Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pucc-h Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!CS-Mordred!Pucc-H:afo From: afo@pucc-h (sefton) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Minimum wages Message-ID: <928@pucc-h> Date: Fri, 10-Aug-84 16:29:05 EDT Article-I.D.: pucc-h.928 Posted: Fri Aug 10 16:29:05 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Aug-84 06:58:28 EDT Organization: Purdue University Computing Center Lines: 33 I think what Mr Kelly is trying to point out here, is that there are quite a few of our industrialists who have a firm grasp of economics. Malthusian Economics, that is. If you remember your Malthus, he felt that the population of the earth was outstripping the means to provide for the population. One of the ways he felt that the population could be controlled was by paying subsistence wages to workers, so they could barely take care of themselves, and not go littering the earth with excess children. A lot of people only seem to have heard the subsistence wages part, and not the reasoning behind it. It is analogous to those who practice 'Scientific Management', without realising that Taylor felt that the money saved by increased efficiency of workers should be paid back to the workers (*surprise!*). Now, if we look at the human species and decide that they are a nasty, selfish lot, only interested in their own short term gains, we should begin to appreciate Mr Kelly's argument. If we do away with the minimum wage, within a generation or two, we'll find the larger part of the population barely making it, and a very small percentage doing quite well (and no, I'm not going to get Dickensian). People who can barely afford to get by can't afford to send the kiddies off to college, so there won't be a lot of upward mobility through education. There will probably be a very clear and distinct class distinction. Those who belong to the class that *has* will continue to reap the benefits of cheap labour, while those who belong the the labour class will have a rather short, nasty, and brutish life. Of course, sooner or later, enough people in the labour class will decide that they don't want to live like they do, and the folks at the top of the hill will suddenly find themselves sporting an extra smile. Now, I realise that this *is* a 'worst-case-scenario'; but it is an extrapolation upon the effects of removing minimum wages.... Laurie pucc-k:afo