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Is there another kind of argument from morality EXCEPT those that go, "We shouldn't do that because it could harm people?" Hard to take someone seriously who b

Is there another kind of argument from morality EXCEPT those that go, "We shouldn't do that because it could harm people?" Hard to take someone seriously who blithely compares genocide to a minimum wage....

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Is there another kind of argument from morality EXCEPT those that go, "We shouldn't do that because it could harm people?" The argument in this case appears to be exactly that, i.e. we shouldn't do that because those people would make too much money. > Hard to take someone seriously who blithely compares genocide to a minimum wage.... There was a lot more to dislike about eugenics than genocide. You play the same game from the other side and you get to claim that Stalin's purges are attributable to the minimum wage because minimum wage is a communist policy and therefore responsible for all the things the communists did. Eugenics is a much more mundane stupidity than that, like purposely trying to breed a lack of genetic diversity independent of "race" -- and we still do this with crops and livestock to our peril -- but back then they did it with people. This has obvious parallels to minimum wage, where people are messing with something they don't fully understand based on simplistic assumptions. And then you do things like make it harder for young people to get internships because they can't pay a living wage even though that was never their purpose to begin with, or subject desperate people to really terrible jobs with longer commutes or less flexibility or otherwise higher real costs that actually really messes up their lives because you decreed that they couldn't accept a better job that pays less. Which have serious and long-term effects on large numbers of people.
- xphilter 7y ago
  You are comparing adjudicating the worth of a non changeable attribute of a human to the minimum cost of labor. If you can’t see the difference between the two then I don’t know what to do. There slippery slope arguments then there are just silly arguments.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    There are many people with disabilities that prevent them from doing ordinary work but who could do certain jobs with lower productivity. A minimum wage is essentially telling these people that they are worthless and should sit in a room doing nothing even though they want to work and feel useful, and in many cases this makes their lives substantially worse because they both feel useless and have less income when they can't work. That actually sounds kind of a lot like what they did to some of the victims of eugenics.
    - xphilter 7y ago
      Right. And there’s no way to have an exception just like there is today. I can’t tell if you’re all be obtuse on purpose. Is this some sort of political movement to equate minimum wage to eugenics? As is now conservatives care about the poor, disabled, and minorities? What’s crazy is that I agree with OP of this thread that economists should refrain from saying what’s moral. But that’s because most economists are just old white men, and I doubt they’re able to judge what’s moral better than others.
AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
Eugenics and wage “protections” like minimum wage are both tied to the same racist underpinnings. The minimum wage was established to price out black workers.
- inreverse 7y ago
  Was the minimum wage in, for example, New Zealand established to price out black workers?
  - logicchains 7y ago
    I don't know about New Zealand, but in 1912 Arthur Holcombe of Harvard University said about Australia's minimum wage: "[The minimum wage will] protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese."
- danans 7y ago
  Lots of rights enjoyed by all today in th US - the most important being voting - were originally established specifically at the exclusion of people of color and women. The problem wasn't the rights themselves, it's that they were purposely offered to white men only. Therefore it's deceptive to attack the minimum wage as being any more racist in origin than the right to vote is. Much of the law has deeply racist origins that has only been reformed in recent decades, and even then not completely.
  - logicchains 7y ago
    That's a completely different thing. The minimum wage wasn't originally only offered to white people: it was mandated for everyone, for the purpose of rendering those with lower-paying jobs (people of color, immigrants) unemployed, or preventing them from competing with whites. The briefing paper at https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp017.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp017.pdf discusses this. "The law provided that all federal construction contractors with contracts inexcess of $5,000 or more must pay their workers the "prevailing wage," which in practice meant the wages ofunionized labor. The measure passed because Congressmen saw the bill as protection for local, unionized[12] white workers' salaries in the fierce labor market of the Depression.[13] In particular, white union workers were angry that black workers who were barred from unions were migrating to the North in search of jobs in the building trades and undercutting "white" wages.[14] The comments of various congressmen reveal the racial animus that motivated the sponsors and supporters of the bill. In 1930, Representative John J. Cochran of Missouri stated that he had "received numerous complaints in recent months about southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South."[15] Representative Clayton Allgood, supporting Davis-Bacon on the floor of the House, complained of "cheap colored labor" that "is in competition with white labor throughout the country."[16]"

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Is there another kind of argument from morality EXCEPT those that go, "We shouldn't do that because it could harm people?" The argument in this case appears to be exactly that, i.e. we shouldn't do that because those people would make too much money. > Hard to take someone seriously who blithely compares genocide to a minimum wage.... There was a lot more to dislike about eugenics than genocide. You play the same game from the other side and you get to claim that Stalin's purges are attributable to the minimum wage because minimum wage is a communist policy and therefore responsible for all the things the communists did. Eugenics is a much more mundane stupidity than that, like purposely trying to breed a lack of genetic diversity independent of "race" -- and we still do this with crops and livestock to our peril -- but back then they did it with people. This has obvious parallels to minimum wage, where people are messing with something they don't fully understand based on simplistic assumptions. And then you do things like make it harder for young people to get internships because they can't pay a living wage even though that was never their purpose to begin with, or subject desperate people to really terrible jobs with longer commutes or less flexibility or otherwise higher real costs that actually really messes up their lives because you decreed that they couldn't accept a better job that pays less. Which have serious and long-term effects on large numbers of people.

xphilter 7y ago
You are comparing adjudicating the worth of a non changeable attribute of a human to the minimum cost of labor. If you can’t see the difference between the two then I don’t know what to do. There slippery slope arguments then there are just silly arguments.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  There are many people with disabilities that prevent them from doing ordinary work but who could do certain jobs with lower productivity. A minimum wage is essentially telling these people that they are worthless and should sit in a room doing nothing even though they want to work and feel useful, and in many cases this makes their lives substantially worse because they both feel useless and have less income when they can't work. That actually sounds kind of a lot like what they did to some of the victims of eugenics.
  - xphilter 7y ago
    Right. And there’s no way to have an exception just like there is today. I can’t tell if you’re all be obtuse on purpose. Is this some sort of political movement to equate minimum wage to eugenics? As is now conservatives care about the poor, disabled, and minorities? What’s crazy is that I agree with OP of this thread that economists should refrain from saying what’s moral. But that’s because most economists are just old white men, and I doubt they’re able to judge what’s moral better than others.

AndrewUnmuted 7y ago

Eugenics and wage “protections” like minimum wage are both tied to the same racist underpinnings. The minimum wage was established to price out black workers.

inreverse 7y ago
Was the minimum wage in, for example, New Zealand established to price out black workers?
- logicchains 7y ago
  I don't know about New Zealand, but in 1912 Arthur Holcombe of Harvard University said about Australia's minimum wage: "[The minimum wage will] protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese."
danans 7y ago
Lots of rights enjoyed by all today in th US - the most important being voting - were originally established specifically at the exclusion of people of color and women. The problem wasn't the rights themselves, it's that they were purposely offered to white men only. Therefore it's deceptive to attack the minimum wage as being any more racist in origin than the right to vote is. Much of the law has deeply racist origins that has only been reformed in recent decades, and even then not completely.
- logicchains 7y ago
  That's a completely different thing. The minimum wage wasn't originally only offered to white people: it was mandated for everyone, for the purpose of rendering those with lower-paying jobs (people of color, immigrants) unemployed, or preventing them from competing with whites. The briefing paper at https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp017.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp017.pdf discusses this. "The law provided that all federal construction contractors with contracts inexcess of $5,000 or more must pay their workers the "prevailing wage," which in practice meant the wages ofunionized labor. The measure passed because Congressmen saw the bill as protection for local, unionized[12] white workers' salaries in the fierce labor market of the Depression.[13] In particular, white union workers were angry that black workers who were barred from unions were migrating to the North in search of jobs in the building trades and undercutting "white" wages.[14] The comments of various congressmen reveal the racial animus that motivated the sponsors and supporters of the bill. In 1930, Representative John J. Cochran of Missouri stated that he had "received numerous complaints in recent months about southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South."[15] Representative Clayton Allgood, supporting Davis-Bacon on the floor of the House, complained of "cheap colored labor" that "is in competition with white labor throughout the country."[16]"