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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