The Right to a Minimum Wage
From the James Legge translation of Confucius.
“The Duke Ai inquired of Yu Zo, saying, "The year is one of scarcity, and the returns for expenditure are not sufficient;-what is to be done?"
“Yu Zo replied to him, "Why not simply tithe the people?"
"With two tenths, said the duke, "I find it not enough;-how could I do with that system of one tenth?"
“Yu Zo answered, "If the people have plenty, their prince will not be left to want alone. If the people are in want, their prince cannot enjoy plenty alone."“
Five Hundred Years before Christ Confucius, more properly called Kung Fu Tse, was telling the Princes of China that the way to increase revenues was to stimulate the economy by cutting taxes. Ecclesiastes 1:9 “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
You may be wondering what this has to do with the idea of minimum wage laws. The Republicans support low taxes and oppose a livable minimum wage. Why begin a section dealing with the right to a livable minimum wage with a quote about lowering taxes?
It has to do with words and meanings. What is a tax? Why do low taxes stimulate the economy? What is a wage? Why do high wages stimulate the economy?
If the Fed taxes income and the local State government taxes income and the local County government taxes income and the local City government taxes income, all of these are called taxes. If an employer takes 100% of the value of a workers production and gives back only 10% in wages, this 90% confiscation of value produced is not called a tax. A business is an intermediate power structure operating at a level between the private citizen and the state just as local, municipal and state governments are. Functionally its confiscation of wealth is no different than taxation.
If the Fed taxes income the Republicans scream that it will discourage investment because there is no reward for investing. If a business lowers wages to a subsistence level with no hope of improvement no matter how hard a worker labors, the Republicans insist that this is just the fair market value of labor.
Why is confiscation of the value of work taxation when done by the government and not taxation when done by a business owner confiscating the value of his workers labor? The idea that it is different derives from the idea that the actions of the State effect Citizens in a manner which the actions of other powers within the State do not have a similar effect.
The role of the state is described by Hobbes.
“From whence we may collect that the propriety which a subject hath in his lands consisteth in a right to exclude all other subjects from the use of them; and not to exclude their sovereign, be it an assembly or a monarch. For seeing the sovereign, that is to say, the Commonwealth (whose person he representeth), is understood to do nothing but in order to the common peace and security, this distribution of lands is to be understood as done in order to the same:”
Hobbes cites a number of historical examples where lands were ceded to subjects by the sovereign and held in trust. Ultimate ownership rested in the Sovereign power according to Hobbes. In the US we cede this power to the State but only under the control of our elected Representatives. “No taxation without Representation”, limit’s the power of taxation but also implicitly recognizes its necessity.
It is the State which creates the environment which allows the creation of wealth as it is the employer who creates the means of production which allow the employee to work and create wealth. Hobbes states later in Leviathan,
“A fifth doctrine that tendeth to the dissolution of a Commonwealth is that every private man has an absolute propriety in his goods, such as excludeth the right of the sovereign. Every man has indeed a propriety that excludes the right of every other subject: and he has it only from the sovereign power, without the protection whereof every other man should have right to the same. But the right of the sovereign also be excluded, he cannot perform the office they have put him into, which is to defend them both from foreign enemies and from the injuries of one another; and consequently there is no longer a Commonwealth.”
Work is a form of property, a worker has as much right to have his work protected by the state from confiscation by other Citizens as a property or business owner does.
In terms of natural law there is no difference between these two actions, the State confiscating excessively or other powers within the State confiscating excessively. Both break the fundamental principle of natural law which mandates the right to own property, the right to liberty, and Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”. Both destroy the relationship between work and reward. Excessive taxation denies the property owner the fruits of his labor, lack of a livable wage denies the worker the fruits of his labor. Both destroy the motivation on the part of the individual citizen to work and invent better ways of doing his work.
It is worthwhile as an exercise in scourging hypocrisy, to quote Mathew 18:23 here,
“Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants.
24 And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.
25 But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.
26 The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
27 Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.
28 But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.
29 And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
30 And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.
31 So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done.
32 Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:
33 Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee?
34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.
35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”
The Republicans are like the servant who desired mercy for himself and had no mercy for others in this matter of taxation or the confiscation of wealth. In the real world there is no need for God to punish this, it always produces its own punishment in the long run due to immutable laws of economics and political philosophy.
If business A lowers wages, business B is forced to lower wages to compete. The employees of business A and B have less purchasing power. This means that they cannot buy as many goods produced by businesses C, D, and E. Businesses C, D, and E have to cut their labor force because there is no longer as large a market for their goods. These workers can no longer buy the goods manufactured by businesses A and B. These businesses must cut their labor forces because the market for their goods is smaller. This then impacts businesses C, D, and E again. This cycle continues until businesses A, B, C, D, and E all go bankrupt. All because the manager of business A thought that low labor costs were a good idea. Letting market forces reduce wages to mere subsistence levels leads to reducing a portion of the labor force to what is essentially slavery with all the problems that entails. Workers must be paid enough so that they can form a market for manufactured goods.
If the Federal Government mandates a livable minimum wage. Business A cannot cut wages too low. Business B does not have to cut wages to compete with A. Businesses C, D, and E continue to have a market for their goods in the employees of Businesses A and B. The economy chugs along. A free market economy requires a market to work. The workers are the market. Minimum wage laws prevent competitive pressures from gradually destroying the market.
Cutting labor costs, as demonstrated in the section on Liberty and Slavery is (to a large degree) an imaginary means of cutting business costs. In the long run it only destroys the economy as a whole. Still, it is seductive to management. Thus it requires the Fed to interfere to protect management from their own stupidity.
A strong economy is built from the bottom up not from the top down. As Confucius said 500 years before Christ.
"If the people have plenty, their prince will not be left to want alone. If the people are in want, their prince cannot enjoy plenty alone."
“The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards.” Adam Smith “The Wealth of Nations” Chapter 8 ‘Of the Wages of Labour”
This particular issue is one of the most glaring examples of the fundamental hypocrisy or stupidity, or cupidity of the Republican party. They scream about family values and parental responsibility and then oppose laws supporting a livable minimum wage. How can parents working 80 hours a week at two minimum wage jobs just to feed their children find the time to spend quality time parenting them? For parents to be able to raise their children properly, workers must have a decent wage. If the Republicans do not want the state to be forced to take over all parental obligations to teach values to children. If the Republicans do not want a national failure of child rearing to force the Fed to assume a tyrannical authority to brainwash children with Politically Correct values, parents must have time to spend with their children. This means that they must have a livable minimum wage.
Aristotle noted the necessity of leisure for the Citizen class around 350 BC in his “Politics”,
“Since the end of individuals and of states is the same, the end of the best man and of the best constitution must also be the same; it is therefore evident that there ought to exist in both of them the virtues of leisure; for peace, as has been often repeated, is the end of war, and leisure of toil.”
A certain degree of leisure is necessary for Citizens to be able to act as Citizens, participate responsibly in the political process and raise their children responsibly. Toil must result in a sufficient degree of leisure.
Many propertied people feel that the vote should be limited to people with property. Study of the characteristics of successful democracies has led to a different conclusion.
“These twofold requisites are not fulfilled by the expedient of a limitation of the suffrage, involving the compulsory exclusion of any portion of the citizens from a voice in the representation. Among the foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their country.” J. S. Mill’s “Representative Government”
A Democracy requires a body of Citizens with sufficient leisure to participate in the government and to learn the basic of that government. The failure to provide a minimum wage reduces the time Citizens have to be Citizens. A Democracy which fails to provide a livable minimum wage will not have Citizens capable of participating in and maintaining a Democracy. In the long run, failure to provide a livable minimum wage will destroy any Democracy and produce a tyranny. This tyranny will, more likely than not, be led by a peoples dictator as the ignorant poorly educated masses trade their freedom for a promise of security. The wealthy who opposed minimum wages will become the victims of their own cupidity.
This idea that the Fed must have enough authority to prevent its being forced to assume tyrannical authority is one of the fundamental principles advanced in the Federalist Papers, and is discussed in the section on the 3rd Amendment in this book.
The Republican position on Minimum Wages laws tends to produce Federal Tyranny brainwashing children to Political Correctness because parents cannot spend the time with their children to raise them properly themselves. Minimum Wage laws are a necessary exercise of the Federal Authority to avoid the conditions which lead inevitably to Tyranny in a number of different ways.
Another example of this principle is the simple fact that economic unrest breeds revolution. Revolutions usually end in the rise of Tyrants. The classic economic revolutionary pattern is of a period of economic growth followed by a collapse. The Federal Government has to take those actions and make those laws necessary to maintain a relatively stable economic situation.
The Republican position can only be considered one created by the great cupidity of most Republicans making them incredibly stupid and short-sighted. No conspiracy theory is needed here, simple predictable human stupidity leads to inevitable Tyranny unless checked by wiser voices. In the sections on this book about a Right to Work and a practical plan for the same an alternative plan in which the Fed provides a competing minimum bid for the labor of Citizens is proposed. This would eliminate the need for minimum wage laws by guaranteeing a minimum compensation for employment that businesses would have to match to hire Citizens to work. There are different means of dealing with the same problem, or more than 1 way to skin a cat.
It has been necessary to smack the Republicans on this issue. It would be wrong not to smack the Democrats as well. If wages are raised by Federal fiat or Union pressure to a point where they no longer represent a fair value for work accomplished or fail to reflect the efficiency and ability of the workers involved, the same fundamental principle of Natural Law is violated. The relationship between work and reward is broken. This results automatically in a slave state as discussed in the section on Socialist Rights.
To apply the Aristotelian principle, “Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.”
Virtue on the part of the state in this instance is again a middle ground between the hypocrisy of the Republicans and the unrealistic foolishness of the Democrats. The practical principle is that there must always be a strong relationship between work and reward. A second practical principle is that the Fed must act with sufficient authority to prevent emergencies arising which would lead to a necessary tyrannical exercise of its powers. A third practical principle is that the economy is built from the ground up not the top down.
This can be viewed formally in terms of Natural Law, Natural Rights and Social Contract theory. As was noted in the section on the Social Contract, Aristotle defined states which did not govern for the welfare of the people as criminal states. Hobbes acknowledged the same principle as Natural Law stating that no Sovereign could be strong if the people were weak and actions by the Sovereign which injured the people injured the Sovereign. The implicit purpose of the Social Contract is to improve on the State of Nature. If the State allows laws or situations to evolve which systematically make the condition of the Citizens worse than they would have been in a State of Nature, then the State has become a criminal State. Hobbes would have denied the right of Citizens to judge these matters leaving it to the Sovereign to act in its own best interests, but Hobbes was terrified or providing an ideological justification for revolution.
Anthropological studies have shown that it took about 6 hours of gathering a day for hunter/gatherers to find the basics of life. 6x7=42. It is probably not a coincidence that our modern workweek is 40 hours long. This is a very well known fact among anthropologists, it is used to debunk the myth of Man the Hunter/Provider in Elaine Morgan’s book, “The Descent of Woman”, Stein and Day, 1972 where she summarizes many of the findings on this issue by anthropologists on page 162.
“Detailed reports by anthropologists on most hunting-gathering groups other than the Arctic ones confirm this. Frederick D. McCarthy and Margaret McArthur’s time-and-motion study of Australian aboriginals reveals that the time spent on procuring and preparing food takes up in one group an average of five hours per day, and in another group less than four. For the ! Kung Bushmen he gives two to three day’s work per week; James Woodburn for the Hadzas, an average of two hours per day. The standard of living by our criteria is of course not high; but a working week which would drive even and American trade unionist wild with envy enables them to live, rear their children, support nonproductive adults, and ensure a varied diet with both calories and proteins well in excess of the dietician’s Recommended Daily Allowance.”
Naturally after gathering the needs of life, time had to be spent at home fixing and preparing them, repairing the shelter, etc. This is equivalent to the time parents spend doing chores around the house, fixing meals, etc. Apparently in a State of Nature, barring various natural catastrophes, humans enjoyed a minimum wage situation in which 40 hours of week or so sufficed to supply their basic needs. Here there is a clear distinction between Natural Law and Positive (or manmade) Law. It can be argued that in Nature natural catastrophes would sometimes result in famine or failure, the guarantee of a livable minimum wage in nature is not absolute.
One issue here is that Nature created Man. Either through mindless evolution or through the intent of a Higher Power. Man cannot make moral judgments against Nature. Man created the State, it was created for a purpose, to improve on the State of Nature. Its purpose was to remedy the effects of natural catastrophe, not implement those effects in a systematic manner. Man can morally judge and condemn his own creation, the State, if it fails to do what it is designed and meant to do. If a State allows laws or situations to develop which make working 60 or 80 hours a week mandatory to achieve the same ends which 40 hours a week would have achieved in a state of nature, then that State is a criminal state.
Since this minimum wage was inherent in nature it is a Natural Right and thus it can be argued that a livable minimum wage that allows the purchase of the basics of life, food, shelter, and some entertainment for 40 hours of work a week is protected under the Ninth and Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Of course there can be no moral obligation to do the impossible. States can only improve on the State of Nature to the degree that they possess the power and ability to do so. What constitutes a livable minimum wage and the obligation to provide it depend on the ability of the society and culture involved.
“Amendment IX; The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
“Amendment X; The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
A similar argument is advanced for the Right to Work being a Natural Right in the section dealing with that issue.