What’s Wrong with the World

Arguably, the living wage distorts the information revealed by the price system, which in theory measures the scarcity of a thing or a skill set.

But this argument, which immediately came to my mind, reveals just how severely quantitative concerns have obscured considerations of worth and duty. The first seems more obvious and authoritative than the latter. Economism and scientism go hand in hand.

Single men, however, have to make as much as married men, so that they can demonstrate to single women that they are able to support a wife and family. Otherwise they are liable to remain single men.

Would an employer who hired a single man be obliged to give him a raise if he got married, and subsequent raises for each child he fathered? If so, that's a "marriage penalty" that I could have lived with as a young man!

Yes, let's pay people to have children. Brilliant.

No, let's support people who have children. Brilliant indeed.

No, let's support people who have children.

One of the arguments against the welfare state has always been that it encourages women to have more children in order to get a bigger check.
In order for the concept of giving raises based on marriage and births not to be similar in effect, it would seem that the married men getting more salary based on having more children would need also to become proportionally more productive with each raise, in order not to damage the economy by having increased his family size. Or, am I missing something there?

Aside from the drawbacks listed in the article. I see the following flaws:

1. It is nightmarishly bureaucratic
If the employer must pay the one with dependents more, then he will charge more for his work. Can you imagine going to Burger King and seeing this menu:

Whopper - $2.99
Whopper made by single mother with 5 kids - $10.99

Yikes. This situation would be repeated everywhere.

2. This economic discrepancy is already accounted for in taxes.
We have different tax rates for marital status and tax breaks for dependents. As much as I hate the government economically penalizing me for not marrying the first thing that came around, for not impregnating girls to chalk up my list of dependents, etc...I find it far more palatable than private business doing the same.

3. Whose to say single people aren't saving money to get married? Or have none-child dependents?

Rodak,

See, it's OK to pay people to have children when business pays, not the government. That way, someone else has to open his wallet whereas when the government does it, I (and you) have to.

See?

Of all the practical points raised here, the one by the second commentator seems to me most relevant for a reason particular to my own worries about the whole "living wage" concept: I think there needs to be more, rather than less, pressure on men in our society to make sure that they can support a wife before they take one. I object to the notion that a guy can get married unthinkingly and then expect "someone else" to take care of the increased expenses, especially if children arrive quickly. Now, these days, that "someone else" is usually the wife herself! She's ususally expected to work. But in a "living wage" situation there could still be the encouragement of thoughtlessness: He would just expect some employer to take pity on him and increase his wages or hire him at a living wage. Then if it didn't happen, he, and his wife, would be stuck. The girl considering getting married would not be able to tell if her husband would be able to support her, much less children, ahead of time, and thus she and her parents would find it hard to exercise due discretion in choosing a husband and counseling the young engaged couple. This is a problem now. It seems to me "living wage" pressure on employers would simply continue that problem in a different way, without addressing the need for young men to find themselves a job that allows them to support a wife before getting married. Indeed, the "living wage for married men" idea positively guarantees that the single young man won't be able to do this, and as long as the increased wage for the married man is kept ad hoc and informal (which I certainly think it should), the problem of planning for marriage and male responsible foresight would remain.

Zippy,
Hospitals, for example, don't hire fathers or mothers. They hire doctors, nurses, administrators, and technicians -- who might or might not be fathers or mothers. The hospital staff are paid for the job they do, not for the children they have or don't have at home. The employer does not support the kids at home; the worker who is a parent does so. If the children are not well cared for, the parents are responsible, not, say, the board of directors at the hospital. The board's job is to run an excellent hospital and to keep it going well. Their obligation is not to put someone else's kids through college, or to pay for soccer camp. That's the parents' obligation.

In other words, you are overlooking not only the division of labor, but the division of responsibility and of obligation. And you are treating employers like things -- in this case an ATM. After all, employers have children to support and bills to pay. Their obligation is to take good care of them; your obligation is to take good care of your own. Don't treat your employer as a thing, an impersonal money source to which you can go in order to have it meet your domestic obligations. Furthermore, not to put the domestic obligation where it belongs is to treat employees as things, not as real persons with real obligations before both God and man. Your solution to the alleged impersonalization of employment is itself an impersonalization.

If you have children, YOU take care of them. If you don't make enough money to support them properly, then you need to work more hours, get more training, or get a different job. The obligation is yours, not someone else's. If you have not acquired a highly marketable skill, one that others will pay you well to exercise, the fault lies with you, not your employer. And that's where the solution lies as well. Real persons recognize, and meet, their obligations.

Michael Bauman
www.michaelbauman.com

I largely agree except I think government and corporations are not able to make fine distinctions so I would just increase the minimum wage to a family wage and excempt proprietorships from having to pay it. It isn't like what Zippy is saying is something we don't know to be true. If anyone was running a small shop with a few employees and a guy with 5 children sought employment and you knew that such a man couldn't support himself with that wage, you would rightly ask him why he was seeking a job there. I think the movie 9-5 even had a boss saying that he had to pay a guy more because he had to support a wife and kids. We don't have to go that far into our history to see the obligation was real before all this feminist nonsense.

As a moral case, one should receive equal pay for equal work. The Vatican has affirmed this many times. This does not preclude us from saying however that x% of all jobs are paying an immoral wage because they expect a man with wife and children to support his family on a substandard salary.

Lydia: those are all good points. I don't think the notion of a "living wage" can make sense as something independent of how diligently a man works. I think if a particular family man whom one as hired turns out to be a slacker there isn't anything inherently wrong with firing him. On the other hand accomodating him as a father does not appear to me to be morally optional as long as he is an employee: if I am going to hire him and take up the bulk of his wage-earning time, I'd better (as a moral matter) be willing to pay him enough to support his family to at least a very basic level. If I hire a single mother, my moral obligations are different if she is a widower attempting to raise her family on her own vs. if she is never married with a revolving bedroom door, and I have some moral obligation as an employer to know what I am doing in this regard: to deal with my employees as persons, not as interchangeable cogs in a machine.

As for the plight of the single man, well, I see that as something of a bonus or at least as mixed. Anything that makes both men and women take more seriously the decision to marry, and spend more continent time preparing the way for that eventuality, is a good thing. A lot of that is beyond the scope of the present subject though.

The way things are set up now doing the right thing is highly illegal, of course. My objection isn't so much that the government doesn't force everyone to do the right thing here; it is that the law forbids everyone from doing the right thing here. "Living wage" is to my way of thinking a moral category, and while the government is incapable of resolving every moral issue with a policy it should at the least refrain from rendering right action impossible. That doesn't mean I would be strictly laissez-faire on the matter: I would for example seriously consider taxing corporate profits at a lower rate based on the number of children who are supported by employee income, and I would at least consider imposing significant penalties on companies which are clearly avoiding hiring fathers because of economic considerations, thus through economic penalties disadvantaging immoral corporate behavior. Instead of an Equal EOC I might well have an Unequal EOC for enforcement in egregious cases.

Hospitals, for example, don't hire fathers or mothers. They hire doctors, nurses, administrators, and technicians -- who might or might not be fathers or mothers. The hospital staff are paid for the job they do, not for the children they have or don't have at home.

Right, I understand, and it is precisely that to which I object. What I am suggesting is that hiring 'functional units' as opposed to human beings is immoral.

"As for the plight of the single man, well, I see that as something of a bonus or at least as mixed." I'm not sure I really get that, practically speaking. Can you give an example of what you are picturing? For example, imagine your sort of ideal society in this regard. Some guy is a really good guy, and has met a great girl, and they'd like to get married. He can find a job, or he has a job, but as long as he's single, he'll be paid a "single wage." Maybe this single wage requires him to have a couple of working guy roommates to pay the rent of one apartment. Now how, in that circumstance, are they supposed to have reason to believe that they can responsibly get married? How is this not saying to them, "Just take the plunge and get married on faith, and hope the employer pays the guy more, or else don't get married ever. Tough luck"? The problem I see is that people seem to be being given the choice of being irresponsible or never getting married. Or is the idea just that paying a "living wage" gets so widespread that they can use induction and expect that the guy will get a raise after the wedding? Or that he can work this out by a conversation with his employer ahead of time before he puts an engagement ring on her finger? Or what?

Instead of an Equal EOC I might well have an Unequal EOC for enforcement in egregious cases.

That's why we love Zippy. He states flatly the most gratuitous defiance of Liberalism.

Sorry, Zippy, but you can't produce a solid reply to an objection simply by reiterating your position. There are numerous arguments to refute -- or else a position to recant.

Yes, we know you think that the marketplace treats persons as "functional units." I showed how what you said was false, how what you advocated was an immoral evasion of obligation, and how it committed the very error you were trying to avoid - both with regard to the employer and to the employee. Mere reiteration does not cut it.

To expand on my initial remarks, I do think there is a moral case for equal wages. Of course we are talking about menial labor when discussing the family wage. It would be silly to argue that the male ob-gyn needs more than the $150,000 a female ob-gyn makes due to the disparity of his obligations. Do I think we need a two tier system for waiters and waitresses? No. I also don't think it is unreasonable to say waiting tables is not a family wage job. I do have a problem with people trying to excuse places like Wal-Mart who in many cases are the largest employers in various counties from having to pay family wages.

Now how, in that circumstance, are they supposed to have reason to believe that they can responsibly get married?

I'm puzzled why that is a problem. A man doesn't (ordinarily) go from unmarried to having five kids to feed in a matter of months, and I see no reason why adjustments wouldn't be gradual here as in most things. If adjustments to changing states of life are gradual, and part of the ordinary course of things in this idealized society is that financial remuneration adjusts not merely with productive function but with one's place in life and within the social scheme of things as a human being, why is there a problem? Granted it seems distant from where we are now with such things being explicitly illegal; but I'm trying to focus on what is good, not on what happens to be the case.

I showed how what you said was false, ...

I must have missed that part. You stated I think correctly how things are presently seen -- that hospitals don't hire whole persons in context but out-of-human-context functional units. However, stating that that is how things are presently seen doesn't imply that how things are presently seen is morally just.

You are quite right that I'm basically just stating what I see to be the truth about the justice of the matter, and that I haven't in this blog post developed a lengthy argument or set of authoritative citations. It is just a blog post.

I do think there is a moral case for equal wages.

That depends on what we mean. If what we mean is that two fathers of four kids exactly the same ages, who are the same in terms of reliability, productivity, years of employment, etc working side-by-side in the quarry doing exactly the same work for exactly the same hours, well... maybe. But I'd probably have to see the argument. Paying one person less than another with no reason whatsoever, or perhaps just because you can get away with it in the case of the one guy but not the other, is probably wrong. But by the time we've properly qualified the matter I'm not sure "equal" is the most accurate description. It isn't that saying "unequal pay is morally wrong" is incorrect under every possible interpretation. It just isn't a particularly useful thing to say unless it summarizes a detailed set of qualifications which are already preestablished; and when those qualifications are already preestablished it doesn't really add anything to them.

You could go from being unmarried and living with two other guys in an apartment to having a single income and a pregnant wife in a matter of months, and still, of course, needing the apartment for the three of you! Obviously you would not have the two other single guys with their incomes living with you. That would make a fairly large difference in the income needed for the new family, and the wife might never have had a job in the first place. In fact, if we're really going to be staunch traditionalists, the young couple shouldn't have started out by assuming they would have her income for an indefinite period. And if they have made that assumption, they're going to be out of luck when she gets pregnant, because somebody should stay home with the baby. I assume we're not advocating that they intend to send the child to daycare.

So actually, the change could be _relatively_ abrupt, and the guy and the girl would need to know that they could handle it. So should the employer promise the raise in advance, or give it to the guy in advance because he says he wants to get engaged, or what?

So actually, the change could be _relatively_ abrupt, and the guy and the girl would need to know that they could handle it. So should the employer promise the raise in advance, or give it to the guy in advance because he says he wants to get engaged, or what?

It depends. If the job was "mowing lawns in the neighborhood" then the betrothed needs to find a job appropriate to raising a family before getting married, and the employer needs to tell him that. If the job is "journeyman programmer" then maybe he doesn't need to do that.

We can construct scenarios to make it look as abrupt as possible, of course, but I really don't see what that buys the counterargument (which seems to be an argument from impracticality). If anything this encourages a man to develop additional excess personal productivity before marrying. That is a good thing. If it is abrupt it can only be because he is choosing for it to be abrupt: he can and should postpone marriage until he is ready.

I have to say I am really puzzled by this particular objection. Yeah, he needs to work things out before he gets married. Yeah, guys who have been married a while have financial advantages (and also greater expenses and responsibilities) than him. So what? How does social support for married breadwinners constitute an insurmountable barrier to entry in becoming a married breadwinner?

Well, I don't want to be sneaky. To me this objection is a sort of rubber-meets-the-road implication of the responsibility objection. The employee should be, as you are admitting, responsible for what he makes and what responsibilities he takes on--like a wife. But the living wage idea seems to imply that it's the _employer_ who is responsible. The interesting thing to note is that this may have the unintended consequence that nobody can responsibly get married, because the employer is knocking himself out financially supporting the already-married guys, even in better jobs.

I suppose the practical difficulty will be greater or less depending on *how great* you envisage the gap as being between the single and the married man. For example, if the gap is so great that a single college professor still needs income-earning roommates to afford to rent an apartment, and he can't get paid more until he has a marriage license in hand, then he won't be able to "develop excess personal productivity before marrying." All or most of the excess money in the economy will be going to support the men who were already married before the system kicked in. It would be sort of like the high bride prices in African countries, which serve to perpetuate polygamy, where the older men can buy more and more wives while the younger, poorer men have a terrible time breaking into the system in the first place and affording even one wife.

I'm gathering you aren't advocating a married-single gap as radical as that, though.

Lydia, you have claimed that the employer does not have an obligation outside of a contract with his employee. This seems to be the more outrageous claim. We are perfectly consonant with the State interfering with this relationship to protect the employees health and safety. Even slavery had obligations.

The sad thing about your argumentation is that in the end you end up enabling that which you detest, the welfare state. If someone accepts the argument that employers can pay wages that aren't enought to feed Little Timmy, then there will be a demand for the intervention of the welfare state. People will not tolerate the consequences of a radical liberterian state.

Michael Baumann seems to me quite correct. Zippy simpy shifts the burden of moral responsibility for taking care of children from parents to their employers.

The only hint of an argument we get for this shift in responsibility is an invocation of the Kantian categorical imperative: employers, it seems, are supposed to treat their employees as ends in themselves, rather than as means to the employers' economic goals.

But Baumann's reply is, I think, absolutely crushing: isn't Zippy just proposing that *employees* treat their *employers* as means to the *employees'* goals? But if Zippy thinks it is wrong to treat others as means rather than ends, how can he possibly justify this?

The underlying presumption seems to be that there is something inherently better and purer and nobler about the status of being an employee than about the status of being an employer, so that it is perfecly alright for the former to treat the latter as sacrificial animals. This has, of course, long been a widely held prejudice - on the left. But since when did it become acceptable among conservatives?

With apologies to Oscar Wilde, any polity that would treat employers like this would not deserve to have any.

The implicit moral judgment regarding employers and employees, insofar as I grasp it, would seem to be that those to whom more is given bear a heavier burden of responsibility - a principle defensible both on theological and natural law grounds.

Lydia:
The employee should be, as you are admitting, responsible for what he makes and what responsibilities he takes on--like a wife. But the living wage idea seems to imply that it's the _employer_ who is responsible.

Can we say "both/and" rather than "either/or"? Also, it is certainly the case that the responsibility is more primary in the case of the father, since the father's relationship to his children is not conditional. I wouldn't for a moment suggest otherwise. What I suggest is that it is morally wrong for an employer to treat an employee as nothing but a unit of productivity bought at a particular price, specifically independent of the fact that he is a man working to support a family. An employer has a responsiblity, not a totalizing comprehensive responsibility.

Steve:
The underlying presumption seems to be that there is something inherently better and purer and nobler about the status of being an employee than about the status of being an employer, so that it is perfecly alright for the former to treat the latter as sacrificial animals.

I hope not. I've had many employees in the past decade and a half, and I've been nobody's employee in that time (except very briefly for a few months during a transitional period with one of my ventures). And while it is true that I am at times given to self-deprecation, the reality is that I don't view myself as nothing but a source of wages for the people I've employed.

It would certainly be wrong for an employee to treat his employer as nothing but a means to squeeze out wages, independent of that employer's role in the world, etc. I have as little use for the equality/fungibility principle applied by employees to employers as vice versa. A disloyal and exploitative employee is every bit as in the wrong morally as a disloyal and exploitative employer.

It would certainly be wrong for an employee to treat his employer as nothing but a means to squeeze out wages, independent of that employer's role in the world, etc.

This strikes me as dubious.

It strikes me as dubious that it would be wrong that is.

I would object to being defined by by social commitments. My subjectivity is not defined as "brother" or "son" or "husband" - any more than I am defined by Kantian universality.

This strikes me as dubious.

Truly?

Suppose that we have employers A and B. The job at each place is IT support, virtually identical, and employer B pays a great deal more, enough to make the difference between a more dignified existence for the man's children and virtual impoverishment. (Say we are talking about a data center in India).

Lakshmikantha has to decide who to work for. Can we say that it is fine for him to work for employer B rather than employer A, independent of the human context of the role those employers play in the world?

The answer, it seems to me, is obviously not. Suppose employer B is hardcoreporn.com, and employer A is indiaprolife.org.

I don't think I even need to say the punch line out loud.

Many other scenarios can be devised. I think it could be wrong for (say) a single guy to quit the machinist shop in order to go to the beach, knowing that working two more days would make all the difference in his employer's livelihood and ability to support his family.

It definitely cuts both ways, and I do have Steve and Michael to thank for drawing that out in the discussion. It is an important point.

I would object to being defined by by social commitments.

Lots of people have their objections to reality. I sympathize, but sympathy won't turn lead into gold.

Your example is a contractual obligation. One's ability to fullfill that obligation is quite independent of the employer. It is the matter. Similiarly, it is not immoral to be a soldier of the United States government. It may however not be moral to act as a soldier for the U.S. in a particular war.

Your last example is a better example. Since not all law is written, by custom the machinist has an ordinary obligation to give his employer sufficient notice. In return, the employer has an obligation to give his employee sufficient notice before termination - the latter being increasingly absent in today's world. Barring the custom, the machinist should feel free to terminate his services. That is the definition of at-will employment.

Your example is a contractual obligation.

No it isn't. There was no contract in it, and no contemplation of any explicit one: just a contemplation of employment. Stipulate for the sake of argument that the country we are talking about has no employment law whatsoever: the point is not a legal one, but a moral one. The purpose of the examples is merely to illustrate the general point to which you objected, that (as I said before) [i]t would certainly be wrong for an employee to treat his employer as nothing but a means to squeeze out wages, independent of that employer's role in the world, etc.

Are you taking the position that it is definitely OK for Lakshmi to work for the pornographer, even though (by the design of the scenario) he can scrape by in an undignified manner otherwise?

It would certainly be wrong for an employee to treat his employer as nothing but a means to squeeze out wages, independent of that employer's role in the world, etc.

It seems to me to be the case that very few of us work for an "employer," meaning by the word, a human being. Most of us work for some kind of corporate entity, be it large or small. That being the case, how an employee is treated by his "employer" is pretty much dictated by the configuration of the corporation, rather than by "human-to-human" considerations. Corporations exist to promote their own survival and growth, and any of their "moving parts" is expendable, if necessary to that survival and growth.
Your problem, Zippy, is that you suffer from nostalgia for the plantation. Back then they had it all--patriarchy, aristocracy, Sir Walter Scott, ladies with the vapors; it was heaven on earth.

Actually, the example of employee loyalty makes me more sympathetic to something in the neighborhood of Zippy's position than I ever have been. If there is a "grey area" where the employee's moral obligation goes beyond his contractual one, without being separable out as some sort of "charitable" obligation, then I suppose I have to allow that there could be a similar "grey area" in employer obligation to employee. And I do understand employee loyalty.

Suppose Jane knows that her employer depends on her, that no one else knows how to do her job, and that her employer is a really nice and good guy who has always been loyal to her. (When she was sick, he gave her time off and didn't dock her pay, or whatever.) So she, in turn, feels obligated to stay at the job--even though she wants to retire, or wants to move to be near her grandkids, or whatever-- for several months to train in a replacement so she doesn't leave the employer in the lurch. Now, that sort of loyalty makes sense to me, and I wouldn't be inclined to say, "Well, if it goes beyond what is written in her contract as the period of notice she has to give him, she's just being charitable." So, by the same token, I can see that the employer should also say, "Jane works hard, she's a good lady, she has kids to support since her husband ran off on her. She's sick. I'm going to give her paid sick days even though that wasn't something I offered her initially as part of the job set-up."

Good post, Zippy. The fact of the matter is that morality in employment is like orthodoxy in religion: first it becomes optional, then it becomes illegal or proscribed. In the corporate world today there is a defacto preference for women and singles. Young singles, in particular, are much more flexible, more willing to travel, more willing to relocate, more willing to accept lower wages, and better able to assimilate rapid changes in the workplace. Current employment law was enacted precisely to overturn the traditional preference for married male breadwinners, and this motive is never far from the surface. Employers prove their "equal opportunity" credentials by proving that they do not give preference to middle-aged men: that is enough.

I'm taking the postition that it is wrong for Lakshmi to participate in pornography independent of employment considerations.

Apropos of Jeff's remarks, it ought never be forgotten that the Republican party, historically the custodian and embodiment of the interests of the corporate class, had advocated the entrance of women into the workforce as early as the waning years of the Nineteenth Century, supported all of the equal-opportunity-employment legislation of the mid-Twentieth Century, and, prior to the marginalization of the Rockefeller establishment within the party, supported the Equal Rights Amendment. Their reasons, of course, were never so high-minded as even misguided notions of human rights, but were purely pecuniary.

To go back to my earlier question, do you guys at least agree that for this idea to be even marginally workable, without encouraging employee irresponsibility, there must be a way for single males to ascertain that they will be able to support a wife before they actually have one? And that this may require employers to be willing to make commitments to single males about what they will do after marriage?

To go back to my earlier question, do you guys at least agree that for this idea to be even marginally workable, without encouraging employee irresponsibility, there must be a way for single males to ascertain that they will be able to support a wife before they actually have one?

In a healthy system - and a culture of marriage - this would not be any more of a problem than it is presently. Most single men are potentially married men: both employers and their single male employees will have this in mind. One corollary of an employer preference for married male breadwinners in particular is an employer preference for male employees in general (for jobs which pay a family wage). Thus, single men will be selected for such work with a married future in mind.

I don't think such preferences should be legislated: I would rely, instead, upon societal expectations. There are obviously a multitude of valid considerations in play when it comes to employment. The need for competent employees is obviously important, and maintaining a competent workforce could mean subordinating other criteria. But if I understand Zippy's point, he is saying that employers have a moral duty to consider, at least, the human and social implications of their decisions along with economic success and profitability.

And that this may require employers to be willing to make commitments to single males about what they will do after marriage?

Yes, perhaps - but I don't think those "commitments" need to be explicit or contractual. It will simply be expected.

Actually, it's a pretty big problem now. Most guys expect their wives to work. This is worrisome to the mothers of daughters. But at least as things presently stand, one can look out and say, "Okay, but if he gets such-and-such a type of job, one can expect that he'd make about such-and-such an amount, and they should be able to make ends meet." One potential problem of a strict distinction between single and married male workers, especially if the gap is large, is that that "at least" would no longer obtain. Your daughter's beau could get such-and-such a type of job and still make a pittance, because he was single. I suppose if the social expectation of a "married raise" were strong enough, induction would allow the young couple and their families to plan with that as a given, but that would have to be an awfully strong social expectation.

It seems to me that these effects could be mitigated a lot if the difference were not very great between the married and single male wage. In effect, it seems to me that the proposal here is most workable and least pragmatically outrageous (if I can put it that way) if there is a relatively narrow range of probable wages for some given job, if at the lower end of the range a young couple can still scrape by, even if a baby comes along, but if the married guy usually gets bumped up to the higher end of the range. That way, even if worse come to worst, they can still expect to scrape by.

Whether that's going to result in a "living wage" for all married males will likely depend on economic factors beyond anyone's control. I myself am rather skeptical.

Here, of course, I'm just talking practicality and leaving aside the question of worth. When Jeff Culbreath and I went at a related issue before, Jeff seemed willing even in a rather important field (like academics) to sacrifice quite a bit of ability in order to employ a married male. That seems troublesome to me in principle as I think getting the job done well should be a very high priority. In practice, I happen to think males are often meritocratically better anyway at the jobs I'm most concerned about, so I'm not sure how often the problem would arise.

If it makes you feel better Lydia, you and I practically aren't that far apart. I don't think there is a married/single differential for the doctor or the professor. Where we differ is that I think the corporate sector has proved incapable of not leeching off the rest of society when they hire for menial jobs - broadly defined as anything less than a living wage. My remedy is to raise the minimum wage to the living wage level for the corporates.

My remedy is to raise the minimum wage to the living wage level for the corporates.

Yes -- a remedy that no doubt would also result in promoting inflation as well.

It seems to me to be the case that very few of us work for an "employer," meaning by the word, a human being.

Most employees don't have a human being for a boss? Who do you work for, Zoltar of Sirius Five? (Don't answer that. I'm not sure I'd like the answer).

Your problem, Zippy, is that you suffer from nostalgia for the plantation.

Heh. You haven't seen the corporate version of the Night of the Long Knives unless you've been CEO of a company in the middle of being acquired. Funny thing though, everyone involved puts their pants on one leg at a time: cut-them-and-they-bleed humans beings, to the last man.

Yes -- a remedy that no doubt would also result in promoting inflation as well.

And the suppression of wages is doing wonders for our present inflation situation. Oil at $100/bbl, gold over $800/oz, but inflation under 3%. Continue quaking before our corporate masters.

Although I hate even to appear to agree with Rodak about anything, one effect of the sheer largeness of various employing "entities" is that your boss--the actual human being who knows you and to some extent controls your destiny--is often himself an underling under other underlings under...and may have little discretion in these matters. Hence, the person you can be loyal to and who can be loyal to you, as a person, the person who actually knows you, may have little to say about how much you get paid. I see this particularly in a university, where the chairman of the department is nominally and on a day-to-day basis the boss of his faculty, his secretary, etc. This means that he can fire people and can decide on their workloads and specific teaching jobs to a large extent, but he can't give a single one of them a raise, even if he wants to.

With respect to Lydia's concern that single men have some economic or financial status before getting married, I think we need to be realistic here. A healthy culture is one in which 18-22 y/o men can marry and support a family. An 18-22 y/o man is not going to have much work experience at any wage. It follows that (non-slacker) men, in general, need to be paid a family wage for full-time work - period.

Today's economy doesn't come anywhere close to supporting this. People think I'm crazy for saying this, but here it goes: there is too much work being done in the economy. Much of our GNP consists of garbage, pure garbage. This garbage is produced by a surplus of low-wage workers, which is available because women are now positively expected to work, which depresses wages overall, which means that most men do not earn a family wage.

I recently paid for a $10.00 haircut. My 72 y/o barber told me that he raised a family, paid for his home, and put his kids through college cutting hair. That's impossible today (in California anyway). Today's crisis is simply this: ordinary jobs for ordinary men no longer pay a family wage. Cutting hair, turning wrench, driving a truck, selling shoes, cleaning carpets, managing an office, dispatching, etc., - the kind of work that is within the reach of ordinary men with ordinary intelligence and ordinary talents - is now considered menial work and pays accordingly. Men who aspire to support a family on one income, and to raise their children in a relatively safe environment, must now have an extraordinary competitive edge in the workforce. Most just don't have it.

MZ Forrest,

And just what sort of monetary control would the Fed be exercising in the case of when they hike up the rates in an effort to control monetary flow when, all the while, such attempts are but done in vain if we, on the other hand, are increasing the wages of others all for the sake of this sort of 'communist' equality you seem to be advocating?

I tend myself to think the presence of so many women in the workplace is inflating prices, too. I don't know whether it is depressing wages as well.

To my mind much of this could be solved _by_ laissez faire without the moral imperatives Zippy is arguing for. Let's face it--a guy is not likely to quit his job to get married. He's certainly not likely to quit when he becomes a new father. Life events that sometimes make women less stable employees make guys work harder. What is the "glass ceiling" (if it's not a myth, which it may be) if not the last final vestiges of the employer's taking into consideration such issues as dependability, drive, commitment, etc., which *tend to track gender*? What is the regulatory burden of the guaranteed three-months' maternity leave if not an attempt to make employers accommodate women while weirdly and simultaneously ignoring the plausible consequence of their being women--their quitting after the three months that their job has been held for them? I have _known_ women who have exploited this fact, and doing so is wrong, in my opinion. And yet there are people who would like to make such mandatory leave longer, and make it paid! (Such are the Europeans among us.)

Is laissez-faire itself a moral system or ideal, such that there is no necessity of tempering it, in certain respects, by means of moral judgments?

This is a position common to classical liberals and libertarians, among others, which quite literally induces in me a state of stupefaction - there is a sphere of human activity within which all processes operate so as to obviate the necessity of moral judgment, save, perhaps, concerning what is produced (ie., not pornography)? The system itself automatically yields moral outputs? The system itself legitimates the discrete acts by which it is constituted?

Frankly, I think this a sort of conjuration.

Additionally, purely as a matter of honouring the actual historical record, the notion that a simple repeal of equal-opportunity legislation will suffice to achieve most of the objectives of Zippy's (and my) ideal polity will not pass muster. In point of fact, the economic establishment advocated the entry of women into the labour force, and, subsequently, the adoption of anti-discrimination legislation, at a time when there obtained a demonstrable preference for male employees, a time when the advantages of a principally male workforce should have been appreciated. The establishment supported the abolition of that workforce precisely because the costs, as they reckoned them, of less-stable and committed female employees were outweighed by the advantages of wage suppression and the stimulation of patterns of consumption. It was a simple, utilitarian calculation, and it reaped dividends for those who endorsed it, or acquiesced in it; in other words, it was eminently rational, given the logic of a utilitarian, fungible-productivity-units approach to economic policy. The corporate establishment did not elect to lose money merely because they felt some sort of guilty affinity for feminism.

To my mind much of this could be solved _by_ laissez faire without the moral imperatives Zippy is arguing for.

But the moral imperatives simply exist. Today, we are legally prevented from acting upon them. The first thing is to remove the obstacles to right action. And on the level of government policy - duly observing the principles of subsidiarity - the possibility of incentivizing right action should also be considered.

Life events that sometimes make women less stable employees make guys work harder. What is the "glass ceiling" (if it's not a myth, which it may be) if not the last final vestiges of the employer's taking into consideration such issues as dependability, drive, commitment, etc., which *tend to track gender*?

The glass ceiling isn't a myth, but I don't believe it is created by employers. Most men today are only too happy to invite women into the boardroom. The glass ceiling exists everywhere because human hierarchy exists everywhere, and in the business world a very small percentage of men far exceed the rest of the population in talent, ambition, and often enough, ruthlessness. The glass ceiling exists for most men as well.

What is the regulatory burden of the guaranteed three-months' maternity leave if not an attempt to make employers accommodate women while weirdly and simultaneously ignoring the plausible consequence of their being women--their quitting after the three months that their job has been held for them?

You're absolutely right about the inherent contradictions and craziness of it all. But in an economy where women are expected to work, I don't have a problem with maternity leaves so long as small businesses are exempt. It's nice to see the system bow to realities of sex differences in some way.

Maximos, you sometimes talk as if we are all ruled directly by Bill Gates from his office chair. I don't buy it. Did the corporate execs phone up Lyndon B. Johnson and tell him to include women in the Civil Rights Acts? And I suppose he and Congress did this for reasons that had nothing to do with feminism? I cannot believe that you really think feminism has had nothing to do with the EEOC inclusion of women in all of this. The do-gooders passed this stuff because they were feminists. It's one of the many reasons why do-gooders are more dangerous than profiteers.

Huh? Who said anything about Bill Gates ruling the world from his office chair?

No, all I stated was that the corporate establishment desired these changes in employment policy, and that for decades before they were enacted, for reasons quite other than those of orthodox feminism. One can argue that it was the emergence of that same feminism that pushed those objectives 'over the top' politically, securing their enactment; but it is simply untrue that feminism itself was the fons et origo of the notions that women should enter the labour force, and that men had no claim to preference over women.

The notion, seemingly implicit in some of these criticisms, of an immaculately-conceived laissez-faire order, which underwent its Fall with the introduction of feminism and affirmative action, has got to go.

"But in an economy where women are expected to work, I don't have a problem with maternity leaves so long as small businesses are exempt. It's nice to see the system bow to realities of sex differences in some way."

There, Jeff (Culbreath), I can't agree. Ultimately, the costs of such unfunded mandates are borne by the consumer, and the single-income family has less money to pay them. The traditionalist family that (in some cases) painfully tightens its belt to pay for what is needed pays indirectly for the benefit to the working woman of having her job held open for three months instead of training in a replacement. For the government to require this is de facto for the government to further encourage women's entry into the workplace.

A thought experiment: Imagine someone's making the same argument about government-paid 10-month maternity leave, such as we sometimes hear advocated. "Well, it's nice to see the system bow to realities of sex differences." But there is a cost to such bowing, and in essence such attempts to have it both ways--to keep women in the workforce while paying to accommodate them--merely amount to encouraging women and putting increased financial and social pressure on women to enter the workplace. In Europe where women often get very long paid maternity leaves, this is exactly the opposite of traditionalism. There is something like an iron expectation that the child will be placed in daycare at the age of _two_ and the mother return to work. I have known a Christian missionary family in Hungary that went along with this even though they were receiving their financial support from America. Such was the social expectation. The child wasn't required to leave the home and go to school until she was 5 (young enough!), but they put her in "avoda"--daycare--at two. Everyone does it there. It's part of life.

There, Jeff (Culbreath), I can't agree. Ultimately, the costs of such unfunded mandates are borne by the consumer, and the single-income family has less money to pay them.

That's true - but where are all of these single-income families? The reality is that a tiny number of single-income families, most of whom are already middle or upper-middle-class, may pay a little more for certain things, but a very large number of working women in all classes will be able to be mothers to their children at a very crucial time. If they do, in fact, end up leave the workforce because of this experience, then I count that as a bonus.

...one effect of the sheer largeness of various employing "entities" is that your boss--the actual human being who knows you and to some extent controls your destiny--is often himself an underling under other underlings under...and may have little discretion in these matters. Hence, the person you can be loyal to and who can be loyal to you, as a person, the person who actually knows you, may have little to say about how much you get paid.

That is true, but all of the people you refer to are also human beings, and when the human being who decides what to pay - whomever that is - makes his decision about what to pay, that decision is subject not solely to economic constraints but also to moral constraints.

The concept of a “family wage” guided public policy for the first 65 years of the 20th Century. It was bolstered by a cultural that encouraged open job discrimination in order to foster breadwinning dads and stay at home moms.
During the New Deal the largest relief program—the Works Progress Administration—was limited to one breadwinner per family: 85 percent of the 4.5 million enrollees were men. Women in the program found themselves assigned to classes in childcare, home health, and cooking. The Social Security Amendments of 1939 gave to working men, not working women family-oriented benefits with an extra pension for homemaking wives. Survivors benefits went to widows, not widowers and their children.

Business interests and feminists were always hostile to the family wage. In 1904, the National Association of Manufacturers adopted resolutions such as: “No limitation should be placed upon the opportunities of any person to learn any trade to which he or she may be adapted.” The National Woman’s Party formed in 1917, pushed for equal work and equal pay for women outside the home and when this group proposed the first Equal Rights Amendment in 1923 it was National Association of Manufacturers, plus Republicans who supported it in the House and Senate.

With the Civil Rights Act, feminists gained their "equality". Now, children pray that Mom isn't killed in combat in a foreign land, or doesn't get home too late from the office. Our captains of industry get their wage deflation and dalliances with their female colleagues.

Ain't progress grand?

Now, children pray that Mom isn't killed in combat in a foreign land, or doesn't get home too late from the office.

Wild exagerations don't help your cause.
Did Mom join the military under threat of a jail term?
Did police escorted her to the office and forced her to work there?

Did Mom join the military under threat of a jail term?

Did Kevin say she had? I'm trying to see the connection between his post and your reply, and there doesn't seem to be one.

A cultural consensus for the family wage was legislatively shattered by 2 powerful interest groups. The flattening of real income acts as a powerful incentive for moms to remain in the work-force outside the home. Who needs state compulsion when economic coercion coupled with the cult of "Self-fulfillment"will do the trick?

Zippy,
Am I right to conclude that the following assumptions underly your post?

1. Men and women should marry and then have children.
2. Women should be the primary caregiver.
3. Men should be the primary earner.

And finally
4. It is somehow immoral for a couple to deviate from _any_ of the above assumptions?

It seems to me that if a married couple decide that the father is better-suited to raising children, that's a reasonable and legitimate decision which shouldn't be undermined by rigid social standards.

Phil, I wouldn't be quite so categorical, though one of my premeses is categorical. Some qualifications:

1. Men and women categorically should not intentionally have sexual relations or raise children outside of marriage, and categorically should not use artificial birth control. Society should strongly support these norms, both formally and informally. Given this, most men and women will choose to marry and have children, though nobody should be pressured to do so.

2 and 3 I would leave mostly unqualified, as long as "should" doesn't mean intoleration of exceptions. Society has a duty to support the normative situation, but that isn't a license for society to ruthlessly and uncharitably stamp out exceptions. On the other hand people who choose a non-normative path must bear the burden of that choice; indeed even those who do not choose a non-normative path must still bear the burden of their own personal non-normativity (more in a moment on that). So obviously it follows that I reject (4) as stated: it isn't immoral to deviate if one has good reasons to do so and as long as one is willing to bear the burden of it and not attempt to undermine the authority of the normative case. IOW, be different within reason if you need to be different, but don't make a fuss about the unfairness of it all. Accept the abnormality as abnormality, don't attempt to impose it as an alternative normality.

The ultimate expression of the attempt to impose a less-than-ideal abnormality as an alternative normality is so-called "deaf culture". Deafness is a privation of a natural good. Being deaf carries no moral implications with respect to the deaf person, other than that we recognize that the person carries a burden which most of us do not share, with all that that implies. But the attempt to impose deafness as a legitimate alternative lifestyle, which in some cases has meant attempts to deliberately breed congenitally deaf children, is disfunctional.

Flexibility and yes tolerance is important in dealing with real people and life as it is actually lived; but it doesn't follow that norms, and societal support of those norms, should be abolished. That abolishment is what our present legal regime with respect to employment, and the social/moral presumptions behind it, attempts.

"...be different within reason if you need to be different, but don't make a fuss about the unfairness of it all. Accept the abnormality as abnormality, don't attempt to impose it as an alternative normality."

Amen. So many people do not get this in the U.S., esp. w.r.t. women working, children in daycare, and so forth. We suffer from a combination of making a virtue out of necessity and not realizing that hard cases make bad law.

Actually, single people should be paid more because they have the hours to actually devote to their jobs instead of running off to pick up Junior at school or leaving promptly at 5:00 or staying home with a sick kid.

beloml's perspective shows the influence of umpety years so far of women in the workforce. If a family has traditional gender roles, there will be far less of that sort of thing for the working member of the family, though of course fathers need to watch the "workaholic thing," too. But having one family member devoted full-time to the children makes for less work interruption for the other member. This is a sheerly pragmatic fact.

IOW, be different within reason if you need to be different, but don't make a fuss about the unfairness of it all. Accept the abnormality as abnormality, don't attempt to impose it as an alternative normality.

Wouldn't it make more sense for you, Zippy, to say that "Single people and parents who don't support families should receive less pay for equivalent work?" I realize this isn't a board where the term "