Minimum Wage
Is their any reason, why we should abstain from a globally sufficient minimum wage? Usually we get taught and scared in many ways, that our employer will dismiss us, and shall leave the country, not to diminish or loose his profits. There are so many other places and so many other people who will be content with a little job and a little money, that's the story.
Sure, it's a true story, but it can be changed anyway. Suppose, most places and most people won't do any longer without a decent minimum wage. Then what use was there in firing workers? or in leaving the country?
But truly, what will change?
First, profits will decline. So that factories, offices and business must go bankrupt? No, business community will raise prizes to keep production and trade profitable. A minimum wage is no obstacle against labour being lucrative. There is no economic reason for low wages, not to speak of handouts hailed a salary.
But if prizes go up, wages will go down in effectivity, since they can pay less. To keep up with maintenance costs the minimum wage must be risen again, taking along prizes again, and so on. Where does this logical circle stop? Can there be a balance between prizes and wages?
Suppose, after a while of hard struggle, everybody can make a proper living and thus is pleased with his income. Minimum wages and all other wages will have reached a sufficient level. Need prizes to go up then any longer? No. Even more, prizes will go down again, when productivity becomes improved.
So it's only a question of profit. The lower wages are, the higher profits climb. The heart of the problem is rivalry. Who's making more profit, will swallow more competitors. Investors and their execution officers are so ruthless because of being afraid. But, we must keep in mind, they are afraid of each other.
How will this situation change, when sufficient minimum wages become achieved? Rivalry will stay alive, but its battlefields will not include unreasonable exploitation any more. That's just a question of power, so it's a political question indeed. Rivalry can do without depriving people of an adequate income. Instead, rivalry will withdraw then to a competition of productivity.
So I can see no economical reasons, why minimum wages should not be established. Sure, it must be globally done. Only this way investors will stop to erode workforce round the globe until it is wasted. Instead, production will stay allocated where it is most effective and productive. A decent living by no means can be an obstacle to a successful economy. On the contrary, any economy which fails to provide a decent living is absurdly perverted.
But how can it be done? How can minimum wages globally get through?
I think this task is not one for workers and employees alone, and surely not a fight in several shattered fields of suppressed action and despair. This is a job for all people who are discontent with the actual global situation. Sure, it will be necessary to combine the struggle of all trade unions, but even this will not be sufficient. It's a question of a vital social system, of life and death, so all of us are to get active. We need to express our will by all legal means we can think of, or may invent, until we shall overcome. I have no doubt that millions of mutual advisers will have tons of great ideas to surprise those who ask for it.
Business community surely will oppose with all its might, but being the known one percent this elite necessarily cannot form a majority. And it is to be well reminded, owners and managers actually are only afraid of each other. So, if all of them are well treated the same, since all have to pay minimum wages, their fearful means need not include ruthlessness, corruption, intervention, subversion, cheating, counterinsurrection, or war any more. Business community will turn to compete in productivity, instead of unbounded exploitation. I'm quite sure this will make social consensus last for another, appropriate period. And what is to be called appropriate? Until we all know much better, and decide in an organized way what is to be done next.
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