Q&A: What do you think about the Minimum 40 movement?
What do you think about the Minimum 40 movement?
Question
Answer
I’m not familiar with this movement. I just now saw that they are demanding an increase in the minimum wage. What’s the problem? They have the right to demand it, and the state has the right not to accept the demand.
The basic question is whether setting a minimum wage is itself appropriate. I addressed that very briefly just now here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%a1%d7%a0%d7%a7%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%95%d7%a9%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9c%d7%AA-%d7%a8%d7%99%d7%A9%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9F-%d7%9C%d7%9E%D7%99-%d7%A9%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%A7-%d7%91%D7%98%D7%99%D7%A4#comment-59207
Discussion on Answer
(My personal inclination is that a minimum wage does improve the overall situation in the country, and it probably ought to be indexed to something rather than set each time as a fixed hard number. But first one needs assessments from professional economists. Except that principles are one thing and egoism is another, and it’s not at all clear that the sociological group in Israel that interests me in practice more than Indonesians would profit from raising the minimum wage.)
Just to note that there are also economic considerations against a minimum wage that aren’t connected to justice and liberty, but rather to the usual capitalist maximization of overall happiness (and in the crappy world that the Holy One, blessed be He, created for us, capitalism certainly does that better than communism), because it raises prices and may harm low earners even more, and hurts competitiveness with other countries (so they may lose their jobs altogether, because it will no longer be worthwhile for the employer), and so on.