Roger, If just compensation and a living wage can so easily upset our
economic system, then perhaps that needs to be upset. The fact that such
basic principles can not be accomodated tells us something alarming about
that system. Actually, I think most of the detailed issues you raise are
sensible enough, but they supposed to be worked out by the people and the
courts.
That's it.
DMB
-----Original Message-----
From: RISKYBIZ9@aol.com [mailto:RISKYBIZ9@aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2002 6:27 PM
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD unemumerated rights
Hi David (and Platt)
DMB
Or rather, if I were to propose an amendment to the constitution, he's what
I'd do. I'd propose something like this...
The ownership of one's own time and energy being the ultimate property
right, no employee shall be deprived of just compensation. Since poverty is
the enemy of life, liberty and happiness and is inconsistent with both human
rights and human dignity, no full-time employee shall be deprived of a
living wage.
ROG
I embrace your good intent, but continue to be suspicious of Wim and your
general pleas for a Right to DIGNITY. It smells much more of a duty than a
right. I suspect that it could lead more to restrictions of freedom than
expansions (but I could be wrong here).
As for this particular suggestion, my main concern is that there is no
caveat
for the quality of the work done by the full-time employee. In fact there
is
no standard of quality whatsoever. It reminds me of the current debacle on
the INS being unable to fire someone, regardless of how incompetent. I would
say this needs major repairing to clarify that this does not lead to the
suppression of the employers' right to establish the requirements and
standards (within accepted reg's) of the employment. We must ensure quality
as well as reasonable freedoms for the employer.
My secondary concern is that even if rewritten as above that this will have
the effect of acting as a tax on employment, especially of the employment of
those that this type of rule is intended to help. Those creating jobs will
inevitably respond by concentrating their hiring to those areas and job
types
that would not be so taxed. They will tend to gravitate to areas out of the
country, or to areas of more skilled labor, which would not fall under the
minimum. Furthermore, companies subject to this tax would be less
competitive
than those not subject to it (for whatever reason including the above) to
the
further detriment of hiring and business success.
You may want to consider a minimum floor on full time wages via a direct
government subsidy program. Of course, this means that the minority of
people that already pay all the taxes (the top 25% of earners in the US pay
83.5% of all income taxes and the bottom half pay virtually no federal tax
today at all) would have even more of their earnings confiscated and
redistributed. This gets dangerous and leads to a whole other type of
inequity -- as I am sure Platt would argue.
One final comment on this adea is that you need to ensure that your minimum
wage is not so high as to discourage people from investing in themselves or
their education. We wouldn't want to subsidize, unintentionally, reduced
incentives for people to develop skills and knowledge.
I don't think your idea would accomplish the desired goals as written, and I
think it would require a few more details before it would be worthy of
serious attention. Assuming you do get the bugs worked out, I would still
suggest though that you try it in some states first. That way we can have a
chance to see if it leads to unintended consequences. To be honest though, I
suspect that we can already see the outcome of at least poorly written rules
of this type by reviewing the sad state of employment and opportunity in
several over-regulated European countries.
This idea still needs some work...
Rog
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