But I'm a little confused how it would work in practical terms. Say we decide that paying someone 20K/yr is a living wage. Okay, first problem solved. But how do we make sure that people want to still work jobs that they'd only make 15K a year, clearly they'd have to get a raise right? But then what if the costs of X, Y and Z products go up? Inflation. Will won't that mean the living wage will have to go up too?

Essentially, how will a practical living wage be introduced, without causing un-nessecarilly high inflation, while still encouraging people working low-wage service industry jobs to keep doing them? Heck, is inflation so bad that we'd need to avoid it? (I'd assume it is, but if you can argue that it's not...then be my geust).

A first order effect of this change is an increase in the unemployment rate. This would come from some employers not willing to pay the new rates and from more job seekers willing to work for higher rates. Total employment would drop from this effect.

However, there are second order effects. With higher pay rates comes increased demand. Which causes increased employment, reducing unemployment.

The other problem, given the current scheme of things, is what the central bank would do with the inflationary aspects of this. Right now, increase unemployment by cranking the interest rates. Not a good result.

In order to implement this we need to shift some power relations and come up with some new techniques for economic management. If corporate tax rates rose with unemployment and inflation there would be powerful pressures placed on the key economic decision makers to behave better.

PS

The moral to pay attention to is: You can't just change one thing.

[ 01 January 2006: Message edited by: jrootham ]

Another related thread

[ 01 January 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

And if people over-consume some product or commodity, then why not impose a tax on it to reduce consumption or scarcity of natural resources that accompany the manufacture of it ?.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jrootham:
With respect to the inflation question, what changes to the power structure are required so that we can implement that answer?

---

I think that whether it's an economy designed around people and societal needs or whether we continue with the environmentally and socially destructive one we have now, I agree that change is in order. Economic decision-making should more democratic wrt setting inflation rate goals and interest rates as is performed now by unelected central bankers and their friends at Canadian Club meetings. Karl Polanyi suggested that economic decision making be governed by something similar to American government structure with its three separate executive, judiciary and congressional(senate and house of reps) branches and "at arms-length" separation with none of each having anymore power over the other two.

It's true that the Republicans in that country have been able to circumvent the democratic nature of their government with judiciary appointments sympathetic to the cause of the rich corporate America, but at least it's interesting. The CCF/NDP never advocated separate provincial and territorial governments, or the recent decentralization of federal powers to the provinces as per our liberals. By comparison, I think Canada has more government per capita than the Yanks do.

It's either that or blood in the streets revolution and immediate re-distribution of wealth and land to the people. Personally, I think this option would have longer lasting effects. What we have now is a festering wound in Ottawa. Wounds need cleaning every so often to prevent decay and rot. A new broom sweeps clean, yes ?.

Viva la revolucion!

[ 01 January 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Why is it everywhere I read one of your posts you are whining about rich corprate america and crying for revolution and asking for distribution of wealth.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by forward:
progressive...I thought that meant moving forward,Playing the vitim never moved anything forward. I thought making changes in ones own life to achieve thier goals moved things forward.Did I miss something here....shed some light please

---

So all of those costs get passed on to the consumer, therefore it takes an equal or greater portion of one's new hourly wage to get the same product. And the people like me who are hovering just above where the line would probably be placed- we just get screwed.

And that's just an example- it applies to most inexpensive consumer goods. Computers and yachts would be unaffected... but that doesn't really matter.

Gir, you and I have the skills to make our own pizzas. But how can you deny pizza workers the right to a decent wage?

So I concur with Fidel that if we have to work, which we all do, then I'd like to work for a purpose. For something that benefits people or the environment.

I will never again work for a "Nothing Corporation" that produces nothing except pollution and environmental degradation.

quote:

---

Originally posted by nuclearfreezone:
Funny, I was having a conversation with my 14 year old son just last night. We were discussing a job I once had at a printing plant that printed nothing but flyers which, for the most part, end up in the garbage or as bird cage liner.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lagatta:

Perhaps that is the problem; very cheap, and often exploited immigrant, labour, is at the heart of the pizza-delivery business. Along with crap white flour and crap cheese etc...

---

Funny how history repeats itself. (Well not funny, per se...)

One of the strongest reasons that socialists and anti-capitalists were so successful was because they convinced workers that their work was worth something. We are getting to the point in our history in which capitalists have convinced us that work is worthless. One of the rallying cries I'm sure we've all heard is that if we don't like how [publicly traded company X] is operated, we should buy stock. In other words, work isn't worth anything; the only thing that has value is capital.

quote:

---

Originally posted by forward:
The very idea of a living wage is obserd.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by forward:
The very idea of a living wage is obserd. It takes away every principal this country was founded on. Yes it is a dog eat dog world. Thats reality. We are not all equal.

---

I once helped out a friend who had a small business. It was unskilled. She paid me $10 an hour, way over minimum wage at the time. Still, with the transportation costs (TTC and Mississauga transit) and the exhaustion (necessitating 'fast' = not cheap food), I was not making much. During the long commute, I calculated how I might live if this was my full-time job. I couldn't. There were no benefits. Dentist. Glasses. Prescriptions. Daycare if I had needed it, which I didn't thank gawd.

Ah hell, the point of this thread was not to argue whether a living wage is a good thing, but how it might be achieved.

If a person works full-time, he or she deserves a living wage. What that wage should cover is open to argument and will vary as to circumstances.

quote:

---

Originally posted by forward:
Crappy jobs are lifes little way of telling you to better yourself.
I know that sounds a little harsh,but I do understand we dont all start out equal, in that some are born in rich families and some poor.

---

I think crappy posts like this degrades the integrity of this forum where facts and truth are usually the rule. You are a crude and ignorant person who should consider moving to the United States, or any of its trading partners in Central America and Haiti, if you believe that inequality and upside-down socialism are what people are asking for from their elected leaders.

quote:

---

Poverty

At a time when the unemployment rate is 7 percent consider the following:
- Canada has become a low-wage economy with the second highest percentage of low-wage
workers of any OECD country. Only the US has a greater percentage.
- 23.5 percent of Canadians earn less than $10 an hour, barely above the poverty line even
working full time (in Scandinavia, 5 percent of workers are in low-wage jobs).
- Seventy percent of minimum wage earners are women.
- All March 2005 job creation was in part time work a trend deliberately encouraged by federal
and regional governments in the name of “flexible labour markets”, globalization and competitiveness, Except that for all our low wage pandering to corporations and business, and appalling rate of child poverty(next to the USA), Canada doesn't even rank in the top ten list for most competitive countries as do those with higher degrees of social democracy ranking high in the top five - Economic Competitive Growth Index 2005
- Women who are young, lone-parent, of colour or other racial groups, and new immigrants with
qualifications not recognized by the government, suffer high rates of poverty.
- Women make 73 cents for every dollar a male makes (and do all the care giving tasks that
society expects women free of charge).
- Aboriginal women face even greater pay inequity making on average less than Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal men, and non-Aboriginal women.

---

cfuw women in action

quote:

---

But at some point in our lives we become adults and take charge of our own destiny.The road to success may be hard for some than others ,but not impossible.

---

Except that in the U.S. and Canada, inequality is what makes possible the transfer of wealth from the middle and working class poor to a small minority of billionaires and multi-millionaires.

"We can have democracy in this country[U.S.], or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Justice Louis Brandeis

[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by candle:

You sure you werne't printing the National Post :-)

---

As for this:

quote:

---

Why is it everywhere I read one of your posts you are whining about rich corprate america and crying for revolution and asking for distribution of wealth.

---

And the program is this: sieze power and create legislation that benifits yourself.

.......oh, yeah, when WE do it, it's called piracy. When the wealthy do it, it's called capitalism...

Yar.

On a more serious note, I distrust the notion that one can act on economic hypothesis or theory and have it work in the real world. I say this because I've never heard an economic hypothesis or theory that wasn't dogma in drag.

Which is not to say that it's wrong to hypothesize. But the ideas need to be modeled and tested on a small scale first.

Those models may already exist. I'd like to see if Mennonite or Amish economics might have something relevant to offer us, for example.

I think the way out shouldn't rely on legislatures regulating. They are creatures of those in power, so that avenue is all but closed to us. But we can put our money where our ideas are, and start figuring out ways to fire the boss, and let the workers run the companies.

quote:

---

.......oh, yeah, when WE do it, it's called piracy.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
Somebody lose their kid ?.

---

[ 10 January 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]