If there is no minimum wage, then companies can pay ridiculously low wages to its employees 4. Companies could work together and take advantage of the workforce by forcing them to work for low prices B. Greater costs to society 1. Minimum wage leads to an increase in unemployment and those unemployed people are then a burden on society because the government has to pay for them through welfare
Despite its imperfections, the Articles were able to provide the Colonies ability to conduct diplomacy and a sense of colonial unity. However it lacked many aspects to make a strong governmental organization. One of which is, the inability to regulate currency. During the Revolution, many colonies lacked any form of effective currency and as a result they developed their own state currency. Over time the currency lost its value due to inflation which devastated colonial economies.
LDC(least developed countries) in this group have very low income with a low GDP per capita; they have sometimes been described as ‘Fourth World’ nations to emphasise their bleak conditions and their populations lack of engagement with globalising forces. Countries such as Sudan and Afghanistan are classified in this group; these countries are frequently described as ‘failed states’ by politicians. A benefit is that it’s an average of countries income and doesn’t look at uneven distribution in the world. However a problem with grouping the countries into LEDC’s or MEDC’s is that is far too simplistic to divide the world in two, the distribution of wealth and power is more complex. Instead grouping nations into High, Middle and Low income is now considered more useful.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is also not taken into account with income per capita; this means that the cost of living in each country is not accounted for so development may appear better in some countries than it actually is. Income per capita can be used to measure the economic and social development, but not any of the other factors of development, such as environmental development. Development can be further measured by income inequality. This can be a useful measurement as it shows the differences between the rich and poor. The greater the inequality, gap between the rich and poor, the worse developed the country is.
However, in the north and south there were groups such as the NAACP which campaigned for voting rights and this was successful, in the north jobs were better paid and there was less segregation. Between the years 1945 and 1955 lives of Black Americans did not improve this can be seen by the substandard housing that all African Americans were caused to live in. In 1945 40% of the housing that was allocated to African Americans was substandard and for white people this was only 12% substandard housing. This shows that Black Americans had to live in poorer living conditions and this would cause lesser health and a poorer quality of life. Little was done by the government in order to change the standard of housing that people were living in.
Between 1945-1968 the occupational structure is different from that in 1968-2012. People don’t get ahead in their class structures so easily. This connects with the Utchille chapter on the Steady Job decrease, Zweig shows now it’s a decrease in downward mobility. All you have to do is work hard to come up (American Dream) is the myth behind upward mobility. However it doesn’t guarantee a jump in the upper social class.
Economic factors such as the ever improving state of the economy was also improving the cracks in society, improving lives for most and allowing ideas to spread more easily. The deep rooted social divisions quite clearly showed that the nation was not united. Germany was still a hierarchy with those at the top being hugely better off compared to those at the bottom. The wealth and social divide was massive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. These divisions existed since before the unification but yet weren’t improved, in fact they were getting worse with the divides getting bigger and people feeling more abandoned and worse off.
Compassionate reasons where one of the underlying reasons many historians argue upon the realise of the report on poverty from booth and rowntree in their study of the English town York , a town not normally associated with extreme poverty they found 29% of the population were well below the poverty line. Another reason was the very real fear workers were discouraged by the poor conditions and governments and may later turn against the government and form mass strikes or in serious cases rebellion or join the communist groups within Britain. Political self interest was high on the liberal’s agenda many historians argue. The franchise was being extended to the average man slowly and the liberals realised the average man did not benefit much from the government’s approach to peoples life’s and with the rise of the labour party and other parties many historians argue that it was out of desire to be re-elected that the liberals slowly brought about this change in reform. They didn’t get a majority government in 1910 like they did in 1906 which led them to think that social reform was the way to gain votes.
Some believe that wage inequality was caused by educated people versus uneducated people. Many positions search for certain skills and if you happen to be in the right place at the right time then you would receive a position with a decent wage. The wage inequality for the building industry is based off of the fairness of wages paid to all involved. Even when the building industry is booming the wages generally stay the same and do not increase. This is because of the illegal immigrants that will quickly fill any openings and work for lower wages.
One aspect of the workers’ lives that needs to be considered in order to see whether the Communist leaders did less than the Tsars to improve them is their living standards. The quality of life generally declined for workers throughout the period, with the only period of significant change under Khrushchev, however even his reforms cannot out way the deterioration of standards earlier in the Communist period, whereby Lenin and Stalin seemed to show a complete disregard for the improvement of living standards; For instance, the amount of living space for a worker fell from 8.5m squared in 1905, to 5.8m squared by 1935. A significant motive for this seems to be due to ideology; Stalin in