Physiology 2075G Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Living Wage, Sweatshop
Document Summary
Wages: captive child labour, living wage standard: this is providing people enough money in order to live sufficiently. The perversity thesis: living wage standard makes workers worse off. However the argument against this is that if living wage standard is implemented, it will increase the bottom line for businesses, and therefore force businesses to go elsewhere. This pulls money away from countries, and people that were making sh. 25 a day, are now not making anything at all and are therefore worse off. Argue that unskilled labour wages are price-elastic (aka easily replaceable and therefore the mncs hold the buying power over companies) Race to the bottom: if all companies are looking around the world for the best or cheapest labour, countries are now racing against each other in order to provide the cheapest labour. This forces labour wages down even lower than they already are.