So, this is gonna be a bit of a spicy one from me given I'm more left than right, and normally more pro working class and pro worker (even if I am elitist toward some working class oriented ideas), but I heard Trump's comments about overtime today, and he's getting ripped for this, but idk, depending on what he means, this isn't necessarily...that bad to me. Let me post the exact quote of what he said.
“I know a lot about overtime. I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay,”
So...let me just start by saying, if he plans to get rid of the idea of overtime pay as is talked about in project 2025, F that guy. And if he did something blatantly illegal by "getting other people in", F that guy.
But, let's talk about this idea otherwise. So...here's the thing with overtime pay. Here's why you get it. It's to discourage overtime. The idea of overtime goes back to FDR's Fair Labor Standards Act and the 40 hour work week. The goal was to 1) limit the work week for most workers to 40, and 2), reduce unemployment.
You see, when you're in the great recession, where unemployment is 25%, you have two major problems. You got a ton of people who aren't being hired who want to find work, and you have businesses abusing the poor souls who do have jobs to death and telling them they should be grateful for the opportunity because they could enjoy the ranks of the unemployed. It's the same thing the businesses did during the great recession where it seemed like businesses fired half their work force and worked the other half twice as hard, making them pick up the responsibilities of those who left, while telling them they're lucky to have a job.
In a sense, in FDR's day, the goal of the FLSA in this sense was to limit as many workers as possible to an 8 hour day, and thus encourage "work sharing" where businesses would then hiring more people, thus reducing unemployment.
Put another way: say a business has 24 hours worth of work it needs done in a work day. It can either hire 2 people at 12 hours a day, or 3 people at 8 hours a day. And obviously, most businesses would prefer, without regulation, to hire 2 people at 12 hours a day. And then if the worker complains about being worked too hard, they're told they're lucky to have a job, because they could be the third guy out on the street with NO job. So the 8 hour work day and overtime pay basically economically disincentivized businesses from working people more than 12 hours. Instead, they'd hire people for 8 hours a day, and then hire an extra person to pick up the rest of the load. This both ensured good work life balance for the workers themselves, and also lead to more widespread employment, and lower unemployment.
The point of paying people time and a half is basically to say, okay, you CAN work people beyond 40 if you HAVE to, but we don't want you to, and we want you to hire more people instead. Basically, it introduces an extra cost to working the same employees beyond a certain amount of time in order to disincentivize them doing it.
So...if Donald Trump hates paying overtime, and wants to "get more people in" (ie, hire more people) to avoid paying overtime, I don't see the problem with that. That's what capitalists are supposed to do rationally. Say, I don't wanna work people beyond 40 hours because then i lose money, so I'm gonna hire more people instead.
I mean, you can crap on the project 2025 stuff, since i know that talks about axing overtime as a concept altogether. You can criticize him if he means he wanted to do things that are illegal like hire illegal immigrants under the table (a stunning admission since being anti illegal immigration is that guy's entire schtick), but if he just doesnt wanna pay workers overtime so he hires more people to avoid doing it...I'm not seeing the problem. That's exactly what is supposed to be happening.
Heck, let's go further and use this logic to explain why the ACA's insurance mandate is actually a bad idea. So, the ACA has a provision in which any employee over 25 hours has to be given health insurance. And it's led to a lot of businesses refusing to employ people full time to avoid overtime pay. So we got this system now where most workers in like the service industry, retail, etc., are working part time, <25 hours, and the minimum wage is still $7.25, and they can't afford to live on their salary, and now they gotta work 2 jobs just to make ends meet. And that's basically the economy for lots of people any more. The ACA added a perverse incentive, and while it was designed to make businesses pay for health insurance...they instead pass on the costs to the worker, leading them to only be able to work part time and being fired if they go a second over 25 hours. So...this makes wage slavery worse. it would be fine I guess if people could meet the basics of life at 25 hours, but they can't.
Heck, let's really get to the really unpopular thing about capitalism that the jobists dont wanna talk about. BUSINESSES DON'T WANNA PAY WORKERS! They want workers, but they dont wanna pay for them. They'll work them as hard as humanly possible while paying them the bare minimum, and trying to get businesses to pay them ends up being like trying to get blood from a stone. We have all this talk about full employment, and jobs for everyone, and yay jobs, but then we have a system where the so called "job creators" explicitly don't wanna pay people, and avoid doing so like the plague. And then we wonder why capitalism is crap and why work is so miserable for the workers. And this is why we need regulation in the first place. Because we decided workers have to work, we dont wanna liberate them from their societal burden or whatever we wanna call it, so instead, we spend all this time trying to regulate businesses and how they treat workers, and at the end of the day, the workers still gotta work and are screwed every chance they get, and the capitalists are crying about how having to actually pay their employees is destroying their business model.
Honestly, wouldn't things be better if we shifted the burden to provide for people, at least somewhat, to the state, by giving people a UBI and universal healthcare? We could maintain enough of the wage system and the work incentives associated with them to keep the system going, but we won't expect people to make their entire living from work that sucks for everyone involved.
Really, I think we'd be better off moving away from this system, at least somewhat, and toward a system where the state takes the role of providing for people. It doesn't have to be the sole provider, I'm not advocating for the dreaded "communism" the right loves to scream about in government doing things and blah blah blah. But yeah. Leaving this crap up to the market seems like a recipe for disaster.
As such, I dont really blame Donald Trump for not liking overtime and preferring to hire more people to avoid paying for it. I will blame him for the project 2025 crap associated with it, and if his comments implied doing anything illegal like hiring people under the table, but taking the words at face value in the most legal way possible...yeah no...that's the entire point of overtime pay in the first place. if you're gonna force workers to work beyond 40 hours, you should compensate them more heavily for their time. And yeah, you're supposed to want to hire more people to avoid paying overtime. That's literally the point. So idk why they're ripping trump on those comments on face value. He's just being a rational capitalist here. Again, rip him for wanting to do away with overtime pay, if you wanna pin project 2025 on him.
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