8 ms·

It's very similar to when you hear people say "I love my job but they don't pay a living wage!" It's because you love your job, you have to pay for that.

AlexandrB 8y ago
This kind of post-facto justification for poor working conditions or wages needs a name, so it can be dismissed out of hand. It seems to assume that the market is “fair” and getting poor pay must be justified by some other factor about the job. In reality, there are plenty of jobs that have garbage pay and suck. As well as jobs that are both lucrative and “easy”. Consider the average CEO: not the exceptional visionaries but the type that loses the shareholders money for years and then exits on a golden parachute. These jobs are hard only in the sense that you have to know the right people, (being born to the right people helps) to even be considered. On the other side of the ledger, you have immigrants with medical degrees, who are driving cabs for minimum wage (or now, Uber, for below minimum wage). The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy. It is subject to all the same tribal impulses and inequalities that have persisted in humans throughout history. In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. That’s just an excuse for exploitation.
- haberman 8y ago
  > This kind of post-facto justification for poor working conditions or wages needs a name, so it can be dismissed out of hand. This seems to capture the current intellectual zeitgeist very well. Once we name something, we can dismiss it without engaging it. I was going to read the rest of your comment, but I decided it was "Jacobin whinging" so I realized I didn't have to.
  - jnbiche 8y ago
    > I was going to read the rest of your comment, but I decided it was "Jacobin whinging" so I realized I didn't have to. But the rest of the comment supports the first part, which you seem to agree with. Plus, "Jacobin whinging", seriously? Advocating for a living wage is "Jacobin" now?
    - haberman 8y ago
      I regret that my point may not have come across. I don't actually believe in pejoratively labeling any good-faith argument, and I would not actually use a label like "Jacobin whinging" in earnest. My point is: labeling something is not the same as refuting it.
      - jnbiche 8y ago
        Apologies, my irony meter is malfunctioning today. I read it twice but I'm so used to reading this serious comments similar to your sarcastic critique online these days, it didn't read as sarcasm.
        jasonm23 8y ago
        I like to say, the best thing about the Internet is the reasonable debate, and the accurate detection of sarcasm.
        memling 8y ago
        You have an absolutely terrible assessment of the Internet.
        SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
        whoosh
        u02sgb 8y ago
        Oh the irony :)
        memling 8y ago
        You know, I built an irony detector once...but it detected everything BUT irony.
  - AlexandrB 8y ago
    > This seems to capture the current intellectual zeitgeist very well. Once we name something, we can dismiss it without engaging it. In the internet age, this is a necessity because the other pattern is the same claims repeated over and over again with the expectation that a comprehensive rebuttal must be provided each time. At some point you have to name the thing so it can be added as an entry to Wikipedia and move on. See also: how global warming denialists have an evergreen grab bag of false claims to pull from and expect a thesis-length answer to each one. Also, this is nothing new. Commonly referenced fallacies like tu quoque are a way of saying that the other person is arguing from shaky ground, and their argument does not need a complete rebuttal until they refine it a bit. In fact, the comment I was replying to can be considered a derivative of the just-world fallacy[1], substituting the hand of the free market for the kind of ephemeral karma that the original just-world fallacy implies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
    - haberman 8y ago
      Your arguments are examples of the false equivalence fallacy. [1] Sorry but I don't have time to provide any more comprehensive of a rebuttal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence (This is why I don't think labeling is a rebuttal.)
      - isoskeles 8y ago
        People aren’t understanding what you’re doing, apparently. But I appreciate it.
      - javajosh 8y ago
        I mean, I see what you're doing here, haha, but AlexanderB brings up a good point about asymmetrical debate, where one side says something sloppy, vague and poorly sourced and then expects you to "write a thesis" to rebut. Personally, I think this phenomena really does need a name, less to dismiss it, more to get lazy arguers to stop demanding high quality rebuttals (and at the very least to make the debate easier to walk away from). Fundamentally it's a kind of hypocrisy, but it needs a lyrical name. I like the pattern of naming a fallacy and then opting out that you're demonstrating, but a name could actually be useful. Indeed you could even term it a fallacy, the "vice demanding virtue" fallacy, or something like that.
- merpnderp 8y ago
  The free market is not fair. It's just fairer than anything else we know of. It's not a meritocracy, just more meritorious than anything else we know of. If you think things are bad when greedy people are pitted against each other, wait until greedy people are pitted against the average man, as they are in nearly every other economic system.
  - ken 8y ago
    I wouldn't say it's the fairest thing we know, but it scales the best. A centralized market system could be extremely fair, if there's only 7 participants. With 7 billion, there's just no way. At a national or global level, we need decentralization. At smaller scales, we do use other systems. Within a company, essentially nobody uses a free market system.
  - kiriakasis 8y ago
    There is something to note here, the "free market" is a pretty wide term, goes from corporate anarchy to heavy regulations with everything in between. I agree that it is the right pattern to organize into as in "freedom for private enterprise to provide goods and services" but it not necessarily the right way to handle retirements funds. Overall I am quite far on the side of regulations, claiming that free market needs to be constantly beaten into shape to keep it a meritocracy. you could say that this is the free market greatest strength: private enterprise and public government can have a dynamic dialogue trough regulations often with an almost symmetric power structure (when things run smoothly).
- roenxi 8y ago
  > The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy. It is subject to all the same tribal impulses and inequalities that have persisted in humans throughout history. Based on context, I suspect you mean merit as in moral merit. Economic merit is defined as the economic value add in a free market, so free markets are tautologically a meritocracy, because success in a free market is basically a definition of economic merit. It certainly isn't fair, but nearly nothing is. Life is profoundly unfair. > In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. That’s just an excuse for exploitation. A debatable point - it is easy to justify making it as easy as possible for a worker to leave a job that isn't paying a living wage and find something else. However there are a lot of people out there and not all of them are working to live. Eg, maybe someone has a stead source of income (spouse, parents or investment money) and wants to get involved in something worthwhile but low value add. It isn't at all obvious why we should prevent that as a society because nobody thinks it is worth a living wage worth of money per hour. A minimum wage is basically a declaration that work with less value add than some number is not worth doing. From an incentives point of view, it is really weird and there are probably better ways of helping people with nothing to offer their community.
- cobookman 8y ago
  I've personally worked for less pay to work on fun projects. I've also taken on unenjoyable projects for more money. If it weren't for the money you'd have a heck of a time recruiting VPs
  - thelittleone 8y ago
    When discussing deals, jobs etc, an old boss of mine used to ask "is the juice worth the squeeze?". A job that you are morally against requires more squeeze, so you expect more juice.
- magduf 8y ago
  For many jobs, the pay and working conditions really are a product of market forces. For other jobs, not so much. For software jobs, and for jobs with garbage pay and which also suck, it's mostly true. People who can competently write software aren't that common, and there's tons of jobs and demand for them, so the pay goes up, and companies compete with each other for them by offering better pay, better perks, etc. Jobs which both suck and have horrible pay are that way because there's desperate people willing to do them, and because those jobs generally have a very low barrier to entry. CEO jobs aren't very common, and are largely a factor of "who you know". Going to the right fraternity in college is more important than how competently you can run a company, so obviously it's not a merit-based job. As for immigrants with medical degrees, here again there's a barrier to entry: you can't just immigrate here and get a medical license by taking a test; the industry actively limits how many licenses they allow. >In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. Software jobs that pay poorly DO pay "living wages"; they surely pay far better than any random horrible minimum-wage job. You're not going to get any sympathy from me about not getting paid "enough" for some software job that doesn't pay median pay, but is more "fun". If you want more money, go find a big-corporate job that's boring as hell but pays well. Nothing is stopping you. For actual shitty jobs, this sounds good, but how do we enforce it, besides simply raising the minimum wage? And there is an argument to be made that raising the minimum wage will simply cause many of these jobs to go away (increasing unemployment), and also cause the prices of products and services to raise, increasing inflation so that poor peoples' purchasing power isn't any better than it was before. IMO, what we really need is more automation, plus a Basic Income so that people forced out of work by the automation can still enjoy the fruits of society's success without having to toil in some pointless bullshit job, and perhaps use their free time and efforts to do something more productive (like start an innovative new business, write a best-selling book like Harry Potter's author, etc.). Automation is going to put more and more people out of work by rendering so many jobs obsolete, as machines can do them faster and more efficiently, and as a society we need to prepare for that. Remember, a century ago people thought that in the 2000s, we'd all be working 10 hours a week.
  - memling 8y ago
    > IMO, what we really need is more automation, plus a Basic Income so that people forced out of work by the automation can still enjoy the fruits of society's success without having to toil in some pointless bullshit job, and perhaps use their free time and efforts to do something more productive (like start an innovative new business, write a best-selling book like Harry Potter's author, etc.). How do you decide what is a pointless bullshit job? How do you decide what it means to be productive? How much of the success of a business relies on its innovation, or the success of a book on how well written it is? How many people have the drive and self-discipline for self employment? On the face of it, what it sounds like you're contrasting isn't "pointless bullshit" and innovative productivity, but "what bores me" and "what excites me" or "what fulfills me." It's easy to confuse the good-in-itself of work with the goods-in-themselves that work facilitates (paying the bills, feeding a family, giving to the less fortunate, et c). If we prioritize the former over the latter, we're going to have a crummy society in whatever regime we use to try to solve the thorny issues of automation and living wages.
- kansface 8y ago
  > In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage... Pay is determined chiefly by supply and demand in the labor market. Jobs that are more fun pay less because the supply of workers is higher. Fairness is literally not part of this equation. > On the other side of the ledger, you have immigrants with medical degrees, who are driving cabs for minimum wage. Medical licenses are controlled by the government, not the free market. > [The free market] is subject to all the same tribal impulses and inequalities that have persisted in humans throughout history. ... and also the Civil Rights Act of 1964. All snark aside, why should we pay a high school paperboy a living wage? What does a living wage even mean - the ability to live in a single bedroom apartment? That runs ~3K/month in SF which is roughly commensurate to $50/hour.
  - tropdrop 8y ago
    > What does a living wage even mean.. The definition of living wage is fairly established. It is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. Needs are defined to include food, housing, and other essentials such as clothing. This definition is why, in the United States, at least, every few years Minimum Wage (used interchangeably here with Living Wage) would be raised, to keep up with inflation. It allowed the average American to start saving for a down-payment for a house even if all they had was a high school education and nothing else (so, the paperboy you mention). Until, for some reason, we stopped doing that as much. Instead of looking at one of the most inflated rental markets in the country (SF), let's look at somewhere like Idaho - you'll find that inflation has still affected that place, but minimum wage (living wage) to be able to provide those basic needs has not kept up. This is why, countrywide, 40% of non-elderly adults report difficulty meeting basic needs such as food, housing, health care and utilities [1]. But let's consider that paperboy, for a minute. Do you really believe that the only people who deserve the most basic income to be able to live (living wage) are those that are capable of getting a higher education? What about all the other members of a functional society that we rely on? [1] - https://www.urban.org/research/publication/well-being-and-basic-needs-survey https://www.urban.org/research/publication/well-being-and-ba...
    - glglwty 8y ago
- pathseeker 8y ago
  >The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy. It's fair, but not based on effort like people mistakenly think it should be. It's silly to think "I should be paid X because it was really hard work" or to try to interfere with the market to force that price. A big part of the issue is ignorance of economics among most of the population. People don't realize they are always participating in markets, even when it's a regulated market. >Consider the average CEO: not the exceptional visionaries but the type that loses the shareholders money for years and then exits on a golden parachute. I don't think you know what the word "average" means, because that's very far from the truth. There are hundreds of thousands of people with the title "CEO". Only a tiny fraction are of companies with publicly traded shares and only a fraction of those get large golden parachute deals (<1000). There are more professional football players becoming millionaires for playing a game than there are CEOs who lose companies tons of money and get a golden parachute. >On the other side of the ledger, you have immigrants with medical degrees, who are driving cabs for minimum wage (or now, Uber, for below minimum wage). So what? Their medical degree obvious isn't qualifying them to be a doctor in the new country.
  - tropdrop 8y ago
    >So what? Their medical degree obvious isn't qualifying them to be a doctor in the new country. I never understood this, even while in the medical industry myself. Perhaps this might be a little true for an immigrant from Venezuela with a medical degree. But for an immigrant from England, Why not?
    - falsedan 8y ago
      Lobbying from the AMA to limit available labour & maintain high wages
    - wild_preference 8y ago
      You can't even do a tiny lateral transfer in the US medical industry without reschooling, so how would it work with foreign degrees?
      - 8y ago
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >This kind of post-facto justification for poor working conditions or wages needs a name, so it can be dismissed out of hand. It seems to assume that the market is “fair” and getting poor pay must be justified by some other factor about the job. Maybe this is true when you consider not just the job itself, but acquiring the job. How many minimum wage jobs offer minimum entry requirements? How many offer secondary benefits that are worth a lot, but only to a very small percent of the population (such as internships offering access to important people). Of courses, none of this means fair. Some people are unfairly born with advantages or disadvantages, many of which have no solution that I've ever seen.
bradenb 8y ago
> It's because you love your job, you have to pay for that. I don't buy that. I don't think enjoying your job and being paid well need to be mutually exclusive. I think it's in an employer's best interest that their employees enjoy their job. Part of that is that an employee has to not feel the stress of being underpaid or overworked.
- glibgil 8y ago
  > I don't think enjoying your job and being paid well need to be mutually exclusive If there is a job, say museum docent, that the majority of qualified people would love to do then the salary of that job will approach $0. Museum docents are usually volunteers, but the chance for an art history major to practice their craft is valuable to the worker even at $0
  - joesb 8y ago
    > If there is a job, say museum docent, that the majority of qualified people would love to do then the salary of that job will approach $0. Sure. But then you are assuming that what I love is what other people love. If there's only very few people who want to do those job, and I'm one of them. Should the pay be less only because I happen to love the job?
    - thecatspaw 8y ago
      No. In capitalism its a question of supply and demand. Usually the jobs that most people love, are in low demand, and high supply, so they can pay less. If you love a job that only very few people love, you can still make demands and request a high salary.
- ralusek 8y ago
  I just mean that "enjoying your job" has a monetary value. The employer can recognize that or not, but the employee always does.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tsumnia 8y ago
I'd agree; welders is beginning to pay nicely due to their demand. You won't enjoy the time away from home or the work conditions, but you'll be paid reasonably well.
code_duck 8y ago
Another way you could put it is that employers offer a premium for unpleasant jobs.

AlexandrB 8y ago

This kind of post-facto justification for poor working conditions or wages needs a name, so it can be dismissed out of hand. It seems to assume that the market is “fair” and getting poor pay must be justified by some other factor about the job. In reality, there are plenty of jobs that have garbage pay and suck. As well as jobs that are both lucrative and “easy”. Consider the average CEO: not the exceptional visionaries but the type that loses the shareholders money for years and then exits on a golden parachute. These jobs are hard only in the sense that you have to know the right people, (being born to the right people helps) to even be considered. On the other side of the ledger, you have immigrants with medical degrees, who are driving cabs for minimum wage (or now, Uber, for below minimum wage). The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy. It is subject to all the same tribal impulses and inequalities that have persisted in humans throughout history. In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. That’s just an excuse for exploitation.

haberman 8y ago
> This kind of post-facto justification for poor working conditions or wages needs a name, so it can be dismissed out of hand. This seems to capture the current intellectual zeitgeist very well. Once we name something, we can dismiss it without engaging it. I was going to read the rest of your comment, but I decided it was "Jacobin whinging" so I realized I didn't have to.
- jnbiche 8y ago
  > I was going to read the rest of your comment, but I decided it was "Jacobin whinging" so I realized I didn't have to. But the rest of the comment supports the first part, which you seem to agree with. Plus, "Jacobin whinging", seriously? Advocating for a living wage is "Jacobin" now?
  - haberman 8y ago
    I regret that my point may not have come across. I don't actually believe in pejoratively labeling any good-faith argument, and I would not actually use a label like "Jacobin whinging" in earnest. My point is: labeling something is not the same as refuting it.
    - jnbiche 8y ago
      Apologies, my irony meter is malfunctioning today. I read it twice but I'm so used to reading this serious comments similar to your sarcastic critique online these days, it didn't read as sarcasm.
      - jasonm23 8y ago
        I like to say, the best thing about the Internet is the reasonable debate, and the accurate detection of sarcasm.
        memling 8y ago
        You have an absolutely terrible assessment of the Internet.
        SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
        whoosh
        u02sgb 8y ago
        Oh the irony :)
        memling 8y ago
        You know, I built an irony detector once...but it detected everything BUT irony.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  > This seems to capture the current intellectual zeitgeist very well. Once we name something, we can dismiss it without engaging it. In the internet age, this is a necessity because the other pattern is the same claims repeated over and over again with the expectation that a comprehensive rebuttal must be provided each time. At some point you have to name the thing so it can be added as an entry to Wikipedia and move on. See also: how global warming denialists have an evergreen grab bag of false claims to pull from and expect a thesis-length answer to each one. Also, this is nothing new. Commonly referenced fallacies like tu quoque are a way of saying that the other person is arguing from shaky ground, and their argument does not need a complete rebuttal until they refine it a bit. In fact, the comment I was replying to can be considered a derivative of the just-world fallacy[1], substituting the hand of the free market for the kind of ephemeral karma that the original just-world fallacy implies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
  - haberman 8y ago
    Your arguments are examples of the false equivalence fallacy. [1] Sorry but I don't have time to provide any more comprehensive of a rebuttal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence (This is why I don't think labeling is a rebuttal.)
    - isoskeles 8y ago
      People aren’t understanding what you’re doing, apparently. But I appreciate it.
    - javajosh 8y ago
      I mean, I see what you're doing here, haha, but AlexanderB brings up a good point about asymmetrical debate, where one side says something sloppy, vague and poorly sourced and then expects you to "write a thesis" to rebut. Personally, I think this phenomena really does need a name, less to dismiss it, more to get lazy arguers to stop demanding high quality rebuttals (and at the very least to make the debate easier to walk away from). Fundamentally it's a kind of hypocrisy, but it needs a lyrical name. I like the pattern of naming a fallacy and then opting out that you're demonstrating, but a name could actually be useful. Indeed you could even term it a fallacy, the "vice demanding virtue" fallacy, or something like that.
merpnderp 8y ago
The free market is not fair. It's just fairer than anything else we know of. It's not a meritocracy, just more meritorious than anything else we know of. If you think things are bad when greedy people are pitted against each other, wait until greedy people are pitted against the average man, as they are in nearly every other economic system.
- ken 8y ago
  I wouldn't say it's the fairest thing we know, but it scales the best. A centralized market system could be extremely fair, if there's only 7 participants. With 7 billion, there's just no way. At a national or global level, we need decentralization. At smaller scales, we do use other systems. Within a company, essentially nobody uses a free market system.
- kiriakasis 8y ago
  There is something to note here, the "free market" is a pretty wide term, goes from corporate anarchy to heavy regulations with everything in between. I agree that it is the right pattern to organize into as in "freedom for private enterprise to provide goods and services" but it not necessarily the right way to handle retirements funds. Overall I am quite far on the side of regulations, claiming that free market needs to be constantly beaten into shape to keep it a meritocracy. you could say that this is the free market greatest strength: private enterprise and public government can have a dynamic dialogue trough regulations often with an almost symmetric power structure (when things run smoothly).
roenxi 8y ago
> The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy. It is subject to all the same tribal impulses and inequalities that have persisted in humans throughout history. Based on context, I suspect you mean merit as in moral merit. Economic merit is defined as the economic value add in a free market, so free markets are tautologically a meritocracy, because success in a free market is basically a definition of economic merit. It certainly isn't fair, but nearly nothing is. Life is profoundly unfair. > In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. That’s just an excuse for exploitation. A debatable point - it is easy to justify making it as easy as possible for a worker to leave a job that isn't paying a living wage and find something else. However there are a lot of people out there and not all of them are working to live. Eg, maybe someone has a stead source of income (spouse, parents or investment money) and wants to get involved in something worthwhile but low value add. It isn't at all obvious why we should prevent that as a society because nobody thinks it is worth a living wage worth of money per hour. A minimum wage is basically a declaration that work with less value add than some number is not worth doing. From an incentives point of view, it is really weird and there are probably better ways of helping people with nothing to offer their community.
cobookman 8y ago
I've personally worked for less pay to work on fun projects. I've also taken on unenjoyable projects for more money. If it weren't for the money you'd have a heck of a time recruiting VPs
- thelittleone 8y ago
  When discussing deals, jobs etc, an old boss of mine used to ask "is the juice worth the squeeze?". A job that you are morally against requires more squeeze, so you expect more juice.
magduf 8y ago
For many jobs, the pay and working conditions really are a product of market forces. For other jobs, not so much. For software jobs, and for jobs with garbage pay and which also suck, it's mostly true. People who can competently write software aren't that common, and there's tons of jobs and demand for them, so the pay goes up, and companies compete with each other for them by offering better pay, better perks, etc. Jobs which both suck and have horrible pay are that way because there's desperate people willing to do them, and because those jobs generally have a very low barrier to entry. CEO jobs aren't very common, and are largely a factor of "who you know". Going to the right fraternity in college is more important than how competently you can run a company, so obviously it's not a merit-based job. As for immigrants with medical degrees, here again there's a barrier to entry: you can't just immigrate here and get a medical license by taking a test; the industry actively limits how many licenses they allow. >In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. Software jobs that pay poorly DO pay "living wages"; they surely pay far better than any random horrible minimum-wage job. You're not going to get any sympathy from me about not getting paid "enough" for some software job that doesn't pay median pay, but is more "fun". If you want more money, go find a big-corporate job that's boring as hell but pays well. Nothing is stopping you. For actual shitty jobs, this sounds good, but how do we enforce it, besides simply raising the minimum wage? And there is an argument to be made that raising the minimum wage will simply cause many of these jobs to go away (increasing unemployment), and also cause the prices of products and services to raise, increasing inflation so that poor peoples' purchasing power isn't any better than it was before. IMO, what we really need is more automation, plus a Basic Income so that people forced out of work by the automation can still enjoy the fruits of society's success without having to toil in some pointless bullshit job, and perhaps use their free time and efforts to do something more productive (like start an innovative new business, write a best-selling book like Harry Potter's author, etc.). Automation is going to put more and more people out of work by rendering so many jobs obsolete, as machines can do them faster and more efficiently, and as a society we need to prepare for that. Remember, a century ago people thought that in the 2000s, we'd all be working 10 hours a week.
- memling 8y ago
  > IMO, what we really need is more automation, plus a Basic Income so that people forced out of work by the automation can still enjoy the fruits of society's success without having to toil in some pointless bullshit job, and perhaps use their free time and efforts to do something more productive (like start an innovative new business, write a best-selling book like Harry Potter's author, etc.). How do you decide what is a pointless bullshit job? How do you decide what it means to be productive? How much of the success of a business relies on its innovation, or the success of a book on how well written it is? How many people have the drive and self-discipline for self employment? On the face of it, what it sounds like you're contrasting isn't "pointless bullshit" and innovative productivity, but "what bores me" and "what excites me" or "what fulfills me." It's easy to confuse the good-in-itself of work with the goods-in-themselves that work facilitates (paying the bills, feeding a family, giving to the less fortunate, et c). If we prioritize the former over the latter, we're going to have a crummy society in whatever regime we use to try to solve the thorny issues of automation and living wages.
kansface 8y ago
> In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage... Pay is determined chiefly by supply and demand in the labor market. Jobs that are more fun pay less because the supply of workers is higher. Fairness is literally not part of this equation. > On the other side of the ledger, you have immigrants with medical degrees, who are driving cabs for minimum wage. Medical licenses are controlled by the government, not the free market. > [The free market] is subject to all the same tribal impulses and inequalities that have persisted in humans throughout history. ... and also the Civil Rights Act of 1964. All snark aside, why should we pay a high school paperboy a living wage? What does a living wage even mean - the ability to live in a single bedroom apartment? That runs ~3K/month in SF which is roughly commensurate to $50/hour.
- tropdrop 8y ago
  > What does a living wage even mean.. The definition of living wage is fairly established. It is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. Needs are defined to include food, housing, and other essentials such as clothing. This definition is why, in the United States, at least, every few years Minimum Wage (used interchangeably here with Living Wage) would be raised, to keep up with inflation. It allowed the average American to start saving for a down-payment for a house even if all they had was a high school education and nothing else (so, the paperboy you mention). Until, for some reason, we stopped doing that as much. Instead of looking at one of the most inflated rental markets in the country (SF), let's look at somewhere like Idaho - you'll find that inflation has still affected that place, but minimum wage (living wage) to be able to provide those basic needs has not kept up. This is why, countrywide, 40% of non-elderly adults report difficulty meeting basic needs such as food, housing, health care and utilities [1]. But let's consider that paperboy, for a minute. Do you really believe that the only people who deserve the most basic income to be able to live (living wage) are those that are capable of getting a higher education? What about all the other members of a functional society that we rely on? [1] - https://www.urban.org/research/publication/well-being-and-basic-needs-survey https://www.urban.org/research/publication/well-being-and-ba...
  - glglwty 8y ago
pathseeker 8y ago
>The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy. It's fair, but not based on effort like people mistakenly think it should be. It's silly to think "I should be paid X because it was really hard work" or to try to interfere with the market to force that price. A big part of the issue is ignorance of economics among most of the population. People don't realize they are always participating in markets, even when it's a regulated market. >Consider the average CEO: not the exceptional visionaries but the type that loses the shareholders money for years and then exits on a golden parachute. I don't think you know what the word "average" means, because that's very far from the truth. There are hundreds of thousands of people with the title "CEO". Only a tiny fraction are of companies with publicly traded shares and only a fraction of those get large golden parachute deals (<1000). There are more professional football players becoming millionaires for playing a game than there are CEOs who lose companies tons of money and get a golden parachute. >On the other side of the ledger, you have immigrants with medical degrees, who are driving cabs for minimum wage (or now, Uber, for below minimum wage). So what? Their medical degree obvious isn't qualifying them to be a doctor in the new country.
- tropdrop 8y ago
  >So what? Their medical degree obvious isn't qualifying them to be a doctor in the new country. I never understood this, even while in the medical industry myself. Perhaps this might be a little true for an immigrant from Venezuela with a medical degree. But for an immigrant from England, Why not?
  - falsedan 8y ago
    Lobbying from the AMA to limit available labour & maintain high wages
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    You can't even do a tiny lateral transfer in the US medical industry without reschooling, so how would it work with foreign degrees?
    - 8y ago
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
>This kind of post-facto justification for poor working conditions or wages needs a name, so it can be dismissed out of hand. It seems to assume that the market is “fair” and getting poor pay must be justified by some other factor about the job. Maybe this is true when you consider not just the job itself, but acquiring the job. How many minimum wage jobs offer minimum entry requirements? How many offer secondary benefits that are worth a lot, but only to a very small percent of the population (such as internships offering access to important people). Of courses, none of this means fair. Some people are unfairly born with advantages or disadvantages, many of which have no solution that I've ever seen.

bradenb 8y ago

> It's because you love your job, you have to pay for that. I don't buy that. I don't think enjoying your job and being paid well need to be mutually exclusive. I think it's in an employer's best interest that their employees enjoy their job. Part of that is that an employee has to not feel the stress of being underpaid or overworked.

glibgil 8y ago
> I don't think enjoying your job and being paid well need to be mutually exclusive If there is a job, say museum docent, that the majority of qualified people would love to do then the salary of that job will approach $0. Museum docents are usually volunteers, but the chance for an art history major to practice their craft is valuable to the worker even at $0
- joesb 8y ago
  > If there is a job, say museum docent, that the majority of qualified people would love to do then the salary of that job will approach $0. Sure. But then you are assuming that what I love is what other people love. If there's only very few people who want to do those job, and I'm one of them. Should the pay be less only because I happen to love the job?
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    No. In capitalism its a question of supply and demand. Usually the jobs that most people love, are in low demand, and high supply, so they can pay less. If you love a job that only very few people love, you can still make demands and request a high salary.
ralusek 8y ago
I just mean that "enjoying your job" has a monetary value. The employer can recognize that or not, but the employee always does.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

tsumnia 8y ago

I'd agree; welders is beginning to pay nicely due to their demand. You won't enjoy the time away from home or the work conditions, but you'll be paid reasonably well.

code_duck 8y ago

Another way you could put it is that employers offer a premium for unpleasant jobs.