Gephardt's Revolution Begins With a Global Minimum Wage

[papau]

Gephardt's Revolution Begins With a Global Minimum Wage

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-outlook12jan12,1,2949307.column?coll=la-headlines-politics

<snip>...The idea is simple. Gephardt says that as a condition of membership in the World Trade Organization, every nation should be required to adopt a minimum wage. The level would vary from country to country, depending on productivity and the level of development. But everywhere, he says, workers should be guaranteed a wage high enough "to allow someone to live like a human being."

The International Labor Organization estimates that at least 85 countries have a minimum wage on the books. But in many places, it is honored more in the breach. Gephardt, who has always valued the practical over the prophetic, is preaching a revolution: the idea that any country seeking to participate in the global economy should be required to pursue a decent level of existence for its workers.<snip>

A better alternative, Sachs argues, would be to increase foreign aid to improve health and education — thus generating the productivity that could eventually justify higher wages — while reducing tariffs and quotas that inhibit poor countries from selling agricultural or light manufacturing products like textiles to the U.S.

But Gephardt, correctly, doesn't see such an agenda as incompatible with his own. As president, he says, "I would go to the WTO meeting myself" and present developing countries a grand bargain: more foreign aid and lower tariffs in return for a commitment to lift wages. "You've got to cut a deal," he says, the diplomat as legislator.<snip>

[mastein]

1. Good idea, BUT

there are 2 issues here. A minimum wage is great but we have to remember enforcement in most countries is what we generally think of as shakedowns. Also, what would the wage be tied to? If you look at what $5.15 an hour will buy you even in the cheapest places to live, it ain't much. If there were some way to make a minimum wage a "living wage" and a real way to enforce both wage and other industrial regs. (e.g. environmental regs) then we might have something.

[cprise]

2. Yawn

Sounds both radical and ineffectual.

Instead of granting only corporations a system of international rights and courts where they can sue anybody else, why not just extend those rights to unions and individuals so we can fight back?

If the answer is that it goes too far, then the solution is to dismantle the corporate-only international government. (After all, it either goes too far, or it doesn't.)