But even an unskilled worker is giving the totality of the brawn of his back and the sweat of his brow to the boss for 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year is to have the basics for human life and dignity. And for that reason, we have the minimum wage. If the boss cannot produce a decent wage and a profit from taking the labor of a worker, it is the boss who has failed, not the worker.
yes, this.
In a system where there are many workers and few bosses, it is necessary to put the main responsibility for making the job itself productive to the boss. The boss is the one setting the parameters for the job, integrating it into the total business plan. The worker has little or no influence at that, his main role is to do what the boss has asked him to to the best of his ability.
In the case of the self-employed, an individual can choose to do work that pays less than a living wage, if he wants to. i do that, I watch a child and make about $2 an hour, and that works for me for a number of reasons. If it was no longer adequate, i would need to change the parameters of the job.
The mistake of those who think the employee can just go get another job, or improve his skills, is that in a capitalist system, workers do not have the ability to affect the types of jobs available in the marketplace in a significant way. It is the capitalists - the owners of the jobs - who on a large level determine the types of positions available.
That is why we have things like minimum wage laws. It is a way of reigning in the power of the capitalist to determine the ultimate nature of the marketplace. Because the marketplace alone can only take account of monetary values, not human values.
If we want to insert human values - like, say, the dignity of human work - we need to manage the nature of the marketplace in some way. Minimum wage laws are a way of stopping capitalists from creating a glut of jobs that do not treat human work with dignity.
And that is what has happened historically when we don't have those kinds of controls - working conditions have been abusive and immoral.
I have no clue where people get the idea that under laissez faire policies things were great for workers.