5 ms·

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

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.

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.