4 ms·

Are all of your coworkers equally productive? Neighbors? Relatives? The answer for all 3 for me personally is no. I have family members who make decisions ba

by JPKab 7y ago

Are all of your coworkers equally productive? Neighbors? Relatives? The answer for all 3 for me personally is no. I have family members who make decisions based on different priorities which change their income. My coworkers differ radically in their abilities and work ethic. How can they have equal incomes in this scenario? There is a way to do this, and it hasn't worked any time it's been tried.

shadowgovt 7y ago
I mean, "universal basic income" would be a good start.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Adding one thousand to most statistical measures will either not change it or shift it by one thousand.
- tomschlick 7y ago
  Until everyone's cost of living goes up because they have an extra $1k/mo and landlords / retailers know it. The same thing happened with guaranteed student loans. When people have money to burn the market will react by increasing prices.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    It might, but it turns out macroeconomics isn't that simple.
jqgatsby 7y ago
I don't think "fixing income inequality" needs to mean that everyone is paid the same amount. It's reasonable to believe that <insert billionaire here> isn't a million times more productive than their median employee, and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth. Even if you did think that they were that meritorious, you could still make an argument that "fairness" should involve balancing both merit and utility (in this case referring to the diminishing marginal utility of money).
- tomschlick 7y ago
  > It's reasonable to believe that <insert billionaire here> isn't a million times more productive than their median employee If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company, and the CEO executes a few big multi-million dollar deals that month, then the CEO in fact would be significantly more productive (in terms of capital to the company) than the average employee. > and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth. Yes like taking the risk of starting such a business to employ others and putting down the capital which might be lost. I also don't know who you think would enforce some kind of "fairness" limit on how much money someone makes. The government doing so would likely be ruled unconstitutional and wouldn't likely ever be passed in the first place through congress.
  - Konnstann 7y ago
    Just to play devil's advocate, if you put a normal Walmart employee in a CEO position, or maybe just an "executive" position with decision-making authority, how far off would they be in terms of productivity from someone normally in that position? Say the employee was 1/10th as productive as that executive, that would still be thousands of times more productive than that same employee at their regular minimum wage job.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    > If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company If all the normal employees quit and Walmart can't replace them, how much money does Walmart lose? Perhaps we should calculate value to the company based on that sort of reasoning.

by JPKab 7y ago

shadowgovt 7y ago

I mean, "universal basic income" would be a good start.

big_chungus 7y ago
Adding one thousand to most statistical measures will either not change it or shift it by one thousand.
tomschlick 7y ago
Until everyone's cost of living goes up because they have an extra $1k/mo and landlords / retailers know it. The same thing happened with guaranteed student loans. When people have money to burn the market will react by increasing prices.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  It might, but it turns out macroeconomics isn't that simple.

jqgatsby 7y ago

I don't think "fixing income inequality" needs to mean that everyone is paid the same amount. It's reasonable to believe that <insert billionaire here> isn't a million times more productive than their median employee, and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth. Even if you did think that they were that meritorious, you could still make an argument that "fairness" should involve balancing both merit and utility (in this case referring to the diminishing marginal utility of money).

tomschlick 7y ago
> It's reasonable to believe that <insert billionaire here> isn't a million times more productive than their median employee If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company, and the CEO executes a few big multi-million dollar deals that month, then the CEO in fact would be significantly more productive (in terms of capital to the company) than the average employee. > and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth. Yes like taking the risk of starting such a business to employ others and putting down the capital which might be lost. I also don't know who you think would enforce some kind of "fairness" limit on how much money someone makes. The government doing so would likely be ruled unconstitutional and wouldn't likely ever be passed in the first place through congress.
- Konnstann 7y ago
  Just to play devil's advocate, if you put a normal Walmart employee in a CEO position, or maybe just an "executive" position with decision-making authority, how far off would they be in terms of productivity from someone normally in that position? Say the employee was 1/10th as productive as that executive, that would still be thousands of times more productive than that same employee at their regular minimum wage job.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  > If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company If all the normal employees quit and Walmart can't replace them, how much money does Walmart lose? Perhaps we should calculate value to the company based on that sort of reasoning.