Right and I'm saying that it'd be more effective to restructure how the top operates, rather than continuously put programs into place that ultimately only grant temporary reprieve and offer no real lasting benefit because poverty exists for a purpose and isn't a thing that occurred naturally. If eliminating poverty were as simple as raising the minimum wage then it would have already been done. If all we needed were more jobs, then they would have been created.
My argument is also along the lines of BadSheep's: how do we restructure how the "top" operates?
By your logic if all we need is restructuring how the top operates, then it'd be done as well, wouldn't it? If all we needed to prevent climate change is to reduce carbon emissions, then that would've been done as well, wouldn't it? Tell a slave in the 1800's that if human dignity necessitates the ending of slavery, that it would have been done already. Your argument isn't logical here. Just because something is necessary or sufficient to stop something else doesn't mean that it will have already been tried by society. There's no connection. Perhaps the reason it's so necessary is because we haven't tried it yet.
Raising the minimum wage and job creation are both necessary parts to alleviating poverty. If you're working a reasonably full work week and you're paid poverty wages, then you're literally working your way into poverty. If you don't have a job, then you don't have income, and most likely you're in poverty.
The minimum wage can be raised and enforced by government pretty easily. "Creating jobs" is much more difficult and complex. But those two "metrics" are necessary for the reasons I just described. No matter what we do, if people have jobs, then they have an income. And if that income is decent, then they won't be in poverty.
I agree completely. But (speaking for my own country, the US of A) people are constantly told that unions are greedy and corrupt and whatever else that makes people not want to support unions. There are also plenty of laws aimed and reducing the power of unions or people's ability to form unions.
I know. I'm not informed on how the whole union movement rose and fell so I don't have much to say about how to revive it. But from what I know about my own country and other countries, they're a necessary part to pressuring businesses to raise wages.
But if that were true then why are there so many big corporations just sitting on piles of money and not putting it back into the economy?
I guess if your business is in actually making a product or providing a service that everyday people want or need it could be in a business's interests, but even something like Walmart doesn't pay its people well.
TBH I don't think Walmart has the kind of labour model we want to promote for a society with less poverty. I don't have anything against the Walmart business model of selling high volumes at low margins, but $7.25 jobs are not going to lift people out of poverty. I wouldn't say that there isn't a place for jobs like that, but nobody could expect to have a career on minimum wage and rise out of poverty. It should make only a marginal part of the workforce.
From what I know about Germany, the way they do things there is that wages are negotiated, in a general way, between unions, businesses, and the government. They have a collaborative style of labour relations that has been responsible for keeping wages up. Businesses have to stay competitive, but they don't have to compete on the basis of cheap labour, they could do so on efficient workflow or quality. Even though there might be a ton of companies in the US who rely on cheap labour, what matters is that it's not necessary for an economy to prosper.
