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Aaronontheweb, why wait for government action? Come work at my apartment TOMORROW 16 hours/day for $0.20/hr. I'll try to find a way for you to inhale some heavy
by Hubbert 16y ago
Aaronontheweb, why wait for government action? Come work at my apartment TOMORROW 16 hours/day for $0.20/hr. I'll try to find a way for you to inhale some heavy metals and asbestos while you work. Imagine the fun of trying to predict whether you will be functionally retarded or die of painful cancer first. Either way, you will die painfully, because I do NOT provide health insurance.
Seriously: How did we get from "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to "drive down everyone's quality life to match the world's most miserable and backward countries?"
Aside from technology that hadn't been invented yet, people in the West lived did very well in the late 20th century. Most people who bothered to show up for work had a balanced diet, adequate medical care, and usually a car. And they somehow managed to do it without rampant workplace death, child labor, or rendering the ecosystem uninhabitable for decades[1]. They even had fundamental civil rights like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press.
[1] Aside from notable exceptions like Love Canal, etc. But I see that as largely the result of ignorance; we now have a better understanding of the impacts of our behavior on the place we LIVE.
- sitmaster 16y agoThis post is silly. No one is forced to work at an unsafe job for any given wage. The job of the government should not be to say "you can only work for this long, for this wage, under these conditions." Shouldn't that question be up to the would-be employee? And you're not as clever as you think bringing up asbestos. You're far more likely to die in a fire because your building had its asbestos replaced with shitty fireproofing than from the cancer that asbestos can cause.
- Hubbert 16y agoWe all need income to SURVIVE, and indeed FORCED to take the market wage for our labor. The question is whether the market wage will tend toward "Modern Western Wage" or "Communist Slave Wage." Current trade and industrial policies favor the latter.
- sitmaster 16y agoBut the government cannot, by fiat, deem that people should make "Modern Western Wage" because some people's work is not worth that much. Forcing wages to be at that level causes more problems than it solves (i.e. massive offshoring). Minimum wage laws, workplace safety laws, environmental standards, etc, all raise the cost of doing business and make it so only people whose work is worth "Modern Western Wage" can be employed. The whole point is that "Current trade and industrial policies" favor the former ("Modern Western Wage"), not the latter, which is what is causing the problems in the US. Did you read the article?
- shasta 16y agoHey, if you're gonna work for $.20/hr anyway, do you have an iPhone? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1478403 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1478403
- Aaronontheweb 16y agoIs there a reason why you chose to pivot to this extreme immediately after all I did was argue to attack things that result in high labor costs for domestic manufacturing, or are you just an unserious hyperbolic reactionary by nature?