taxes and social security by misclassification of employess as independant contractors. The labor market cna’t honestly be described as being either free or fair. Nobody seems to mind congress voting themselves a pay raise, Why do they need a pay raise? I don’t think it is because they have done such an outstanding job it is justified based on performance. Everybody expects wage increases periodically including teens and adults earning at or near the minimum wage.

    Comment by Stupid Wisdom — August 6, 2006 #

  4. Others would argue that only 1% earn minimum wage and they are all teens, so who cares? This amounts to trivialising the need because the so called “1%” isn’t a signicant enough number or because they are “mostly teens” to justify action. If this is of so little insignificant then would be the harm in increasing the minimum wage? If this is the case then could just as well triple the minimum wage since so few would be affected. From an ethical standpoint, doing what is “best” for “majority” (99% of the population), without regard for the minority (1% of the population), is the type of logic that leads to slavery. Enslaving the 1%-minority to serve 99%-majority would provide the most benefits to the 99%-majority at the expense of the other 1%-minority.

    Comment by Stupid Wisdom — August 6, 2006 #

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