Thursday, January 29, 2009

Fingers crossed for our first blog-free weekend!

To Adam Smith, a law presenting a minimum amount that the lowest worker must make is a wonderful idea. He would agree with the fact that there needs to be a boundary set so that even the lowest laborer makes some amount of money. I would not doubt that Smith would even agree with these minimum wage employees being entitled to updated equipment and benefits in order to perform their jobs. He says something very important to this effect in his first chapter. “Everybody must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery” (Smith 27). However, it is hard to judge what benefits a minimum wage employee should get according to Smith because I have a feeling that he would prefer the employee just make slightly more money so they could pay for the care themselves. While Smith would praise the system of minimum wage, he would condemn the way that minimum wage is controlled. So much of the wealth in our country is held by an extremely small percentage of the people. These people then have the most influence over the government and congress. Lo and behold, minimum wage is controlled by government and congress. This means that while minimum wage will not slip downwards, it is extremely difficult for the people earning minimum wage to have their wages changed. Smith would frown upon this practice because he believes that the man doing the labor has just as much rights to his wages as the man on top doing nothing.

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