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The thing is that there are fundamental trade offs that you can't escape even if you make laws at the federal level. Laws which add costs to labor means that w
by rsj_hn 5y ago
The thing is that there are fundamental trade offs that you can't escape even if you make laws at the federal level.
Laws which add costs to labor means that wages are going to be lower than if those costs weren't there. In a tight labor market that means employers have to go elsewhere, so more outsourcing or they cut back on labor employed. There is a reason why Europe has such high unemployment rates (and comparatively lower salaries) and struggles especially with youth employment. But they have much better worker protections. It's a tradeoff.
Now that doesn't mean it's not worth it to pass certain worker protections. But every such protection will have a cost in terms of reducing demand for labor. Maybe the cost is small and the benefit is high, in which case, go for it. But don't pretend that the costs aren't going to be paid if you federalize the law, or that there is some sort of legal arrangement you can make to outlaw economic tradeoffs. The costs will just be paid in a different way.
And it's not like everyone in Colorado is suddenly unemployed. Lots of people are hiring Colorado workers. It's just a small decrease in demand for Colorado labor in response to a small increase in employer headaches for hiring people in that state. If those who supported this law didn't expect exactly this to happen, then they were uninformed. I am assuming most people in Colorado knew this would happen and decided to pass the law anyway. Time will tell whether the benefits outweigh the costs, but there are always such tradeoffs.
- Ericson2314 5y agoThis is not wrong, but I feel you are hiding the adversity inherent to employee-employer relations. Why is there such a labor glut anways? If it's an immaterial underconsumptionist / keyensian demand-shortfall type problem, how can we boost aggregate demand and broad population purchasing power. If it's some sort of supply glut / too much productivity issue, how can we all work less? Speaking about these issues as if they are "engineering tradeoffs" ignores that the status quo is not static and universal.
- rsj_hn 5y ago> I feel you are hiding the adversity inherent to employee-employer relations. The only adversity inheritent to the employer/employee system is the same adversity inheritent to any buyer/seller relationship. Both want to extract the most from the other while providing the least. Sellers curse when it's a buyer's market and buyers curse when it's a seller's market, and buyers always want it to be a buyers market and vice versa. That's pretty normal and appears in every market, including the labor market. If you are buying flat screen TVs, you need to understand that the flatscreen TV makers are not your friend. They will charge as much as they possibly can. That doesn't mean you hate them, but if you feel personally wounded when they try to screw you over, then you are in for a life lesson. Be wary and avoid brand loyalties. The same with your employer. I don't think this is something I am trying to hide.
- Ericson2314 5y ago> The only adversity inheritent to the employer/employee system is the same adversity inheritent to any buyer/seller relationship. Sure, but your choice of work far dwarfs any other of those other transactions in its magnitude (and ongoing nature).
- markrages 5y agoI can't find any definition of inheritent. What do you mean by this word?