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Child Item

Minimum wage - time for a decrease?

BroomBurner

Judging by comments from the Minister for Labour Affairs, I would say that the government will be intending on dropping minimum wage soon.

"The Minister for Labour Affairs has said he hopes the minimum wage does not become a barrier to employment.He was speaking at the launch of the annual report of the National Employment Rights Authority which revealed that 73 % of employers in the catering sector are now complying with employment legislation. Last year the Authority said it recovered more than €3m due to workers who had been underpaid by employers"
(Source: RTE Radio1)

Do you agree that it should be lowered? If so, by how much? If not, why not?

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L.R. Weizel

You know, screaming SOCIALIST in someone's face doesn't make your argument somehow right.

Permabear

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L.R. Weizel

This is what it comes down to.

If this is true, then it's unfair that people simply have to be born like that.

irish_bob

since when is life in anyway fair

serfboard

No. There are programmes in certain less-developed countries where parents are paid money for allowing their children to receive an education. In that way, the child receives the education and the parents still receive the income. Win-win.

It would cost 8 billion dollars a year for the world to eliminate child labour. We spend 40 billion dollars a year on golf.

RedPlanet

I found this statement interesting.
Is donegalfella taking the position that child prostitution should be legislated against?
As a avowed "libertarian, free-market capitalist", it suggests a kind of humanist intervention that he should naturally disapprove of.
Why shouldn't 2 persons (or more) engage in such a economic transaction?
The only reasons i can think of, are moral.
Why distort free-market capitalism with those humanist morals?
And who should make those interventions other than the state?
And if it's ok to intervene in the market for humanist reasons in this instance, then why not intervene against child labour also?

SeanW

I think there's a difference between a teenager sewing shirts and said teenager going into prostitution? You can be a libertarian and still have certain ideas about the Age of Reason.

Also, reread the post: he basically said a teenager working in a 'sweatshop' was preferable to them having to resort to prostitution, one of the few other alternatives in many 3rd world countries.

RedPlanet

The point is, he is implicitly accepting humanist morals invervening in the marketplace.
So i wonder, why stop at prostitution and not also intervene in child labour?
It raises s pertinent question too, does he accept that it is the State's role to intervene in the market?

Permabear

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thebman

Right so what do you suggest. Mass unemployment? We don't have enough indigenous industry to employ our population and it will take too long to get that going. In the long term, we do really need to encourage indigenous industry more but in the short term we need to attract foreign investment and we will always need a certain amount of that.

Anyway, our economy focuses on exports due to our small size so our costs have to be competitive to other countries so that our exported goods are priced competitively.

Never said there was. Just saying both should be reduced in tandem otherwise that might occur. If you reduce minimum wage to less than the dole pays, why would someone work for minimum wage?

I never said abandon the minimum wage although if you need, minimum wages would probably still lie just above dole payments since employers could never pay less than the dole or people will always be able to just tell them to take their job and shove it.

Oh and I'm not right wing or left wing.

RedPlanet

Care to answer the questions at the crux of the matter?
That you are accepting humanist morals invervening in the marketplace.
Why stop at prostitution and not also intervene in child labour?
Do you accept that it is the State's role to intervene in the market?

Permabear

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RedPlanet

You don't make any sense.
You raised the spectre of child prostitution as an economic activity that might be replaced by child labour.
You support the idea of the state interferring with the former. Yet you contradict yourself by saying you don't believe the state should intervene in the market.
Of course the state should intervene in the market.

History as witness, captialism observes no morals. It's the state's role to put manners on them.

Permabear

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Akrasia

But you do support sweatshop child labour......

The reason why child prostitution is almost universally recognised as abhorrent is because it destroys the innocence of a child and robs them of their childhood.... just like child labour does..

There is of course a difference in the degree of harm, but to act aghast at being accused of supporting child prostitution while admitting freely that you support child sweatshop labour (and are opposed to state programs to keep children at school) is very hypocritical

Permabear

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RedPlanet

Your sweatshops often do not pay taxes and contribute nothing to the local community.
They are just western capitalists there to prey upon needy kids, not so different than pedophiles really.

Permabear

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Sunn

Advocating that a sweat shop is more preferable simply because it gives a slightly better standard of living is an awful argument. It was noted that before the american civil war that slaves in the south of the country had a better standard of living in 1850 than in 1750, now does that mean that slavery should be justified because it offers a "better" standard of living.

Akrasia

Sweatshops are slavery.

there is no real choice, work for a pittance (the most the market will pay, despite the massive profits these sweatshops generate for wealthy western companies), or die (or as many choose, become a criminal to survive)

My point throughout this thread has been that without protections, those are the only 3 options available in a 'libertarian' society. Donegal fella feigns concern for the children when he says it is better to work than to be a prostitute, while missing the elephant in the thread, that this dichotomy only exists because there is no welfare state, and it is exactly these conditions that he seeks to create in our society. Dismantle all social welfare and labour rights so that we will be given the same choice, death, slavery or rape.

DonegalFella, even you accept that these are the only choices available to children in these slums? Even you admit that there is no effective state in these areas (something you champion) It is only 'faith' that leads you to the conclusion that recreating the same conditions in ireland will somehow lead to a perfect society.

Permabear

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Sunn

I'm sorry but that whole paragraph is just bizarre and irrational.

Akrasia

But you already admitted that there is no future in working in low skill, low wage employment where there is a surplus of workers and you are easily replacable at any time.

The fate of children who start work in sweatshops is often to work there until they are used up, after which they go on to become prostitutes and criminals anyway.

Permabear

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Permabear

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L.R. Weizel

Your problem is that you are completely unable to make a point without completely patronising your opponent. You bitch about people saying you support Child labour when you do - you just don't like the negative stigma attached. Being insulting when other people are on top of you, is understandable, we're all human, but you set off to be insulting and condescending from the beginning of the argument, so nobody really wants to take you seriously. You are the aggressor, not the aggressed, yet still act almost as if you're being oppressed somehow.

bobbbb

I think you're dead right on that one. When i was in India i met several families whose only income was that of one their childrens jobs. Those families were glad of those jobs too. The alternative was begging, crime or starvation.

thebman

Wouldn't it make more sense if the people with the job were the parents and not their kid?

Why does the kid have to do the job? What couldn't nike hire the parent?

fly_agaric

Of course they don't ensure anything no matter how much some would seem to wish them to. That's the whole point here.

How are people to ensure these things which they want to happen in opposition to where things may actually end up under the market (education costs too high for most to afford because people
will pay absolutely anything to buy an advantage for their children, wages for low skill jobs forced to subsistance or even below because there are so many destitute beggars "dying" for a job).

You've said that collectives are bad, bad ,bad, the state should get of the way etc so who is going to stand up & do the job?

Except of course when they don't "work" for some reason.
Why do states interfere in the market so much when it comes to the likes of
security, education (again), food, water, energy...or even as we see at the moment banking & credit?

Oh yes - I suppose it's because states are evil...

Sorry, I assumed you'd understand. All children should be educated. No children should be forced to work instead of going to school. I don't think this statement makes me some sort of weirdo or god fobid a "starry eyed idealist".

That's where it should be. If the unfettered markets (for education or labour) cannot ensure these 2 outcomes (i'd say both history and the present in the 3rd world has shown they cannot) then intervention is necessary.

See above.

They confer advantages to those who come to possess them. It seems particularly unfair if the wealth [& power] is inherited or otherwise unearned.
So this wealth needs to be redistributed by some agency...(most would say the state - you might say an angel of god, or perhaps the brotherly love and pity on those less fortunate which all humanity brims over with).

fly_agaric

... like the good old days of free(er) markets for education & labour in the UK of Britain and Ireland 150 years ago...
There but for the evils of state interference (taxes, labour laws [enforced and not just written down], subsidised education system, welfare safety net)...