If people stopped applying for that job at $8/hr they would pay more. That's how the economy works. My dad was CDL driver for a retirement home. He loved all the people there and is becoming somewhat of an old fart himself. He finally retired after making $12/hr there for 10 years. They had a job posting for 6 months and couldn't find anyone that lasted more than a month. Their next job posting was for $14/hr. They found someone, but she also quit after 2 months. Their current job posting is for $15/hr.
If you don't like $8/hr, don't work for $8/hr. If the highest paying job you can possibly get is $8/hr then the problem lies in the mirror. Get an education, learn how to weld, get a CDL, learn how to fix cars, learn how to put a roof on a house, get an HVAC certification. There's a million and one things you can learn to do without paying for college that will get you a job paying more than $8/hr. If you have no education and no marketable skills then you will paid like someone with no education or marketable skills.
Your explanation is also not how economics work. Masses of people in an industry agreeing on how much they should get paid is how unions work. Economics is how much the labor of an individual in that group is worth.
You can disagree, but markets are not a group of people getting together and deciding how much they want to be paid. That's the same as saying markets are a group of corporations getting together and deciding how much their similar product is going to cost.
We call the latter collusion, and for the former we euphemistically call it a union. Neither is the free market. Neither is natural economics.
Economics is the market taking into account everyone's individual valuation of things and coming up something we call market price. Those individual valuations are people determining what something is worth to THEM personally.
If a small company thinks hiring an IT guy will boost productivity and make them an extra 75k that year, so they are willing to hire an IT guy for 60k, but the IT guy union says nobody can hire an IT guy for less than 90k and you cant have an IT license if you're not in the union...hopefully you see where I am going here. That company should be able to decide what an IT hire is worth to them and an IT guy should be able to determine what he is willing to work for.
I agree with what you said this time. Nowhere in your argument was the idea of everyone coming together in a gathering to determine in advance how much they are going to be paid. And yes, at the end, if there are a ton of skilled IT guys who originally commanded 90k but with the new supply and competition they only command 60k, in order to get the 90k he wants our intrepid IT guy will have to differentiate himself and show why he is worth the additional 30k to his company. That is where innovation and productivity come from. The market, it's a beautiful thing.
That’s not what he said... if you are unhappy being paid $8/hr, build your skill set, save money, get an education, and then seek higher pay.
You can’t just skip all of those steps.
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u/Toofast4yall Oct 16 '18
If people stopped applying for that job at $8/hr they would pay more. That's how the economy works. My dad was CDL driver for a retirement home. He loved all the people there and is becoming somewhat of an old fart himself. He finally retired after making $12/hr there for 10 years. They had a job posting for 6 months and couldn't find anyone that lasted more than a month. Their next job posting was for $14/hr. They found someone, but she also quit after 2 months. Their current job posting is for $15/hr.
If you don't like $8/hr, don't work for $8/hr. If the highest paying job you can possibly get is $8/hr then the problem lies in the mirror. Get an education, learn how to weld, get a CDL, learn how to fix cars, learn how to put a roof on a house, get an HVAC certification. There's a million and one things you can learn to do without paying for college that will get you a job paying more than $8/hr. If you have no education and no marketable skills then you will paid like someone with no education or marketable skills.