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Is there a halachaic view on the concept of a livable wage in the work place.
Minimum wage doesn’t really make economic sense.
Minimum wage does make economic sense. If people have more money, demand increases and they can pay higher prices. This is a chicken and egg question, will they be willing to invest and pay higher wages to generate demand and charge higher prices?
Minimum wage does not generate money. And if it would, it would cause hyperinflation.
Should Rebbbes get paid less than $15 an hour?
actually, it’s costing jobs. The technology to replace restaurant serving staff has been around for a while. $15 minimum wage has made it cost effective to install.
I was in a restaurant with 25 tables but onlytwo waiters. Each table had a tablet for diners to place orders. The waiters simply brought the plates. Fast food restaurants are replacing $15 an hour humans with tabletsThe minimum wage is a fake solution to a real problem.
A $15 dollar minimum wage drives up the economy.
Poor people need more money, and when they get it, they’re not saving it for a yacht. It goes back into circulation, and more money gets spent. The money goes right back to the employer from many people, and they can afford to pay their workers.
Seattle has a $14 minimum wage. Some guy had a restaurant. When they passed a bill for the $15 minimum wage, he thought he would lose money. Turns out he opened another five.
When you share the wealth, it’s good for everyone.
The city of Seattle, Washington has a $14.00 minimum wage now. It will increase to $15.00 next January.
Yes there is. Halacha recognizes fair value. Yes technically slaves are allowed but there are costly provisions.
RebYidd23 – You seem to know everything, so what is your solution?
In 1980 Minimum Wage in CT was $3.25 per hour. A decent 2 bedroom apartment could be rented for $300 per month including heat and hot water.
In 2018 Minimum Wage in CT is $10.10 per hour. That same apartment (now 38 years older) rents for $1450 per month. Wages have gone up approx 320% of 1980. The cost of housing has risen to 480% of 1980 cost.
We had no state income tax in 1980, now that minimum wage earner would be paying approx $20 per week in this tax. Minimum wage should keep up with inflation (at a minimum). Lower skilled workers should not be faced with the choice of working 40 hours per week and not being able to afford, food/clothing/shelter, or going on public assistance, getting a section 8 housing voucher, food stamps, WIC, fully paid medical and a monthly cash stipend that is larger than minimum wage.
By keeping minimum wage below a livable standard we are pushing people onto public assistance.
In my area, babysitters get $15 per hour, non-English speaking house cleaners get $30 pert hour. If you want a kid to weed your garden, shovel snow or cut the lawn it’s $25 per hour. AND all of that is cash, non-taxed income. My non-Jewish next door neighbor has a 19 year old who is a certified lifeguard. He refuses to work for the town at their pools because they pay minimum wage. Instead of earning $400 per week at the pool, he cuts lawns 5 hours per day, 4 days a week for more money and spends his afternoons at the beachSetting a too high minimum wage, “high” defined relative to the wages set by the law of supply and demand, forces many businesses to either close (since they won’t make a profit) or to automate. It cuts income to the poor and increases dependency on charities and welfare. One already sees signs of increased use of machinery to replace workers (restaurants getting rid of waiters taking orders, development of driverless vehicles), as well as outsourcing jobs to countries with lower minimum wages (eliminating perhaps most good jobs that can be performed by people with advanced education).
No. In fact, technically a worker can agree to accept any condition as in monetary matters a condition always applies – even against a Torah law. Secular law does not allow it and it may have a halachic status.
However, according to most economists it causes unemployment by pricing labor above the value of its production. It is also inflationary as there is more money. Both are functions of the Law of Supply and Demand. Thus it is counter-productive.
As for the restaurant owner in Seattle, maybe he would have another six without the raise. Or maybe he cut labor costs. You, laskern, have committed the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this). Your statement is akin to someone saying “Hocus Pocus”, rain falling ,and then saying that the rain was caused by his statement.
Haha, anyone who think upping the minimum wage to 14+ dollars an hour should go look up some basic economics. You guys are the best!
I don’t know everything, but the disadvantages of price floors are common knowledge.
When you share the wealth, it’s good for everyone.
This is incorrect.
When you spend money on goods/services that are worth money, it benefits the economy and everybody wins.
When you spend money on things that are not worth money, you’re just moving money around, not providing any benefit to the economy.
Here’s a simple example to demonstrate: Assume the fair price for an apple is $1. If I buy an apple from you for $1, we both win – I got an apple, and you got $1. However if I buy an apple from you for $100, you win and I lose – you got $100, and I got a bad deal on an apple.
Seattle has a $14 minimum wage. Some guy had a restaurant. When they passed a bill for the $15 minimum wage, he thought he would lose money. Turns out he opened another five.
I hope you don’t really think that passing that bill suddenly made this guy rich enough open five more restaurants.
Unfortunately it doesn’t stop frum employees from 1099ing their workers. If these people ran commerce there would be 1910s child labor
Meno – A rich person with his consumption does not create a multiplying effect. He buys a yacht or saves it. A poor person spends the money where his consumption generates more investment requiring hiring workers and thereby the multiplying effect takes hold.
Economy = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending
Meno:
1. If your analogy was the case, nothing would be worth money.
2. Actually, this guy thought he would lose money. But once the minimum wage went up, businesses started paying their workers more, and the workers could finally afford an occasional night out. They went to this guy’s restaurant, and he made more money and opened another five, all with new workers.Bottom line is, a $15 minimum wage works for everyone.
@1
employees DON’T 1099 their workers. Employees are the workers.
Sounds like you are unhappy with Frum employers who 1099 non employee workers. By definition a 1099 worker is NOT an employeeCTL was a typo. I meant employers 1099 their workers. I know what the definitions of what an employee, worker, and independent contractor are.
edited
What if someone isn’t worth $15 an hour and demand for him simply disappears?
Then he loses his job
We had before President Reagan the SETA program for job training which was eliminated by him. I was educated in computer programming through this means. This was very economical because people gained skills making them more valuable and thereby where able to pay it back in taxes. He only looked at instant gratification. We should bring this kind of program back.
Its actually not so easy to put workers on 1099’s
CTLawyer, he’s upset at those who 1099 people who should be considered employees.
I’m glad so many people agree with my doctorate thesis in here!
How about instead of asking for more because every other greedy group asks for more, we stop the insanity? The more you have the more they pick your pockets. I don’t want more money, I want things to be cheaper. Why is it the norm now that you have to have a two income grouping to afford a dinky apartment, let alone a house? I say “group” because look in the non-Jewish places, everyone has roommates, even the single mothers!
This expectation of multiple salaries to get by is wrong. Lower the cost of living first.Walter E Williams said, the real minimum wage is zero.
chiefshmerel- Have you done more than 10 minutes of research and read articles by actual economists, not political stupids? I don’t think so…
Seems the answer to”Is there a halachic view on the concept of a livable wage in the work place.” is absolutely yes
R’Dr.Ahron Levine the economics professor
Has essays on the topic of Lifting the minimum wageIt, how so? Is there a halachic view on which model car to buy? The Baal haTanya complained bitterly about people who bother rabbanim with questions on secular matters. Of course, if a rav is also an economist one can ask him in his economist role. Rabbi Prof. (Emeritus) Israel Kirzner is an example (and BTW, his teacher in Economics was Ludwig von Mises, who was an anti-religious Jew).
Apikursus,as simple as that,(besides plain ignorant as there countless essays in many languages on this)
Judaism absolutely has what to say on how to raise Humanity on every aspect and mode including surely something as crucial as basic economics and wage standards
Whether more than a handful are capable of finding it correctly ,is a different animal
” Is there a halachic view on which model car to buy?”
If we propose that there is, would you care to follow it?
It therefore is better to allow for the multitudes to to be adjured to and adhere to larger precepts and concepts
and give them freedom to maneuver on such minimal things like thisScience doesn’t get the luxury of having an opinion.
Making a burger flipper worth $15 means his job is now just as lucrative as a kindergarten teachers’ assistant’s job. Now the KTA realizes she doesn’t need to put up with stinky whiney kids all day, if she can just flip burgers for a few hours instead. Therefore, nobody wants to be a KTA, and the kindergarten has to raise wages on the position to $18/hr in order to fill it. Then the kindergarten teacher realizes she can just be an assistant and not have to work as hard for the same money, and the cycle continues ad infinitum. Meanwhile the school has to up the tuition costs for all parents in order to to employ the same staff. All you end up doing is devaluating the dollar and creating artificial inflation. Raising the minimum wage is political scheme invented by the Democrats to manipulate ignorant low-income voters and feed off their raw emotions in order to generate votes – par for the course for the left.
@Rebbyid23
I disagree, I think he’s upset at businesses illegally using 1099 system instead of w-2 employment.
It should be reported to the Labor departments, both state and federal…but the Chareidi community will say you are not allowed to go to government, but a beis din. Sorry, this type of criminal act should be reported. The 1099 contractor who is really an employee is being robbed of Social Security, disability and unemployment benefits.Do you actually mean CETA…Comprehensive Employment and Training Act?
It was NOT done away with by President Reagan (and I’m no fan of his). Congress in 1982 voted to fold it into the Job Training Partnership Act. In turn this was replaced by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. All of these were Congressional actions, NOT the pronouncement of a President.
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BTW, I fought and sued the CETA program in CT back in 1980 and pushed our Congressmen and Senators to close it down. At that time I was an owner of a sewing factory in Waterbury, CT. CETA funds had been made available to train sewing machine operators (we were sending work overseas as we could not get enough qualified operators). The director of the CETA program in CT had put rules in place making the ILGWU the administrator and training agency for sewing machine operators. So, if I wanted to have CETA funded trainees in my factor (paid for with my tax dollars) I had to let the union have access to my sewiung floors where they could attempt to organize my non-union sewing force. No other industry was forced to have union supervision of CETA. By the time the case actually got to court, it was moot, CETA had been folded into the Job Training Partnership Act and the union was no longer in control.@CTLawyer, maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but I don’t see the disagreement?
It, do you consider the Baal haTanya to have been an apikoros c”v? Here is what he wrote (Iggerot Kodesh #22):
My dear friend….”Remember the days of old, understand the years of every generation” – has there ever been anything like this since the beginning of time?! Where, in all the books of the scholars of Israel, whether the earlier or later ones, have you ever seen such a custom instituted, to ask about a secular question, such as what to do in some mundane matter, even from the greatest of the early wise men of Israel, such as the Tannaim and Amoraim…but rather [people would turn to] actual prophets, such as there used to be, such as Shmuel the Seer, to whom Saul went to ask about the donkeys which his father had lost. But in truth, all matters relating to a person, other than something having to do with Torah or fear of heaven, are not apprehended other than through prophecy, and not by a wise man. As our rabbis have taught, “Everything is in the hands of heaven other than fear of heaven…” And when our rabbis zt”l said that people “derive benefit from him [from a talmid chacham] by advice and sound wisdom,” this refers to words of Torah, which is called “sound wisdom” [Translation from Rabbi Alfred Cohen in his article on Daas Torah]
Being that we do not have prophesy we must rely on professionals. For example, if we want to know if someone must eat on Yom Kippur we ask a doctor, even if he is not Jewish. Similarly, in matters of Economics we ask economists. The Halacha, as Rav Chaim David haLevi says, only sets the goals, not the means.
@RebbYid23
You interpreted the post as anti-worker, I saw it as anti boss. There is the disagreement.Productivity has also increased tremendously but not wages.
Many places have raised the minimum wage by large amounts without hyperinflation. What causes hyperinflation is printing tons of money.
employers don’t just fire people when minimum wage goes up. This has proven true over and over again across the world.
In cas you haven’t been awake for the past 20 years or don’t know anything that’s been going on for the last 100 there have been tremendous advances in tech that has taken over human jobs. But guess what there are still jobs even though machines have taken many because they are cheaper than paying someone.
The real issue is the rich business owners don’t want to pay people enough to live and the workers want o earn enough to live.
CTLawyer, I don’t think that’s what I said, but I’ve lost track of the conversation, so I could be wrong? IDK.
“The real issue is the rich business owners don’t want to pay people enough to live and the workers want o earn enough to live.”
JJ2020,
Perhaps you were raised in Communist Russia but Americans go into business and employ workers to make a profit. Let’s take the simple example of a “rich and greedy” business owner who has an annual budget of $60K to pay three menial workers at $10 per hour. Now the very generous federal government mandates that he pay his menial workers $15 per hour, what do you think is going to happen? He’s not going to eat the additional $30K or price his product out of the market. He’s going to fire one employee and make the other two work harder for their “living wage”.
The very generous federal government really taught that “rich and greedy” owner a lesson for having the nerve to open a business, didn’t they?
To explain what should be obvious..
There is a galactic difference between economic pyramid structures of society and someone’s personal dilemmas
Of the latter ,while torah surely has what to say -as it has to offer about all that exists,
we presume that no one of the past several hundred years is capable of regularly giving definitive answers
(The BH ‘s own descendants often did just that,interestingly)Regarding livable wage,wage structure, and the like , are there few topics which are dealt with as much ?
At least in the ideal. Begin with 7th PereK of Baba MOnce ,say , those of us capable come to a conclusion of what the proper respectable delineation ought to be al pi torah,then we can conceivably call in the statisticians and economists to crunch the numbers
Here is a humorous typed dialogue with a cousin two days ago, an Economist for the Federal Gov’t :
He :Economist don’t care about reality, all we care about is does it work in theory
My: and when the Government has a shut down they still call you guys in.Sounds like Gulliver’s Travels
He: Somebody has to give them misleading dataIt, learn it yourself. The very first mishna says that all is according to local custom. Moreover, the employee can accept a condition not in accordance with the custom. In fact, in monetary matters two parties can even make a condition not in accordance with Torah law (SA CM 296:5).
From a purely experiential viewpoint i dont see how there can be a right or wrong in raising minimum wages. In chicago we live very close to the border of wisconsin, michigan and indiana and many companies have up and moved to avoid taxes, insurance premiums etc. I also live only blocks away from streets where the southern side is chicago and the northern side is a suburb who did not raise the minimum. The result is the minimum wage earners taking jobs across the street for an extra $40 a week and leaving business understaffed.
In my field, caregivers and direct support professionals for special needs adults get paid minimum wage. Upping the minimum gives us more chance to hire qualified individuals who may actually stick around for more than 8 months. It truly seems like a catch 22.Syag,
It is endlessly complex with constant balancing necessary.
But isn’t that preferable to what has been going on ? Avos 2:21‘am asked to explain what sort of conservative I am—a question often posed quizzically, given that I am a vocal environmentalist, vociferous critic of corporations.. It is wearying to perpetually explain that “conservative” is not, in fact, synonymous with “Republican” (and these days may even be antonymous)’
“Seattle has a $14 minimum wage. Some guy had a restaurant. When they passed a bill for the $15 minimum wage, he thought he would lose money. Turns out he opened another five.”
One piece of anecdotal evidence that runs counter to the general data of what happened in Seattle. Generally, those making less than $19 per hour are bringing home less total wages.
At that time I was an owner of a sewing factory in Waterbury, CT.
@CTLAWYER
How did you manage to get through law school and have the time to practice law, while operating the businesses you’ve mentioned in this post and previous ones? No offense meant, just honest curiosity.
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