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What is fair pay for hospitality workers? : Comments
By Tanel Jan Palgi, published 16/1/2012The real problem in the restaurant industry is the number of exploited workers paid under the table less than award rates.
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The author did not answer his own question.
In order to justify his assumption that there is a difference between the fair rate of pay and the market rate of pay, he needs to identify the principle by which the difference between the fair rate and the market rate could be ascertained. It is no use assuming, as he does, that the "legal" rate represents the fair rate as against the market rate. This only begs the question what principle the central planning officials used in determining what is fair. Why is their estimation necessarily fairer than that of the paying public, whose valuation of restaurants' services determines the value that the entrepreneurs set on the factors of production?
The argument over the fair rate of pay is essentially a re-run of the mediaeval debate in the church about usury. The idea was that there is a difference between the market rate of interest and the fair rate of interest. After 1200 years of scholars chasing their tail, they ended by concluding there is no rationally knowable difference between the market rate and the fair rate. The market rate is the agreed rate; the "legal" rate is the coerced rate. It is the agreed rate that is fair, not the coerced rate.
Why didn't the author simply work where his pay would be higher? If the answer is, because where he worked, of all places in the world, paid him more than anywhere else considering the value of the services he was able to offer, then he has no ground for complaining that his pay was unfair. Compelling the services of restaurants to be more expensive for everyone else is certainly not fairer.