Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 20:03:15 -0500
From: Brian Carnell <briand-AT-carnell.com>
Subject: Re: Brian Carnell on Minimum Wage


At 08:47 PM 3/3/96 -0600, Carrol Cox wrote:

>as a matter of fact, the matter of both the minimum wage and
>the content of the struggle for it could be an important topic for
>this list to pursue. I should like to start it off by noting that
>a job (and thus "employment" or "unemployment") is NOT a "thing" like
>a stone or an electron or even an idea like *pi* or the speed of light;
>it is a SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP, and thus its content is subject to
>constant social struggle. Hence it is literal non-sense, pure gibberish,
>to state that "X decreases (or increases) unemployment."

This is nonsensical.  Jobs are supported by the level of income and wealth 
in an economy.  When you raise the minimum wage, companies will either lower 
the wages throughout or reduce their workforce.

How do you think unions get higher wages consistently for their members?  By 
limiting the supply of labor.

If jobs were merely social relationships, we could have full unemployment 
tomorrow by simply expanding our social relationships.  But jobs are 
fundamentally *economic* relationsihps.


>    In any case, it is almost certainly not true that even in bourgeois
>terms a higher minimum wage generates "unemployment"; it is at least as
>likely to increase employment. This argument is one of the slimier of
>the current scams of capitalism in the United States--and it induces
>vomit to see someone on this l*st repeat it.

Here your are quite wrong.  An increase in the minimum wage cuts jobs 
specifically among young people and in jobs that are low-end to begin with.  
Minimum wage increases end up hurting those people barely getting by already.


-------------------------------------------------------
Brian Carnell
briand-AT-carnell.com



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