Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay. The bill, over a four-year period, would lowe…
Is there any reason that it couldn’t use existing employees rate of pay as a benchmark and literally force them to pay accordingly while reducing hours? It’s not like that wage data is secret its reported to the government as part of withholding. Ultimately a business would have to hire to meet needs or commit to paying overtime to all its 40 hour workers.
Since we are playing I run the world can’t I just say you can’t offer less than the average you are already paying for new people? If you don’t like it you can always close up shop and cede the market to someone else. Also wages are normally sticky. A large portion of your workforce works for someone else how will you ever attract them to work for you with smaller wages?
can’t I just say you can’t offer less than the average you are already paying for new people? If you don’t like it you can always close up shop and cede the market to someone else
And some employers will close up shop, causing inflation, then some wages will be raised to correct for inflation and some won’t. Those of people working in the same area as hit by such a law likely won’t, because there’ll be more people qualified and fewer jobs.
I’d wish Bernie limited this to changing the normal work week to 32hrs, and none of the other smartassery with unpredictable results.
Employers closing up shop doesn’t cause inflation. Neither houses nor groceries get more expensive because a fast food joint closed. Marginal businesses who make poor use of cheap labor such that they can’t even make much while paying people so little they get welfare are the assholes going down.
Yes there is at least one reason: jobs that aren’t yet defined wouldn’t exist in the Big Table of Centrally-Controlled Prices. So we either don’t apply it to those, or we prevent anyone from creating any new kind of employment arrangement without first getting government approval.
This kind of thing precedes starvation and mass murder. This is very dangerous.
Nobody suggested that a each business would have a fixed price for labor nor that new employers would have to apply to the government for a defined wage. Just that existing businesses and positions would be subject to such regulations and that businesses couldn’t pay new workers less than existing.
Prices for labor are inelastic. If you have 1M people in an industry nationwide making 50k for 50 weeks x 40 hours. If you scale down year by year your workers down from 40 -> 32 ultimately you end up with 1.25M workers earning 50k plus inflation if the size of the market served remains the same. In actuality labor effects price and price effects quantity demanded so you actually end up with 50k+inflation 1.10M or some such.
In this environment you could perfectly legally start up a new outfit paying 40k x 32 hours. However the well paying outfits need new workers at 50k to keep rolling and are aggressively hiring so the logical conclusion is that folks paying 40 wont be able to meaningfully hire. Even if you do manage to get SOME useful hires you will live in fear of them jumping ship at any moment for an instant life changing raise which will happen constantly until your business closes and you cry on social media that the government destroyed your business.
Actual up and comers will start out paying similar wages as the rest of the market and the price for labor is stuck at the new level.
Is there any reason that it couldn’t use existing employees rate of pay as a benchmark and literally force them to pay accordingly while reducing hours? It’s not like that wage data is secret its reported to the government as part of withholding. Ultimately a business would have to hire to meet needs or commit to paying overtime to all its 40 hour workers.
OK, then hiring new people they’ll pay less, and after everybody’s been rotated - for everybody.
Which is logical, I don’t get why he adds that phrase everywhere.
Since we are playing I run the world can’t I just say you can’t offer less than the average you are already paying for new people? If you don’t like it you can always close up shop and cede the market to someone else. Also wages are normally sticky. A large portion of your workforce works for someone else how will you ever attract them to work for you with smaller wages?
And some employers will close up shop, causing inflation, then some wages will be raised to correct for inflation and some won’t. Those of people working in the same area as hit by such a law likely won’t, because there’ll be more people qualified and fewer jobs.
I’d wish Bernie limited this to changing the normal work week to 32hrs, and none of the other smartassery with unpredictable results.
The core idea is good.
Employers closing up shop doesn’t cause inflation. Neither houses nor groceries get more expensive because a fast food joint closed. Marginal businesses who make poor use of cheap labor such that they can’t even make much while paying people so little they get welfare are the assholes going down.
Yes there is at least one reason: jobs that aren’t yet defined wouldn’t exist in the Big Table of Centrally-Controlled Prices. So we either don’t apply it to those, or we prevent anyone from creating any new kind of employment arrangement without first getting government approval.
This kind of thing precedes starvation and mass murder. This is very dangerous.
Nobody suggested that a each business would have a fixed price for labor nor that new employers would have to apply to the government for a defined wage. Just that existing businesses and positions would be subject to such regulations and that businesses couldn’t pay new workers less than existing.
Prices for labor are inelastic. If you have 1M people in an industry nationwide making 50k for 50 weeks x 40 hours. If you scale down year by year your workers down from 40 -> 32 ultimately you end up with 1.25M workers earning 50k plus inflation if the size of the market served remains the same. In actuality labor effects price and price effects quantity demanded so you actually end up with 50k+inflation 1.10M or some such.
In this environment you could perfectly legally start up a new outfit paying 40k x 32 hours. However the well paying outfits need new workers at 50k to keep rolling and are aggressively hiring so the logical conclusion is that folks paying 40 wont be able to meaningfully hire. Even if you do manage to get SOME useful hires you will live in fear of them jumping ship at any moment for an instant life changing raise which will happen constantly until your business closes and you cry on social media that the government destroyed your business.
Actual up and comers will start out paying similar wages as the rest of the market and the price for labor is stuck at the new level.