For me labor / laboring means that I have to give someone else my time in exchange for something I need, typically US dollars but not always. If I didn't need the money I wouldn't be doing the laboring as I would prefer all of my time to be free spent doing what I want to do. This free time might be spent doing work on my own property or one of my small businesses, but I wouldn't consider that laboring. Truth be told I would much rather spend my free time floating down a river, reading, playing video games, talking with friends around a fire, writing, preparing a one of a kind delicious meal, hiking in the woods, gardening, fishing, or just about anything other than chasing down the fiat currency they just print and hand to each other. With each passing year, more of my time will be spent freely doing what I want and less of it navigating through traffic to sit and stare at screens.
So how do I decrease my time spent laboring and increase my free time? I increase my wage rate. My first job was for a farmer bailing hay in the summer. I made $5 per hour and it was very hard work. I would have loved to do something different but we lived in the country and there wasn't many options for kids without cars. The farmers knew if I didn't want the job there were other kids lined up to take my place. This labor market for bailing hay in my small town was established and I was on the labor curve where supply met demand.
When I turned 16 and I had a car, I began driving around and looking for better labor opportunities. I didn't have much to offer other than the fact I was a big strong kid and would work through mild discomfort until the end of the day then come back and do it again the next day, and the next day after that. My rate was up to around $9 per hour. By the time I was 18 and in college, my summers were spent working for contractors doing many tasks and my rate was around $15 per hour.
After college my first professional job in the finance and accounting arena made me around $25 per hour. I had an internship in college and good grades so that is how I was able to start at such a high rate directly out of college. Lucky for me I had a mentor who took me under his wing and taught me some tricks in excel. Over the next couple of years my wages gradually increased as I picked up more tricks and tried to set myself apart from my peers.
Fast forward 17 years and many corporate jobs later and my wage rate sits somewhere between $40-$100 per hour depending on what kind of laboring I am doing. My personal demand for labor has decreased because I am frugal and we don't have debt so I can cherry pick the best jobs at the highest rates. I can also cherry pick those jobs which will diversify my skills so the next time I am looking to labor it will be that much easier to find a match. I can also cherry pick the jobs which give me the most flexibility in regards to when I do the laboring.
The moral of my story is that as my wage rate increased, my free time increased. But my wage rate only increased as I made intentional moves to diversify the ways in which I could earn income. If you aren't worth what you are charging your employer, the market will eliminate that inefficiency and you will be out of work. But if you stay on that gradually increasing curve and maybe offer your services for a slight discount to get in the door and be a good value, you will always be on the employable side of the labor curve.
In regards to a government mandated minimum wage, I think this is garbage. First of all cost of living is drastically different around the country. And there are some of us that don't require living wages. Teenagers and elderly people come to mind as laborers who would be willing to work for less than an adult in the prime years of laboring supporting themselves and maybe a family. Why should we set the curve for this wage rate when many factors go into what rate people would be willing to labor for. There have been studies that conclude minimum wage actually hurts those who it was "intended" to help. Leave the wage rate up to the employer and the laborer, it will work itself out.
And children should be allowed to labor at any age and for any rate (assuming they are free to come and go as they please and aren't in a forced slave labor situation). Many of the problems I see in the children today is because they are given everything and don't have to contribute to their own well-being. This creates lazy brats who expect life to come easy and on a silver platter. When we had the urban farm in Cincinnati I would pay the kids in the neighborhood to pick weeds, $2 for a 5 gallon bucket. Some of them would loosely place the weeds in the bucket and bring it to me 5 minutes later. I would step on the weeds and tell them to fill it up. Some would take an hour to fill up 2 buckets and all they wanted was a few bucks to buy some snacks. That is OK who am I to judge? One kid though would make around $15 per hour because he worked smart and hard and I was happy to pay him the money.
Wages should be on the rise but they are stagnant because our economy is stagnant. The gangsters who took over our government and tilted the economy in their favor have steadily invested their profits into automating their businesses and decreasing their demand for human labor. And the human labor that remains is shopped around the globe for the cheapest bidder. It has turned the labor market in the US into a nasty and desperate one. People are willing to work long hours for minimal pay increases because if they don't, someone else will. We have also pushed young people into college to further their institutional brainwashing while neglecting the skilled trades and professions. This too will work itself out, but for us to re-balance the labor market we must make moves to correct these imbalances in our own lives. Take ownership of your wage rate!
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