Thanks for clarifying. I concluded that you would not hire them when you said
Sorry for jumping to conclusions. So, what would you do? mk and thenewgreen refer to this conversation in the past tense, and if you feel it has run its course, please feel free to say so. I will consider askinghubski, though I am wary of the amount of effort it might take to understand a lot of different people's positions. I haven't even gotten clarity on the terms "living wage" and "starvation wage" which you use as black and white categories. Here are the definitions you linked to: So there is some ambiguity about who will be able to meet basic needs with a given wage. The worker, or the worker and family? Consider this scenario: Alice and Bob work in the same office, with the same role, at the same level, with similar performance and seniority. As one would expect, their salaries are very similar. Bob is married to a doctor and lives in a paid-off single family home. They have a dog but no kids, and enjoy spending time in their vacation condo. They have no debt. Alice is a single mother of three. She lives in a rented townhouse. She has student loans outstanding as well as significant credit card debt because of chronic bad luck with the used cars she buys. Alice is thinking about declaring bankruptcy. Bob is thinking about buying a Maserati. As I said, their salaries are similar. Is it a living wage or a starvation wage? Since public assistance in the United States is typically means-tested on a household basis, there should be nothing immoral about an employer hiring Bob at any salary while he is living comfortably. But if his circumstances change, say following a divorce, he may start qualifying for public assistance. Nothing has changed in his relationship with his employer; is the employer now acting unethically?I did not suggest the $25k/yr. interviewees not be hired, I merely pointed out that, depending on how they answered the questions, they may end up being problems.
No matter which way you look at it, you're going to have problems if you don't pay your employees a living wage.
That allows a family to meet its basic needs, and provides it with some ability to deal with emergencies, without resorting to welfare or other public assistance.
money paid to workers that is not enough to pay for the things (such as food and shelter) that are needed to live
A living wage is the minimum amount of money needed to meet basic needs, assuming someone does not have access to other means of support. Each adult is assumed to be paying for the needs of one child. No one is presumed to have a paid-off home or vacation condo, and no one is assumed to be paying off usurious debts. This amount of money is determined by the cost of living in a particular area. Last I heard, the estimated cost of living in the United States, in general, is about $37,000 a year. It will be more in urban or suburban areas, and less in rural areas. It will also vary by region. The east and west coats will cost more, the central parts of the country will cost less. Employers who pay less than the cost of living for full-time work in their area are pushing their labor costs off onto the public, who will be required to make up the difference through taxes for public-assistance programs. The question being addressed by the living wage/starvation wage division is not, what is sufficient for all circumstances, but, what is minimally necessary in common circumstances. Some people will have problems we'll need to help them with, like Sally. Others will have advantages which can help others out, like Bob. In general, I've found it pointless to speak about business practices in terms of ethics. Unfortunately, most business administrators and economists believe ethics to be unrelated to their practice. However, they will pay attention to utilitarian arguments. So, if you ask me a business question, I'll respond with a utilitarian argument. You can only speak about ethics to someone who is acquainted with the liberal arts.
I am not a business administrator or economist. I have a liberal arts degree. Utilitarian arguments are interesting, but I would like to explore the ethics of low-wage employment. I see I left out a feature of Alice and Bob's situation you need to know before answering my question. Let's say that the particular area they live in is average, so the cost of living is about $37,000 a year. Is their salary a living wage or a starvation wage?
Still probably a starvation wage, even though it might be easier to live on $37k in rural Alabama than in NYC. I base this mainly on the fact that wages are lowest in the Deep South, and (surprise, surprise) they also have the highest proportion of people on Medicaid and welfare. We can argue about the virtues and vices of free market economic all day, but the fact of the matter is that there is empirical evidence, the absolute, scientific gold standard of what actually happens in the world that shows that low wages are bad for everyone.