It's far too late at night for me to go into detail, but what you're saying is not true. Class mobility is not higher than it has been in years. In fact, the odds of moving up in social class (maybe it has changed with Britain struggling these recent years) is greater in Britain than in the United States for the first time in a long time. If you know recent history, that is a troubling sign. The disparity in wages has been at a steady increase since the 1970s and people of all income levels, including college graduates are making less than they were making a decade ago. The system you are talking about is working for a very few people. Most people do not end up in a social class higher than they were born into. Wealth disparity did not disburse because of industrialization. It disbursed due to minimum wage laws, child work protection laws, etc. It is government intervention and labor unions that brought about the rise in wages. It is even shown that just the presence of strong unions raises wages even among those not in unions locally because employers raise wages because they want to avoid it.
There are capitalist hybrid economies all over the world, and many of them do not endorse our brand of capitalism. The reason someone in France may be able to scrape by is because the government provides significantly more social services there (I.E. healthcare). If we just use the average monthly cost of a random healthcare premium as a barometer, we would have to increase the minimum wage to over 16 dollars an hour to cover it. The government provides that in France. What you're demonstrating is why social scientists majors need to exist and why law school and MBA students class often when we get together. You guys think purely in terms of maximizing profits, and ignore the effects on society. Employers determine the "market" and "value." It is not as if there is some sort of equation. Cotsco chooses to pay its employees 12 dollars an hour at minimum and it's no different than any other company of its sort.
Those employees are no less interchangeable. The Scandanavian countries that lack minimum wages do not institute it because their employees are largely covered by collective bargaining agreements and make more money than a proposed minimum wage. Just because someone did not become as educated as you or I does not mean they should suffer a life of barely being able to afford food. In NYC 50,000 homeless people have 1 or two jobs.
How about you drop your gem and illuminate us then...........
5 star post @
