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In Most Countries, 40 Hours + Minimum Wage = Poverty
In Most Countries, 40 Hours + Minimum Wage = Poverty
Last week, we noted that Democratic lawmakers in the US are pushing for what they call “$12 by ’20” which, as the name implies, is an effort to raise the minimum wage to $12/hour over the course of the next five years. Republicans argue that if Democrats got their wish and the pay floor were increased by nearly 70%, it would do more harm than good for low-income Americans as the number of jobs that would be lost as a result of employers cutting back in the face of dramatically higher labor costs would offset the benefit that accrues to the workers who are lucky enough to keep their jobs.
Regardless of who is right or wrong when it comes to projecting what would happen to low-wage jobs in the face of a steep hike in the minimum wage, one thing is certain: many working families depend on government assistance to make ends meet, suggesting it’s tough to persist on minimum wage in today’s economy and indeed, a new study by the OECD shows that in 21 out of the 26 member countries that have a minimum wage, working 40 hours per week at the pay floor would not be sufficient to keep one’s family out of poverty.
Here’s more from Bloomberg:
A global ranking out Wednesday by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development painted a grim picture of the situation in member countries straddling continents. The 34-member organization found that a legal minimum wage existed in 26 countries and crunched the numbers to see how they compared.Forget taking a siesta in Spain. There, you’d have to work more than 72 hours a week to escape the trappings of poverty. Turns out that is the norm, not the exception. In the 21 countries highlighted with blue bars in the chart below, a full 40-hour work week still won’t lift families out of relative poverty. This list includes France, home to the 35-hour work week, which almost met the threshold. Minimum wage workers there who are supporting a spouse and two children need to work 40.2 hours to get their families out of poverty. (The poverty line is defined as 50 percent of the median wage in any nation.)
A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse – David Graeber on “The Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”
A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse – David Graeber on “The Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”
Graeber’s argument is similar to one he made in a 2013 article called “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”, in which he argued that, in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the century technology would have advanced sufficiently that in countries such as the UK and the US we’d be on 15-hour weeks. “In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.”
But what happened between the Apollo moon landing and now? Graeber’s theory is that in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was mounting fear about a society of hippie proles with too much time on their hands. “The ruling class had a freak out about robots replacing all the workers. There was a general feeling that ‘My God, if it’s bad now with the hippies, imagine what it’ll be like if the entire working class becomes unemployed.’ You never know how conscious it was but decisions were made about research priorities.” Consider, he suggests, medicine and the life sciences since the late 1960s. “Cancer? No, that’s still here.” Instead, the most dramatic breakthroughs have been with drugs such as Ritalin, Zoloft and Prozac – all of which, Graeber writes, are “tailor-made, one might say, so that these new professional demands don’t drive us completely, dysfunctionally, crazy”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Pulling the plug, part 1
Pulling the plug, part 1
We can refuse to participate in a dead society gone shopping.
— Joe Bageant
Once we understand what feeds it, it becomes possible to think of stopping the Machine. I puzzled over this one for a long time, only to suddenly grok the obvious: the fodder for the Machine is our precious life energy!
So then. Deny it its coveted fuel: your effort, your attention and interest, your money, your loyalty, your goodwill and your good ideas. Deny it your streams of energy, one by one. Direct them instead to the Lifeworld. And don’t shout it from the rooftops! Just blend discreetly into one of the various subcultures experimenting nowadays with a saner way of life; the minions and guardians of the Machine will never even notice you.
This is the crux. Any machine can withstand tinkering, but no machine can run without fuel. Like an old mill on a dry riverbed, it will become a relic of a past that’s done with, a useless hunk of debris. Our radical withdrawal will be the end of the Machine.
Here are some of the ways of seceding from Babylon:
- Down-work, un-work
More work is the source of evils like resource depletion and stress and pointlessly complicated lives; the Earth needs us to stop working so hard! The less we work, the less we feed the Machine. Our work aids the plunder, our de-working slows and stops it, one person at a time. This is why Babylon has always reinforced the message that work is virtuous and important even as it was inventing pointless busywork, harmful work, useless work. Let’s celebrate “Freedom from Labor” Day! Working more is not the way to leisure. Leisure is the way to leisure. Find it before the Machine uses you up and spits you out.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Students Tell Government They Won’t Work For Free On Logo For Canada’s 150th Birthday
Students Tell Government They Won’t Work For Free On Logo For Canada’s 150th Birthday
Many young Canadian designers are expressing outrage that the federal government would ask them to work for free.
The Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) has launched a campaign to boycott the Canadian Heritage ministry’s competition to find a logo for Canada’s upcoming 150th birthday in 2017.
Anchored with the hashtag #MyTimeHasValue, the campaign seeks to highlight how design competitions have become a means for companies and governments to obtain free work from designers, particularly when they’re young. The logo competition is open only to post-secondary students.
While the creator of the winning logo will receive $5,000, RGD president Stüssy Tschudin says that doesn’t even begin to be fair.
“Imagine 500 students enter the contest. Each student spends 10 hours on a design, which totals 5,000 hours of work. At minimum wage in Ontario ($11), this amounts to $55,000 worth of free labour,” said Tschudin in an email. “The fact that one of those students will receive a prize doesn’t negate all of that other free labour.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
