Falling Back, 20 & 21. A Decent Minimum Wage

Yesterday was another blue day. Now that the days are getting shorter and cooler, they appear more often. The day goes by without anything catcing my attention, or simply too tired to think about anything, doing things automatically. 

But today I was thinking about a news blurb from last week. Geneva now has the highest minimum salary in the world, voted in by a majority of citizens of its canton, roughly $25 an hour (around $4,000 a month). I wouldn't mind moving to Geneva now and working at a minimum wage job. The Spanish national minimum wage is about €950 ($1,100) a month. In some American cities, it's been raised to $15 an hour.

One of the major differences is that Geneva is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Things cost a lot more there than they do in the majority of Spain. Americans might also think it's much more expensive to live in Switzerland, but not so fast. On the list of most expensive cities in the world, New York came out fourth, after the three cities that tied for first place, Hong Kong, Osaka, and Singapore. Geneva came out tenth, after tied Los Angeles and Tokyo.

So, what's the difference? That a coalition of labor unions brought it to a vote to "fight poverty, favor social integration, and contribute to the respect of human dignity." And a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless, of voters decided it was a good idea. 

The reason behind a minimum wage is precisely to avoid unskilled workers from living in poverty, like once upon a time back in the time of the robber barons, around a hundred years ago. Workers then lived in conditions that sparked uprisings and strikes until they got an eight hour workday, worker's compensation, and a minimum wage. There are people in Europe who still keep those lessons in mind. But many Americans seem to have forgotten them. They argue that the employer won't be able to pay higher wages, etc. That's the same argument the conservatives in Spain use. The answer is that the employer will benefit from losing some profit initially to the employees, because in the long run, the employees will work better, seeing that their pockets receive a more just recompense, and they will not need taxpayer assistance to supplement their income so they can eat and live.

Slave labor does not increase production, but will rather create shoddy products. When an employee has no incentive to work well, the company suffers. One way to "make America great again" is to increase wages, especially minimum wage, and that way, maybe American will become the productive force it used to be. Otherwise, it becomes a country of the very rich and the very poor, the middle class forced to disappear. Human dignity becomes subservient to money. The canton of Geneva has understood that and decided that the person is more important than money.

Life continues.