Prison labour taking private sector jobs

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no legal standing in the United States of America. Not a bit. It is just words on a piece of paper and hot air uttered on the appropriate occasions.

ruveyn

Oh, the USA did sign The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But, that was back in the heady Truman days, after we had just emerged from the Great Depression, followed by World War II, and we were afflicted with optimism and good will. Those days are long gone.

Ask, and you shall receive.

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

I have never claimed that it does. Capital is (or should be) free to move where it can produce goods and services at the most competitive price. Economies, therefore, must adapt, doing what they do best, and leaving other fields to economies that can do it better.

You see it all over the OECD, manufacturing--especially low skilled manufacturing--is moving offshore, and services are taking over the role that manufacturing once filled.



For the United States, here's a starting point: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/12poverty.shtml

Just to be clear, I have never suggested that it has any legal effect in the United States. But it is an aspirational document, and one which can create a sound policy basis on which the legislature can then choose to act.

If conservatives posit that there is a "right to work," then it is perfectly fair for progressives to posit that there is a right to a fair and reasonable wage.

The Right has this "survival must be earned" mentality, that every single thing, even drinking water, the most basic food and shelter, must be in play and that some may have to go without and die. They add that it's reasonable that certain people can use this to effectively own people, to say well I will give you bare survival in return for open-ended servitude and I will gorge myself on free lunches at your expense. The Left says that the basics of survival should not be in play, that this should not be used to allow people to effectively capture and enslave large numbers of people and gorge themselves on free lunches at their expense. That people are not free if they spend every waking hour trying to survive. The Left favours freedom, the Right favours slavery.

http://www.dinosoria.com/galeres.htm

Prior to Louis XIV, galleys were staffed primarily by free men. The pay was low, working conditions rather abysmal, and benefits that many modern workers take for granted were nonexist.

Louis XIV wanted a bigger fleet, and ordered French courts to sentence men to the galleys as often as possible. He also ordered French judges to sentence men to life in the galleys instead of death.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjgImODCv3M[/youtube]




The situation today is similar. A lot of Americans don't want illegal migrants to do our farm work (or to take other jobs that our citizens do not want, at the pay that is offered). So, businesses can either raise salaries and benefits to attract legal employees, or get convicts to do the work. The demand for cheap convict labour is bound to increase pressure on judges to convict, as Louis XIV did back in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Oh, dear. Yet another example of the view that politics can be adequately described by a dichotomy.

There are 10 types of people...

Who gets to determine what is "fair and reasonable"? Those political whores in Congress?

In any free transaction, the price of the good or service is determined by mutual agreement between buyer and seller, not some bribe seeking congress critter.

ruveyn

There is really a division between the "survival must be earned" crowd and those who say that we have enough to ensure everyone's survival, this should not be in play... I wouldn't say that all conservatives are in the "survival must be earned" crowd, but that point of view has been out there more and more. The thing is, when survival is in play you end up with large numbers of people ready to be had, to be owned, to be abused and exploited. "It's all part of the game", as the survival must be earned crowd say...

Thank'ee kindly my friend.

"But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they giving drug offenders time in double digits"

- Killer Mike, "Reagan"

Basically, I wouldn't have a problem with prison labor if we didn't have no many people in prison unnecessarily to begin with.

But your fantasy world requires equality of bargaining power. There cannot be mutuality of agreement when one party to the transaction can say, "take it or leave it," because there are a thousand other people in the line waiting to make the same transaction. When the marketplace is demonstrably broken (and I say that full time workers relying on food stamps is ample demonstration of that), then it is the responsibility of the legislature to impose correction. Given the choice between forcing minimum wages up, or forcing prices down, I prefer the former as the least interventionist approach that will address the issue.

So what is fair and reasonable? In my view it is that amount, in a given market, that will provide a person--based on a forty hour work week--with take earnings of at least50% of the amount required to meet the poverty line for a family of four.

Except raising the minimum wage has some seriously nasty side effects. If the value of your labour is lower than the minimum wage, then you become permanently unemployed as no one will hire you.

Raising the minimum wage increases employment as it increases demand in the economy. The existence of unemployment is a choice made by the elite, it's called the NAIRU theory to create a deliberate Reserve Army of Labour for the purpose of suppressing wages.

Proof?

My Wiki-Fu yields no conclusive results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wa ... al_studies