6 ms·

At the price "Americans" would do these jobs, the companies may not be able to earn a profit. Because, otherwise, they probably would do just that.

tuyiown 8y ago
If you have no one willing to pay for your service, including actual labor price, your business is irrelevant, and certainly not entitled to any effort from the worker. It's just business management that suck.
- logicchains 8y ago
  >If you have no one willing to pay for your service, including actual labor price, your business is irrelevant, and certainly not entitled to any effort from the worker. It's just business management that suck. How much people are willing to pay for a service is connected to the value labour generates. If the minimum wage for cleaning was raised to $50/hour, many cleaning companies would close because few people were willing to pay at least $50/hour for a cleaner; the work done by the cleaner does not generate $50/hour of value. For any given individual at any point on time there is a ceiling on how much value they can generate, based on their knowledge and abilities. If somebody is capable of generating $10 of value, and the minimum wage is raised to $20 of value, anybody employing them would be losing $10/hour (paying $20 for $10 worth of labour). In which case it becomes much harder for that individual to find a job, and also to get a foothold for them to gain skills and experience that allow them to generate more value in future. You might argue that such a worker is better off on welfare or some kind of basic income, but shouldn't that be their choice to make, not yours?
  - state_less 8y ago
    > How much people are willing to pay for a service is connected to the value labour generates. It's how much the market will bear. Business owners (shareholders) play a game of arbitrage between what people will pay for the service and the cost of producing the service (e.g. labor costs). I think folks are upset not so much at the cleaning services of the world, but the oligopolies, where you soak up the surplus value of the labor. Sometimes it's done illegally like in the wage collusion case in silicon valley, other times it's done legally through M&A. The wealthy have learned how to leverage their position for maximum profit, and many folks see it for what it is.
    - logicchains 8y ago
      > I think folks are upset not so much at the cleaning services of the world, but the oligopolies, where you soak up the surplus value of the labor. These aren't the companies that minimum wage laws hurt. According to https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5314-entrepreneur-salaries.html https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5314-entrepreneur-salaries..., the average salary of small business owners in America is $68,000, which is much less than most software developers on this site seem to make. They're not exactly filthly-rich businesses gobbling up profit. Even a small increase in costs can be enough to put them out of business, leaving their employees jobless.
  - akoncius 8y ago
    exactly the same applies to workers - if my work generates less money than it is neccessary for living, then it’s not worth doing it, why lose money?
- zjaffee 8y ago
  Except that's not the problem going on here, for non growth stock companies today, profits matter more than revenue expansion. So even if they would be able to successfully grow their business in nominal terms by raising wages for more employees, they are often obligated to only try and expand at the same or increasing levels of profitability.
FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
Guess those companies should not exist then. No company should exist if their workers end up in poverty or need help in the form of food stamps or any other kind of help. Any job should pay enough for a decent life.
- bayesian_horse 8y ago
  Many small business owners are probably not quite so eager to close up shop because they lack a few employees. The industries or professions where "living wages" is an issue are usually not the ones desperate for labor.
- logicchains 8y ago
  >Guess those companies should not exist then. No company should exist if their workers end up in poverty or need help in the form of food stamps or any other kind of help. Any job should pay enough for a decent life. Killing such such companies doesn't magically create new companies able to pay more, it just converts their low-paid workers to unemployed workers. The minimum wage is always zero (no job).
  - bayesian_horse 8y ago
    That's only the case when profit margins are so low that the minimum wage extinguishes the marginal benefit of a worker. At the bottom of the wage spectrum that's mostly not true. Profits would allow for higher wages, but the negotiating power of the employers is such that they can hold wages down. In these cases minimum wages do make sense and don't result in higher unemployment. And implementing minimum wage laws has shown that it does not affect unemployment in a big manner.
- scarface74 8y ago
  So how much do you think the local pizza shop should pay my 16 year old son? Should they be giving him a “livable wage” or should they keep offering $7.25/ hour for him and his high school friends who are staying at home with thier parents?
fifnir 8y ago
So the market has spoken and the business is unsustainable
- bayesian_horse 8y ago
  Nope, those businesses are sustainable, they just don't pay higher wages to hire more people because that would be unsustainable.
  - fifnir 8y ago
    If I put sawdust in the bread i make to "make my business sustainable" I'll end up in jail, why is exploiting my workers more acceptable than that? "well yeah but the workers consented " People do a lot of things when desperate, that shouldn't inform how we design our society
    - logicchains 8y ago
      Killing such companies doesn't create better-paying jobs for the workers, it just leaves them unemployed. What gives you the right to "design" how these workers spend their time; maybe they'd prefer to be exploited than jobless? Ultimately the worker is payed by the company's customers, and if the law asks consumers to pay more than they're willing to pay for the workers' service, they'll simply go without the service.
      - fifnir 8y ago
        > What gives you the right to "design" how these workers spend their time; maybe they'd prefer to be exploited than jobless? Jeeeeeesus christ, how am I designing how they spend their time? How can you detect lack of freedom in saying "you can't work for unlivable salaries" but not in "I only pay unlivable salaries because if you dont want these crubs there's other more desperate people". > Ultimately the worker is payed by the company's customers, No, no, they are paid by the owners who decide what slice of the income to allocate to salaries. The customers pay the product and walk away, they don't know anything about the internal workings of a company >and if the law asks consumers to pay more than they're willing to pay for the workers' service, The law asks the boss to pay livable salary, the end price has nothing to do with the law. If the service cannot be offered at competitive prices while offering livable wages, it's not a sustainable business
Amygaz 8y ago
That would be true for businesses who’s motivation is to provide a lot of jobs. This would not be true for businesses who intent to make a few people rich. They have another motivation, and definition of higher wage.

tuyiown 8y ago

If you have no one willing to pay for your service, including actual labor price, your business is irrelevant, and certainly not entitled to any effort from the worker. It's just business management that suck.

logicchains 8y ago
>If you have no one willing to pay for your service, including actual labor price, your business is irrelevant, and certainly not entitled to any effort from the worker. It's just business management that suck. How much people are willing to pay for a service is connected to the value labour generates. If the minimum wage for cleaning was raised to $50/hour, many cleaning companies would close because few people were willing to pay at least $50/hour for a cleaner; the work done by the cleaner does not generate $50/hour of value. For any given individual at any point on time there is a ceiling on how much value they can generate, based on their knowledge and abilities. If somebody is capable of generating $10 of value, and the minimum wage is raised to $20 of value, anybody employing them would be losing $10/hour (paying $20 for $10 worth of labour). In which case it becomes much harder for that individual to find a job, and also to get a foothold for them to gain skills and experience that allow them to generate more value in future. You might argue that such a worker is better off on welfare or some kind of basic income, but shouldn't that be their choice to make, not yours?
- state_less 8y ago
  > How much people are willing to pay for a service is connected to the value labour generates. It's how much the market will bear. Business owners (shareholders) play a game of arbitrage between what people will pay for the service and the cost of producing the service (e.g. labor costs). I think folks are upset not so much at the cleaning services of the world, but the oligopolies, where you soak up the surplus value of the labor. Sometimes it's done illegally like in the wage collusion case in silicon valley, other times it's done legally through M&A. The wealthy have learned how to leverage their position for maximum profit, and many folks see it for what it is.
  - logicchains 8y ago
    > I think folks are upset not so much at the cleaning services of the world, but the oligopolies, where you soak up the surplus value of the labor. These aren't the companies that minimum wage laws hurt. According to https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5314-entrepreneur-salaries.html https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5314-entrepreneur-salaries..., the average salary of small business owners in America is $68,000, which is much less than most software developers on this site seem to make. They're not exactly filthly-rich businesses gobbling up profit. Even a small increase in costs can be enough to put them out of business, leaving their employees jobless.
- akoncius 8y ago
  exactly the same applies to workers - if my work generates less money than it is neccessary for living, then it’s not worth doing it, why lose money?
zjaffee 8y ago
Except that's not the problem going on here, for non growth stock companies today, profits matter more than revenue expansion. So even if they would be able to successfully grow their business in nominal terms by raising wages for more employees, they are often obligated to only try and expand at the same or increasing levels of profitability.

FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago

Guess those companies should not exist then. No company should exist if their workers end up in poverty or need help in the form of food stamps or any other kind of help. Any job should pay enough for a decent life.

bayesian_horse 8y ago
Many small business owners are probably not quite so eager to close up shop because they lack a few employees. The industries or professions where "living wages" is an issue are usually not the ones desperate for labor.
logicchains 8y ago
>Guess those companies should not exist then. No company should exist if their workers end up in poverty or need help in the form of food stamps or any other kind of help. Any job should pay enough for a decent life. Killing such such companies doesn't magically create new companies able to pay more, it just converts their low-paid workers to unemployed workers. The minimum wage is always zero (no job).
- bayesian_horse 8y ago
  That's only the case when profit margins are so low that the minimum wage extinguishes the marginal benefit of a worker. At the bottom of the wage spectrum that's mostly not true. Profits would allow for higher wages, but the negotiating power of the employers is such that they can hold wages down. In these cases minimum wages do make sense and don't result in higher unemployment. And implementing minimum wage laws has shown that it does not affect unemployment in a big manner.
scarface74 8y ago
So how much do you think the local pizza shop should pay my 16 year old son? Should they be giving him a “livable wage” or should they keep offering $7.25/ hour for him and his high school friends who are staying at home with thier parents?

fifnir 8y ago

So the market has spoken and the business is unsustainable

bayesian_horse 8y ago
Nope, those businesses are sustainable, they just don't pay higher wages to hire more people because that would be unsustainable.
- fifnir 8y ago
  If I put sawdust in the bread i make to "make my business sustainable" I'll end up in jail, why is exploiting my workers more acceptable than that? "well yeah but the workers consented " People do a lot of things when desperate, that shouldn't inform how we design our society
  - logicchains 8y ago
    Killing such companies doesn't create better-paying jobs for the workers, it just leaves them unemployed. What gives you the right to "design" how these workers spend their time; maybe they'd prefer to be exploited than jobless? Ultimately the worker is payed by the company's customers, and if the law asks consumers to pay more than they're willing to pay for the workers' service, they'll simply go without the service.
    - fifnir 8y ago
      > What gives you the right to "design" how these workers spend their time; maybe they'd prefer to be exploited than jobless? Jeeeeeesus christ, how am I designing how they spend their time? How can you detect lack of freedom in saying "you can't work for unlivable salaries" but not in "I only pay unlivable salaries because if you dont want these crubs there's other more desperate people". > Ultimately the worker is payed by the company's customers, No, no, they are paid by the owners who decide what slice of the income to allocate to salaries. The customers pay the product and walk away, they don't know anything about the internal workings of a company >and if the law asks consumers to pay more than they're willing to pay for the workers' service, The law asks the boss to pay livable salary, the end price has nothing to do with the law. If the service cannot be offered at competitive prices while offering livable wages, it's not a sustainable business

Amygaz 8y ago

That would be true for businesses who’s motivation is to provide a lot of jobs. This would not be true for businesses who intent to make a few people rich. They have another motivation, and definition of higher wage.