How would Locke help you to arrive at a judgment about the raise in the minimum wage?
I thought I would revisit Locke before our class tomorrow. As we’ve discussed, Locke’s social contract contains a fairly strong focus on property -- in his view, the civil government should protect “life, liberty, and property,” not “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” like the US Declaration of Independence. He argues that the government should respect one’s natural right to acquire property. Under this natural law, one should only acquire as much property as one needs. This made the most sense before money, when people dealt with mostly perishable goods: “Where there is not something both lasting and scarce, and so valuable to be hoarded up, there men will not be apt to enlarge their possessions of land, were it never so rich, never so free for them to take” (Locke 285). Then Locke describes how people began to use gold and silver for currency “which may be hoarded up without injury to anyone” (Locke 286). Thus, it seems like money transcends this natural law that dictates that one only take what one can consume, or what one needs for subsistence. If people can accumulate more money than they need “without injury to anyone,” then I would like to think that workers should at least receive a subsistence level wage, if not more. In many US cities, the minimum wage is below a subsistence level wage, also known as a living wage. If Locke thinks that it’s okay for people to earn even more money than they need, I think we can apply his thoughts to say that people should at least be paid enough money to get by.
Also, Locke seems to value labor quite highly, as the route to property. So it seems like he believes that people should get what they deserve for their labor. Today, people mostly work for wages, not property, so it follows that people should get the wages they deserve for the labor.
I certainly agree with your evaluation of Locke’s hypothetical take on the increase of minimum wage. Now you raised the point that Locke would not oppose people earning more money than they need, however, I believe this is impossible for someone who’s wage is the permissible minimum (regardless of how wages are raised). Surely the real value of wages is bound to fluctuate and in a relativistic understanding of value, an increase in wages can be nullified by a counter-action in the economy that devalues the wages. Thus in order to increase the minimum wage (in a palpable way) there needs to be some sort of regulation on behalf of the government whereas the situation described by Locke (in which labor serves as the route to property) is much easier to provide one with the property needed for subsistence.
ReplyDeleteGeorge brings up a crucial point to the understanding of the self-succiency of raising the minimum wage. Although Locke may make it seem that "money transcends this natural law that dictates that one only take what one can consume," it is not a sustainable concept. I do not disagree that people should receive the wages they deserve for their work, but this is a subjective notion. The relativity of money within the international economy counteracts a raise in minimum wage. Essentially wage steps beyond the numbers and into this limited form, that Locke describes as "property". For the prosperity of a nation's people, government can use the money they would have placed in the variable pockets of the people to collectively beneficial programs that support those who are uneducated or those who want to move beyond the blue-collar, hourly wage job.
ReplyDelete