By
Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners
Most
of the world pays homage to its sweating, busing, trucking classes, its poor
huddled masses… yearning for a cushier seat and a better deal… on May 1.
But
President Grover Cleveland chose the first Monday in September.
Of
great interest to people in America on Labor Day – as indicated by the
newspaper headlines – is how much the laborers earn.
No
one – or almost no one – writing in the editorial pages works at McDonald’s or
earns the minimum wage. But practically every one of them has an opinion about
how much people with low wages should earn.
A
“living wage” is what they say they want. Thirty thousand dollars a year is the
amount we’ve seen discussed.
Of
course, a national living wage is absurd. It costs far more to live in
Manhattan than it does in the Ozarks. And it is far less expensive to live with
Mom and Dad than to have a place of one’s own.
But
we are not so much concerned with the practical details as with the theory.
If
well-educated, well-liquored, and well-paid employees can decide the wages of
McDonald’s workers, surely the burger-flippers should have the right to fix the
wages of the chattering, meddling, and improving classes.
Were
that to happen, our guess is that the well-paid know-it-alls would take a pay
cut.
We
walk into McDonald’s, and a minimum-wage worker serves up our order. We get
what we pay for and are content with the transaction; we do not begrudge the
worker his recompense.
We
read the paper, on the other hand, and we get bilge and nonsense.
Self-Satisfied Price-Fixers
Logically,
there are only two possibilities. Either wages are determined by a free
give-and-take between those who offer their labor and those who want to buy it…
or someone else sets wages according to his own standards.
The
do-gooders want to use other people’s money to raise the wages of the least well-paid,
but they make no mention of their own wages. Nor do they offer to pay more for
their hamburgers so that McDonald’s can pay its workers more.
And
what about the poor people who cannot find jobs at all?
If
the minimum wage were raised, there would surely be more unemployed people –
either because McDonald’s could not afford to hire so many people at higher
salaries or because it had replaced its minimum-wage employees with machines!
But
the price-fixers are so self-satisfied on the high road – driving along
comfortably in their Subarus and Priuses – that they can’t be bothered to look
out the window. If they did, they would see that setting prices always –
always! – makes people poorer, not richer.
Nevertheless,
we will give them the benefit of the doubt, if there were any, by trying to
imagine how the world could be improved by setting wages for other people.
A Jolly Undertaking
So
let us begin with a modest nod to fairness: If it makes sense to set the wages
of the least among us, why not do likewise for the most, too?
If
people not involved in a labor transaction can know better than the
participants what the terms should be, why not set the salaries of
editorialists? Publishers? CEOs? Sports celebrities? Movie stars?
And
if it makes sense to raise the wages on the low end… wouldn’t it make just as
much sense to lower them on the other?
If
one side should be fixed, why not both?
You
can see what a jolly undertaking this would be for a bureaucrat with a sense of
mischief.
So
instead of allowing the market to set prices, we will set them ourselves.
Yes,
we will not stop at rigging the stock market. We’ll rig the labor market, too –
by assigning salaries where we think they should be.
So,
let’s have a go. We have taken the lead to propose annual salaries for the
following trades according to the good we think they do society…
- Entrepreneurs (including your editor), poets,
inventors, and whacked-out metaphysicians – $100,000 per year
- Priests, teachers, mathematicians, scientists, pilots,
nurses, and filmmakers – $85,000
- Corporate CEOs, prostitutes, writers, bartenders, and
hedge fund managers – $75,000
- Drivers, laborers, clerks, salesmen, farmers, firemen,
and policemen – $50,000
- Psychologists, bone-crackers, doctors (including witch
doctors), and financial planners – $40,000
- Government employees (those not included in the groups
above), politicians, drug dealers, world improvers, economists,
counterfeiters, psychiatrists, sociologists, political scientists,
pollsters, and flimflam artists – $30,000
We
do not mean this list to be comprehensive or final. It is just a suggestion – a
point of departure toward a “fairer” distribution of national income.
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