5 ms·

This should be a government's job to decide. Google isn't the authority that should decide on that.

by rak00n 8y ago

darpa_escapee 8y ago
There are lot of things that should be the government's job, but aren't. In lieu of that, Google is responsible for its own actions, and Google is the one who is deciding to pay some contractors $15/hr.
gwright 8y ago
It seems strange to say that Google is the "authority" here. They are making a choice on how to run their business. There is no "authority" involved in that decision. But what makes you think the government should decide either? What makes you think that the government is capable of discerning the correct number? What makes you think there must be a single number? And if you think there should be a single number, why should it be $15/hr vs $10, $20, $50, or $100? How is it possible for a federal minimum wage to magically be "correct" for all combinations of: * geographic location and local economic conditions * experience of worker (e.g. teenagers 1st job vs young-adult vs senior citizen) * part time vs full time * no training required, some training required, lots of training required? * time-of-day (1st, 2nd, 3rd shift) * time-of-week (5x8, 4x10, 6x6) * intangible benefits (think internships to gain experience/skills/networks) I'm sure there are many more variables that could be added to that list. The real minimum wage is always 0, for the workers that didn't get hired. Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract.
- dgzl 8y ago
  > Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract. This, 100%. If I have some menial task that doesn't justify paying minimum wage, and I have a person interested in this contract, then the government's intervention is violating our rights. We don't stand a chance bringing the homeless population back into the workforce with a high minimum wage, it's just not going to happen. People who support higher minimum wage don't seem to realize that it has negative side effects, like pushing lower-ranking employees out of the market.
  - hopler 8y ago
    The professional economists who've actually researched this matter disagree with you.
    - 0815test 8y ago
      France has sky-high minimum wages (and, just as importantly, labor market regulations), and the French labor market also has huge issues with low-skilled workers being essentially shut out of it. Coincidence? Germany had the same issue, and they had to introduce special "Minijobs" that don't pay minimum wage, to address it. Who are you going to believe, the professional economists who are actually researching the matter, or your lying eyes?
      - moorhosj 8y ago
        You forgot to mention how France has a significantly lower poverty rate than the US.
        gwright 8y ago
        I don't know about French poverty stats, but in the US the typical stats regarding poverty are terrible misleading. The basic problem is the highly publicized poverty rate from the Census bureau excludes huge amounts of assistance (trillions of $$). Which leads to this perverse cycle: 1) observe poverty rate based on income is x% 2) argue successfully to increase assistance that won't be counted as income 3) observe that the poverty rate based on income hasn't changed 4) GOTO 2 Here is a good summary of this dysfunctional situation: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018-10-14-nice-to-see-that-somebody-is-paying-attention-to-the-poverty-scam https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018-10-14-nice-to-...
        moorhosj 8y ago
        That article is clearly biased as it calls the topic a “scam” with no evidence (and includes basically zero data citations). This argument is nothing new and it still doesn’t make sense. Of course we want to measure how people are doing before government assistance, how else would we know who needs assistance? Either way, this is besides the point anyone was making. We can look at French poverty rates, healthcare costs, or income distribution and see that they are outperforming the US in many areas. Their labor regulations are likely one of the reasons.
- JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
  >But what makes you think the government should decide either? The default position in the US system is that the government does decide these things - you're arguing against the status quo here, which is fine, but the way you are positioning this seems like you think this is an aberration from the norm. >What makes you think that the government is capable of discerning the correct number? The economists and advisers they (hopefully) listen to, they don't pluck it out of the air, they base it on a significant body of research that they deem to be the most correct (at least in a perfect world, ideology and the complexity of it complicates this of course). >And if you think there should be a single number, why should it be $15/hr vs $10, $20, $50, or $100? >How is it possible for a federal minimum wage to magically be "correct" for all combinations of: <snip> This is a fair point, a living wage in NY is very different to a living wage out in the middle of nowhere. You could argue that if people are so desperate for work they should be willing to move across the country for jobs in a cheaper place to live, but life is usually not that simple of course. Ultimately, one minimum wage that is deemed a living wage across the USA is better than the alternative in my view. But I'd definitely be amenable to arguments as to how better to base the living wage depending on the area. (Though no doubt that'd have its own difficulties). >The real minimum wage is always 0, for the workers that didn't get hired. Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract. I mean, sure, contracts have laws around them based on what is legal, what is regulated etc. That's par the course for a government/legal system. I can't just add arbitrary things into a contract that have been deemed to be illegal. Positioning it as a "restriction" does not make this particularly negative. I'm not sure I get the point here.
  - gwright 8y ago
    I feel like you are making a category error here. I'm arguing that minimum wage restrictions are an unwise restriction on contracts and you in turn are objecting to that argument by pointing to the fact that we do indeed have restrictions/regulation of contract terms and therefore my criticism is invalid. At least that seems what you are saying towards the end of your message. Accepting that there are proper reasons to regulate contracts does not mean that any particular constraint is proper.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract. So are essentially all laws, what's your point?
  - gwright 8y ago
    I'm not sure that is true (all laws are about contracts), but your comment suggests an indifference to the notion that laws should be evaluated based on how burdensome they are to individual liberty. My comment was intended to illustrate that minimum wage laws not only restrict employers but they also restrict workers. The rationale for these laws is necessarily built upon the assumption that individuals are incapable of determining what is in their own best interest and must be forcibly prevented from making unwise decisions regarding their own employment. The government's centralized one-size-fits-all solution represents an infringement on individual liberty and individual rights, the exact opposite of the proper role for government.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > I'm not sure that is true (all laws are about contracts) Whether they are about contracts are not, laws restrict the right to enter contracts, because contracts that involve violations of the law are prohibited for that reason. (And, in the case of criminal law, the contracts themselves are not merely restricted but criminalized.) > but your comment suggests an indifference to the notion that laws should be evaluated based on how burdensome they are to individual liberty. No, it suggests that I find the observation that a law restricts the ability to enter contracts to be something that doesn't say anything meaningful about the degree or manner in which it burdens individual liberty, since it is true of most laws, no matter how much or how little they burden individual liberty. > The rationale for these laws is necessarily built upon the assumption that individuals are incapable of determining what is in their own best interest I disagree; the laws are adopted precisely because individuals are perceived as very capable of optimizing for their own self-interest in a way which is perceived as harmful to the general interest. It's seen as a collective action problem; in game theory terms a multiplayer generalization of prisoners dilemma with workers as the participants.
- int_19h 8y ago
  As a leftie, I don't care that much about the right to enter into a contract (we already ban it for plenty of other stuff - e.g. you can't sell yourself into slavery). My problem with the minimum wage is that it's essentially UBI for the working population, that is funded via a regressive tax. Min wage workers produce cheaper products and services, and thus the cost gets passed to those who buy them, rather than those who buy more luxury goods - it's basically taxing the poor to pay the poorest. We might as well just raise the income tax - which is at least progressive (and could be much more so), and cut the paychecks from that directly. The usual objection to that is that it's subsidizing employers, who can now pay much less because the employees already get UBI. Sure, so let's tax them as well - corporate income and/or capital gains.
  - gwright 8y ago
    > As a leftie, I don't care that much about the right to enter into a contract What is your limiting principle then? Our social contract is based on the idea that government does not have unlimited power and that there are individual rights that can not be discarded even via majority rule. Are you unwilling to apply any sort of value metric on laws? I'm not sure I follow your chain of reasoning on wage/UBI/taxes, but there is a part of what you say that I think I would agree with: That if we want to provide a social safety net it should be done explicitly via general taxes and a redistribution mechanism rather than micro-managing commerce.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      To clarify, it's not that I don't recognize the right, I just don't think it's as important as e.g. freedom of speech (nor is it a subset). And clearly the society we live in agrees, because we have numerous laws that regulate contracts, e.g. bans on non-competes, right-to-work laws etc. The chain of reasoning wrt wages is simple: when you raise min wage, it is factored into the cost of goods, proportionally to the amount of min wage labor that went into their creation. In other words, cheaper goods and services get more expensive, and people who buy them end up footing the bill. So when you raise min wage, it's subsidized more by McDonald's customers than by Starbucks customers. So we're basically providing guaranteed income for employed - that's the basic income part - but we pay for it using an implicit regressive sales tax.
- rak00n 8y ago
  Setting a minimum wage and enforcing it has always been a government's job. And when I say government I not necessarily mean federal government. It can be a state government (like California) or city government (like San Francisco). A single company can enforce it in a limited manner and that doesn't have any discernable impact on the society.
DrScump 8y ago
Government shouldn't have this power... but it could make contractor compensation not tax-deductible (or, less so) to incentivize direct employment.

This should be a government's job to decide. Google isn't the authority that should decide on that.

by rak00n 8y ago

This should be a government's job to decide. Google isn't the authority that should decide on that.

There are lot of things that should be the government's job, but aren't. In lieu of that, Google is responsible for its own actions, and Google is the one who is deciding to pay some contractors $15/hr.

gwright 8y ago

It seems strange to say that Google is the "authority" here. They are making a choice on how to run their business. There is no "authority" involved in that decision. But what makes you think the government should decide either? What makes you think that the government is capable of discerning the correct number? What makes you think there must be a single number? And if you think there should be a single number, why should it be $15/hr vs $10, $20, $50, or $100? How is it possible for a federal minimum wage to magically be "correct" for all combinations of: * geographic location and local economic conditions * experience of worker (e.g. teenagers 1st job vs young-adult vs senior citizen) * part time vs full time * no training required, some training required, lots of training required? * time-of-day (1st, 2nd, 3rd shift) * time-of-week (5x8, 4x10, 6x6) * intangible benefits (think internships to gain experience/skills/networks) I'm sure there are many more variables that could be added to that list. The real minimum wage is always 0, for the workers that didn't get hired. Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract.

dgzl 8y ago
> Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract. This, 100%. If I have some menial task that doesn't justify paying minimum wage, and I have a person interested in this contract, then the government's intervention is violating our rights. We don't stand a chance bringing the homeless population back into the workforce with a high minimum wage, it's just not going to happen. People who support higher minimum wage don't seem to realize that it has negative side effects, like pushing lower-ranking employees out of the market.
- hopler 8y ago
  The professional economists who've actually researched this matter disagree with you.
  - 0815test 8y ago
    France has sky-high minimum wages (and, just as importantly, labor market regulations), and the French labor market also has huge issues with low-skilled workers being essentially shut out of it. Coincidence? Germany had the same issue, and they had to introduce special "Minijobs" that don't pay minimum wage, to address it. Who are you going to believe, the professional economists who are actually researching the matter, or your lying eyes?
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      You forgot to mention how France has a significantly lower poverty rate than the US.
      - gwright 8y ago
        I don't know about French poverty stats, but in the US the typical stats regarding poverty are terrible misleading. The basic problem is the highly publicized poverty rate from the Census bureau excludes huge amounts of assistance (trillions of $$). Which leads to this perverse cycle: 1) observe poverty rate based on income is x% 2) argue successfully to increase assistance that won't be counted as income 3) observe that the poverty rate based on income hasn't changed 4) GOTO 2 Here is a good summary of this dysfunctional situation: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018-10-14-nice-to-see-that-somebody-is-paying-attention-to-the-poverty-scam https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018-10-14-nice-to-...
        moorhosj 8y ago
        That article is clearly biased as it calls the topic a “scam” with no evidence (and includes basically zero data citations). This argument is nothing new and it still doesn’t make sense. Of course we want to measure how people are doing before government assistance, how else would we know who needs assistance? Either way, this is besides the point anyone was making. We can look at French poverty rates, healthcare costs, or income distribution and see that they are outperforming the US in many areas. Their labor regulations are likely one of the reasons.
JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
>But what makes you think the government should decide either? The default position in the US system is that the government does decide these things - you're arguing against the status quo here, which is fine, but the way you are positioning this seems like you think this is an aberration from the norm. >What makes you think that the government is capable of discerning the correct number? The economists and advisers they (hopefully) listen to, they don't pluck it out of the air, they base it on a significant body of research that they deem to be the most correct (at least in a perfect world, ideology and the complexity of it complicates this of course). >And if you think there should be a single number, why should it be $15/hr vs $10, $20, $50, or $100? >How is it possible for a federal minimum wage to magically be "correct" for all combinations of: <snip> This is a fair point, a living wage in NY is very different to a living wage out in the middle of nowhere. You could argue that if people are so desperate for work they should be willing to move across the country for jobs in a cheaper place to live, but life is usually not that simple of course. Ultimately, one minimum wage that is deemed a living wage across the USA is better than the alternative in my view. But I'd definitely be amenable to arguments as to how better to base the living wage depending on the area. (Though no doubt that'd have its own difficulties). >The real minimum wage is always 0, for the workers that didn't get hired. Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract. I mean, sure, contracts have laws around them based on what is legal, what is regulated etc. That's par the course for a government/legal system. I can't just add arbitrary things into a contract that have been deemed to be illegal. Positioning it as a "restriction" does not make this particularly negative. I'm not sure I get the point here.
- gwright 8y ago
  I feel like you are making a category error here. I'm arguing that minimum wage restrictions are an unwise restriction on contracts and you in turn are objecting to that argument by pointing to the fact that we do indeed have restrictions/regulation of contract terms and therefore my criticism is invalid. At least that seems what you are saying towards the end of your message. Accepting that there are proper reasons to regulate contracts does not mean that any particular constraint is proper.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Minimum wage laws are ultimately restrictions an individual's right to enter into a contract. So are essentially all laws, what's your point?
- gwright 8y ago
  I'm not sure that is true (all laws are about contracts), but your comment suggests an indifference to the notion that laws should be evaluated based on how burdensome they are to individual liberty. My comment was intended to illustrate that minimum wage laws not only restrict employers but they also restrict workers. The rationale for these laws is necessarily built upon the assumption that individuals are incapable of determining what is in their own best interest and must be forcibly prevented from making unwise decisions regarding their own employment. The government's centralized one-size-fits-all solution represents an infringement on individual liberty and individual rights, the exact opposite of the proper role for government.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > I'm not sure that is true (all laws are about contracts) Whether they are about contracts are not, laws restrict the right to enter contracts, because contracts that involve violations of the law are prohibited for that reason. (And, in the case of criminal law, the contracts themselves are not merely restricted but criminalized.) > but your comment suggests an indifference to the notion that laws should be evaluated based on how burdensome they are to individual liberty. No, it suggests that I find the observation that a law restricts the ability to enter contracts to be something that doesn't say anything meaningful about the degree or manner in which it burdens individual liberty, since it is true of most laws, no matter how much or how little they burden individual liberty. > The rationale for these laws is necessarily built upon the assumption that individuals are incapable of determining what is in their own best interest I disagree; the laws are adopted precisely because individuals are perceived as very capable of optimizing for their own self-interest in a way which is perceived as harmful to the general interest. It's seen as a collective action problem; in game theory terms a multiplayer generalization of prisoners dilemma with workers as the participants.
int_19h 8y ago
As a leftie, I don't care that much about the right to enter into a contract (we already ban it for plenty of other stuff - e.g. you can't sell yourself into slavery). My problem with the minimum wage is that it's essentially UBI for the working population, that is funded via a regressive tax. Min wage workers produce cheaper products and services, and thus the cost gets passed to those who buy them, rather than those who buy more luxury goods - it's basically taxing the poor to pay the poorest. We might as well just raise the income tax - which is at least progressive (and could be much more so), and cut the paychecks from that directly. The usual objection to that is that it's subsidizing employers, who can now pay much less because the employees already get UBI. Sure, so let's tax them as well - corporate income and/or capital gains.
- gwright 8y ago
  > As a leftie, I don't care that much about the right to enter into a contract What is your limiting principle then? Our social contract is based on the idea that government does not have unlimited power and that there are individual rights that can not be discarded even via majority rule. Are you unwilling to apply any sort of value metric on laws? I'm not sure I follow your chain of reasoning on wage/UBI/taxes, but there is a part of what you say that I think I would agree with: That if we want to provide a social safety net it should be done explicitly via general taxes and a redistribution mechanism rather than micro-managing commerce.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    To clarify, it's not that I don't recognize the right, I just don't think it's as important as e.g. freedom of speech (nor is it a subset). And clearly the society we live in agrees, because we have numerous laws that regulate contracts, e.g. bans on non-competes, right-to-work laws etc. The chain of reasoning wrt wages is simple: when you raise min wage, it is factored into the cost of goods, proportionally to the amount of min wage labor that went into their creation. In other words, cheaper goods and services get more expensive, and people who buy them end up footing the bill. So when you raise min wage, it's subsidized more by McDonald's customers than by Starbucks customers. So we're basically providing guaranteed income for employed - that's the basic income part - but we pay for it using an implicit regressive sales tax.
rak00n 8y ago
Setting a minimum wage and enforcing it has always been a government's job. And when I say government I not necessarily mean federal government. It can be a state government (like California) or city government (like San Francisco). A single company can enforce it in a limited manner and that doesn't have any discernable impact on the society.

DrScump 8y ago

Government shouldn't have this power... but it could make contractor compensation not tax-deductible (or, less so) to incentivize direct employment.