Wages and Prices

This is what politics in about.

Sometimes we make things difficult because we “overthink” them.  In a functioning democratic society this is a constant danger.  I don’t mean simplicity, nor even that false God, clarity. I’m calling for focus.

Realities that face an electorate are complex and extensive. The voter’s task is to focus in on a key factor and choose. I’m not a big supporter of “analytic” choice: weighing, quantifying, abstracting, averaging many factors until you achieve a “sweet numerical answer.” Any more than I recommend broad general theory—handing the game over to ideology, to make our choices.

We are not AI machines, and I wouldn’t trust us if we were.

I think voting can matter, should matter, and I think it will matter if this is what both voters and candidates focus on.

The wages a person or persons (husband and wife) receive for the 40 hours of work they do, must pay for their needs as a family.  And their job(s) should be reasonable secure, i.e. not subject to abrupt termination through no fault of the worker or structural changes in the economy that can be foreseen and allowed for (including obviously natural disasters).

To my way of thinking, this is THE central role of government in the modern State.  Living wages and secure employment.  (Of course there is more, but first things first.)

Don’t quote me averages and trends and all the rest of the distractions that mess with my reality.  I am willing to believe the numbers, wages today are more than keeping pace with prices.  These are averages, though, generalizations about the whole.  It can be true, it likely is true, while millions of hard-working Americans still make less than a living wage. 

Face this fact.  Wages and prices in our private ownership market-based economy are initially set by people who seek to maximize business profit.  That is the system.  I personally think it has been on the whole a successful way to organize production and consumption.  I’m not suggesting an abrupt change.  I am, though, clear in my own mind that it is the role of government to bring pressure on wages and prices to create a living wage for all Americans, without abandoning the system itself. 

How?  Through setting minimum wages, ensuring worker bargaining rights and ensuring genuine price competition in a free market for goods and services.  (Yes, we can debate the methods.)

Without government intervention, we have a race to the bottom on wages and we have a steady replacement of free markets by monopoly control of prices. Also a constant disruption of employment.,

There is nothing about private ownership and the central goal of profit that keeps us from solving what I’m calling the key issue of our time: bread on the table for all who are able to work.  As private ownership seeks to increase profits at the expense of living standards for many, governments push back.  A sort of Goldilocks sweet spot must be achieved or approximated.

Not perfect.  Not without governments playing “hardball” at times.  But if we don’t make progress toward that goal, and don’t convince millions of people we are making progress toward this goal, you can kiss democracy goodbye.  You give the mass of voters nothing to vote for.

I want to thank a conversation in a bar the other night for helping me see it this way, though it is obviously not a new idea for me or many others. I gained a lot from listening to a decent person, with a decent job, describe what he expected from his government. Exactly what I’ve been saying. And, I should add, close to the edge of not expecting it anymore.

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