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Foto del escritorCarlos Ricalde

The Minimum Wage is a Human Right

Society must ensure that every citizen, with or without employment, receives a sufficient income to live with decorum. Is it too much to ask?

As i see i give

The title of this writing, dear Reader, does not correspond to a kind of doubt, hesitation or question, but to an affirmation and, I hope on your part, to a conviction beyond question. What burdens some of us is defining and specifying the amount of said salary as well as its scope and way of financing it. Now, if you add the necessary ingredient to ensure that this minimum income is received by every citizen of working age, even without a job, it seems that you are entering a dead end tunnel. Guajiro dream?


Great efforts have been made to improve the living standards of workers. The concept of minimum wage or income for them has its origins in 1890, in New Zealand and Australia. The concern for the adequacy of wages has not been alien to our national context. This purpose was incorporated into article 123 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, until December 27, 1961 by then-President Adolfo López Mateos.


Since then and until now, the text of the aforementioned article, in section A, section VI, establishes that the general minimum wages must be “sufficient to satisfy the normal needs of a head of the family in the material, social and cultural order, and to provide for the compulsory education of the children ”. The debate on wages hangs by a very thin thread, since economically it is not possible, until now, to transfer excess resources from profits to wages, without discouraging the business sector whose engine is the search for a profit. Without this sector, any country will collapse, because the State cannot carry out the task of the entrepreneur or create all the jobs that a society requires. To Caesar what is Caesar's …


The UN, of course, is the spearhead and promoter of a dignified life and healthy coexistence for all humanity. Regarding wages, I will only cite Article 22: "Every person, as a member of society, has the right to social security, and to obtain, through national effort and international cooperation, taking into account the organization and resources of each State, the satisfaction of economic, social and cultural rights, essential to their dignity and the free development of their personality ". Article 23 already mentions the right to work and to a fair salary, but in none of the 30 articles of the Declaration of Human Rights, (Paris, December 1948), is there any parameter on how to measure "their dignity" neither what to do with the unemployed nor with so many millions around the world who live mainly by miracle. If abandonment can be called a miracle.


The growing concentration of income, especially that driven by financial capital, puts world stability at risk and, specifically, some countries more than others. More and more people no longer have to lose or are about to lose almost everything, and thousands of entrepreneurs are in this situation and with them all their workers. Huge sums of capital are concentrated in the New York and London stock exchanges and it cannot be explained how the price of the shares of companies that are bankrupt and of others that do not pay dividends, and of some more than, goes up, if they pay dividends, they do it with stocks. How can a risky American businessman estimate a rate of return on his investment with negative interest rates? Check it out, inflation in the US is higher than the interest rate. The concentration of finance capital is unproductive, equivalent to the equally unproductive concentration of land in recent centuries. The fault lies not with the governments, but with a system that has no limits in the process of accumulating profits and thereby concentrating capital in a few hands, until it bursts and, like a dam that overflows in Tabasco, wipes out everyone, rich and poor. Bad water, kill.


Thus, the future of the analysis and the associated debate should focus on the minimum amount that ensures a decent standard of living for the worker and his family, as well as the viability and source of financing of an equivalent amount, which guarantees the economic stability for citizens of working age who are unemployed. For the first, it will be enough to find a point of equilibrium between profit, tax collection and work. It is possible, since, through many years, society has been approaching that point. Regarding the second, it is necessary to explore sources of fiscal resources that have not been properly studied, such as inheritances, unproductive assets and, above all, speculative profits. We better do.


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La Guadalupana looks at us from afar, but takes care of us closely, each one has their own account!


The Covid19 is the other way around, it seems that it does not look at us, but we have it very close, stay at home!

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