Musings on what is a living wage?

An employer can't know what to pay his worker unless he knows what he's actually expected to pay for. And so the question is : what is included, or not included in the living wage?

Given that a living wage is, that which is sufficient to enable a man to comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, with comfortable understood to mean that which is the common, as well as ordered, standard of living of a given culture.

What must be done is to determine what is properly ordered to the family, as well as what is not properly ordered to the family. And thus if we wish to know what a living wage is for those who live within a disordered society, we must know not only what should be covered, but likewise what should not be covered.

In fact, it is probably more difficult to know what should not be covered than it is to know what should be covered given that consumerist expectations are often mistaken for what is proper to a well ordered life.

An employer does not have a duty to pay for the disorder of consumerism because it is a disorder. An employer's duty to pay a living wage does not include a duty to pay for a disorder.
For example, an employer does not have a duty to pay for an employee's use of contraception, because contraception is contrary to the proper ordering of the family.

Further examples are:

An employer does not have a duty to pay for the disordered common american cultural norm of a bedroom for every child. While in turn a employer does have a duty to pay a wage sufficient for the natural order of sharing bedrooms even though shared bedrooms is not culturally american.

An employer does not have a duty to pay for the disorder of a supersized Catholic family when the reason for the use is a disorder in the marriage the could be prevented by ecologically breastfeeding.

Nor does an employer have a duty to pay for an employee's use of NFP when the reason for the use is a disorder in the marriage the could likewise have been prevented by ecologically breastfeeding.

In other words, the owner of the private business that employs a man, or the subsidized cooperative that employs the same man, has a duty to pay a living wage of a properly ordered family.

Please note, the post is currently being written, read at your own risk.



But what does 'comfortable' or 'common standard of living' mean?


Does it mean paying for piano lessons, or ballet lessons, or sports teams that in turn typically means paying for two cars. And if cars, how nice of cars? And what type of clothing? Or what food? What of paying for College, or schooling?

It's pretty easy to come up with $80,000 in expenses or more. Where as a man with fewer children would not need nearly so much. Where do we draw the line of where the employer's duty ends?

Further, since supersized Catholic families are disordered, even though the disorder is intended as a good in keeping with the Faith as is typical of most supersized Catholic families, nevertheless, why should an employer have the burden of duty to pay for a disorder?

A man's life is improved the more he is paid, and what is being looked at here is a wage for living.

It should be noted, that while a living wage does not include paying for disorder, it should also be noted that a living wage is the minimum that can be paid. Paying less when able to is theft.

I often find discussions online and elsewhere is tend to focus on the least that can be paid, as if the least is what should be paid. Whereas instead, what should be looked for is how to pay as much as possible to the wage earner.

Paying a wage earner the minimum possible is treating men as a means of production, which is the primary evil of capitalism.The intrinsic dignity and worth of the wage earner is not looked at beyond the very bare minimum. This is the sinful act of parsimony.