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I completely agree. If Amazon pays their workers better, that won’t fix the millions of other workers stuck with bad pay and abusive jobs. But that doesn’t mea
by mikeash 7y ago
I completely agree. If Amazon pays their workers better, that won’t fix the millions of other workers stuck with bad pay and abusive jobs.
But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the individual companies. Certainly, our energies should be focused on bigger societal changes. But it’s not misplaced ore to also mention the fact that some companies could already do better, and choose not to.
- harryh 7y agoI completely agree. If Amazon pays their workers better, that won’t fix the millions of other workers stuck with bad pay and abusive jobs. That's not what I meant by "more efficient." If every company employing low skilled labor suddenly raised pay above market wages it might help all those workers. But it would mean that prices for things produced by unskilled laborers were artificially high and prices produced by higher skilled laborers would be artificially low. This would cause the market to produce the wrong mix of goods and services and we would all be worse off for the difference.
- mikeash 7y agoI don’t understand, how is that different from taxing and giving workers money that way? They should have the same effect in terms of economic efficiency. The only reason we use taxes for this sort of thing is because it’s harder to cheat.
- harryh 7y agoIf you do it by pushing wages around artificially then you artificially change the prices of certain goods relative to others. If you do it via taxes and transfer payments then you don't distort the prices of goods.
- maxerickson 7y agoYou are arguing the unstable limit case. There's likely some smaller wage increase that wouldn't impact the prices of goods...