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> People are getting payed $16 that is incredible for an unskilled labor position. That's one view, but it's only informed by "the way things are". Another vie

> People are getting payed $16 that is incredible for an unskilled labor position. That's one view, but it's only informed by "the way things are". Another view is based on the way things should be, that no one should have to work for less than the wage it takes to live a reasonable life. https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/ offers values for this. I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor.

hpoe 6y ago
And I disagree that everyone should get paid a loving wage. Let's take 2 identical twins Juan and Jamal (because if you've seen Juan you've seen Jamal). In school Jamal works hard, studies, and puts his efforts first. Juan on the other hand decides football is the way to go and along with that partying, drinking and at one point gets a gal pregnant. They graduate Jamal gets several scholarships and goes to school while working part time to try and avoid debt. Juan only qualifies for community college but spends several years "finding himself" aka partying, drinking and generally not doing much. 4 years later Jamal graduates from school and gets a successful software engineering gig making a decent salary with which he is able to afford a decent house for him, his wife and his 2 children. Meanwhile Juan has just finished his latest stint in jail for another DUI and it is a wake up call to him. He decides to get his life in order so he cuts out the drugs and the bad friends and tries to find a job. Unfortunately he's unqualified for anything decent because it turns out shotgunning a beer is a useless skill. For many years Juan has made poor decisions, he has been a drain on society and it's resources, but now wants to change. That is good however to claim that he should get the same privileges and standing as his brother who spent years working hard giving back and making better long term choices is asinine. EDIT: There have been a lot of great and informative comments. Several people have been calling this out as a strawman. I'd like to point out this isn't a strawman this is actually remarkably close to what happenned in my own family, it isn't a fantastic out of this world scenario, it's one I lived. Dismissing this as a strawman, is to dismiss hte point without engaging with it.
- iso1631 6y ago
  Nobody is saying that Jamal should not be paid more, they're just saying the floor should be enough to live.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    What does that even mean? Live entirely alone in a 1 bedroom apartment? A studio? Live with roommates? What do their meals look like? A "living wage" means absolutely nothing unless you define the expectations. When I first moved to San Francisco in 2011, I was living on less than $300/month or so for 8 months or so. I slept on an air mattress and ate rice and beans prepared weekly from 25lb bags because it was cheaper that way. I spent less than a dollar a meal. What expectations do we have that people learn to be frugal? Here's someone who lives in the SF Bay Area for $7000/year: https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-year.html https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-ye... It's actually not hard to live on these wages if you're smart about how you spend your money. The only cost you can't really escape without moving is the cost of housing, and if you don't fix that problem, any increase in wages it just going to be temporary relief until housing prices correct.
- function_seven 6y ago
  If you need to spend several paragraphs designing a pair of strawmen to illustrate your point, consider widening your view on this. > That is good however to claim that he should get the same privileges and standing as his brother who spent years working hard giving back and making better long term choices is asinine. Nobody is complaining that minimum wage isn't the same as a software engineering salary. Just that the floor is too low. Unless you think all minimum wage earners are ne'er-do-well convicts with multiple DUIs?
  - clarky07 6y ago
    the counter point is that minimum wage is artificial. if you aren't actually providing that much value, businesses will just cut the job altogether. if you are trying to raise a large family on minimum wage, well then that's obviously a big problem, but it's highly likely to be a problem you created with your life choices. on the other hand, if you are in high school or college, minimum wage is likely fine as it's just extra spending money. raising minimum wage significantly more than likely just kills these jobs in favor of a kiosk that can do the job just as well. if we want to make it so that everyone can live, that is a job for gov't with things like universal healthcare, universal basic income, social safety nets. forcing businesses to pay people more for a job than the job creates in value is not a solution. in the long term those jobs will just go away completely to a technology solution. give people a safety net so that they can not be in poverty, but don't force businesses to pay more than the market says a job is worth. kind of a silly argument on a post about amazon anyways, since they pay well above minimum wage, and in fact have campaigned on raising it (not out of the goodness of their hearts mind you, they want to put small competitors out of business and they know they can't afford a large min wage hike like amazon can)
malandrew 6y ago
> I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor. Then focus on the right problem which is cost of living. Focusing on salary doesn't fix the problem when you have markets that are heavily housing constrained and massive government meddling in education and healthcare that drive up the cost of both well in excess of inflation. Increasing wages without addressing housing shortages, just puts more money in the pockets of landlords as those higher wages drive up rents. Whether someone gets $1 or $2 matters not if you can buy the same amount of stuff with it. In the overwhelming majority places in the country $16/hour is decent amount that goes a long way. That's over $40k at 50 hours a week. That's enough to live on your own in most places. If you have roommates, it goes even further. The problem isn't the $16. It's the circumstances in very very few geographic markets where $16/hour isn't enough because cost of living is out of control in those few markets.
clarky07 6y ago
>I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor. no offense, but this assumes too much about a person. you could make minimum wage $100 an hour, and there will still be poor people because some people make bad decisions. (not even taking into account that that would cause massive inflation etc). just giving a person $100 an hour doesn't guarantee they won't end up poor, as evidence by all the professional athletes that made millions and ended up bankrupt another note, your link above gives massively different outcomes based on life situations (1 adult, 2 adult, 0-3+ kids etc). Do we need to make minimum wage such that it works for 1 adult with 5 kids who somehow got there with no skills whatsoever such that they are still working for minimum wage? Some people make poor choices in life, and we can't just raise minimum wage to a point that makes up for that. It's simply not possible. Now, we can talk about other safety nets, such as a universal basic income, and universal healthcare, etc which I'm 100% for. The gov't should help these people, they shouldn't force small businesses to pay people more than the value they bring to the business. This is just picking winners, amazon will get bigger, and small businesses will get killed. Let the free market decide how much people are worth in the market to a business, and let gov't help keep people out of poverty.
- hollandheese 6y ago
  If a business can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage it can’t afford to exist. Why should the government have to bail out business that can’t afford to operate?
  - clarky07 6y ago
    they can afford to operate. workers have agreed to do the job for the price set today. you want to raise that number arbitrarily, which they can't afford.
    - hollandheese 6y ago
      People being able to feed and house themselves and their children is arbitrary? That “agreement” to work for the current price is compelled by the threat of hunger and homelessness. It is not a fair and free agreement when one party has all of the power. The very very very very least a company could do is pay all of their workers a living wage.
rufus_foreman 6y ago
32K a year is poor? World average is 18K, that's adjusted for purchasing power parity. 32K is at least 2nd quintile, maybe top. Poland is a little less than 32K average, Japan is around 38K, OECD data from 2019. Somewhere between Japan and Poland is where the average worker starts to be poor. Interesting. And that is at the present time, every generation going back to the invention of agriculture had it worse. Someone making 32K a year - PPP adjusted - is in what, the top few percent of all humans that have ever lived? Poor bastard. Learn to code. In the same way that if everything is about politics, nothing is about politics, if everyone is poor, no one is poor. And if these people aren't making a living wage while making what the top few percent of humans have ever made, how did our ancestors manage to live and have children on a sub-living wage? Shouldn't they have died out? I think in this case, "living wage" is just a propaganda term. "Poor" is too I guess. I guess maybe that propaganda term works on people, "living wage". It seems to be effective propaganda, seems to be working. I just cringe every time I read it. Adjusted for inflation, I made $7 an hour working in a factory. Decades later you're going to tell me that isn't a living wage, more than twice what I made back then wasn't a living wage? Was I lucky to survive? That's bullshit by the technical definition of bullshit, and its propaganda. Anyway, these arguments usually split people into two camps, people who worked warehouse or factory jobs before, and people who haven't.

hpoe 6y ago

And I disagree that everyone should get paid a loving wage. Let's take 2 identical twins Juan and Jamal (because if you've seen Juan you've seen Jamal). In school Jamal works hard, studies, and puts his efforts first. Juan on the other hand decides football is the way to go and along with that partying, drinking and at one point gets a gal pregnant. They graduate Jamal gets several scholarships and goes to school while working part time to try and avoid debt. Juan only qualifies for community college but spends several years "finding himself" aka partying, drinking and generally not doing much. 4 years later Jamal graduates from school and gets a successful software engineering gig making a decent salary with which he is able to afford a decent house for him, his wife and his 2 children. Meanwhile Juan has just finished his latest stint in jail for another DUI and it is a wake up call to him. He decides to get his life in order so he cuts out the drugs and the bad friends and tries to find a job. Unfortunately he's unqualified for anything decent because it turns out shotgunning a beer is a useless skill. For many years Juan has made poor decisions, he has been a drain on society and it's resources, but now wants to change. That is good however to claim that he should get the same privileges and standing as his brother who spent years working hard giving back and making better long term choices is asinine. EDIT: There have been a lot of great and informative comments. Several people have been calling this out as a strawman. I'd like to point out this isn't a strawman this is actually remarkably close to what happenned in my own family, it isn't a fantastic out of this world scenario, it's one I lived. Dismissing this as a strawman, is to dismiss hte point without engaging with it.

iso1631 6y ago
Nobody is saying that Jamal should not be paid more, they're just saying the floor should be enough to live.
- malandrew 6y ago
  What does that even mean? Live entirely alone in a 1 bedroom apartment? A studio? Live with roommates? What do their meals look like? A "living wage" means absolutely nothing unless you define the expectations. When I first moved to San Francisco in 2011, I was living on less than $300/month or so for 8 months or so. I slept on an air mattress and ate rice and beans prepared weekly from 25lb bags because it was cheaper that way. I spent less than a dollar a meal. What expectations do we have that people learn to be frugal? Here's someone who lives in the SF Bay Area for $7000/year: https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-year.html https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-ye... It's actually not hard to live on these wages if you're smart about how you spend your money. The only cost you can't really escape without moving is the cost of housing, and if you don't fix that problem, any increase in wages it just going to be temporary relief until housing prices correct.
function_seven 6y ago
If you need to spend several paragraphs designing a pair of strawmen to illustrate your point, consider widening your view on this. > That is good however to claim that he should get the same privileges and standing as his brother who spent years working hard giving back and making better long term choices is asinine. Nobody is complaining that minimum wage isn't the same as a software engineering salary. Just that the floor is too low. Unless you think all minimum wage earners are ne'er-do-well convicts with multiple DUIs?
- clarky07 6y ago
  the counter point is that minimum wage is artificial. if you aren't actually providing that much value, businesses will just cut the job altogether. if you are trying to raise a large family on minimum wage, well then that's obviously a big problem, but it's highly likely to be a problem you created with your life choices. on the other hand, if you are in high school or college, minimum wage is likely fine as it's just extra spending money. raising minimum wage significantly more than likely just kills these jobs in favor of a kiosk that can do the job just as well. if we want to make it so that everyone can live, that is a job for gov't with things like universal healthcare, universal basic income, social safety nets. forcing businesses to pay people more for a job than the job creates in value is not a solution. in the long term those jobs will just go away completely to a technology solution. give people a safety net so that they can not be in poverty, but don't force businesses to pay more than the market says a job is worth. kind of a silly argument on a post about amazon anyways, since they pay well above minimum wage, and in fact have campaigned on raising it (not out of the goodness of their hearts mind you, they want to put small competitors out of business and they know they can't afford a large min wage hike like amazon can)

malandrew 6y ago

> I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor. Then focus on the right problem which is cost of living. Focusing on salary doesn't fix the problem when you have markets that are heavily housing constrained and massive government meddling in education and healthcare that drive up the cost of both well in excess of inflation. Increasing wages without addressing housing shortages, just puts more money in the pockets of landlords as those higher wages drive up rents. Whether someone gets $1 or $2 matters not if you can buy the same amount of stuff with it. In the overwhelming majority places in the country $16/hour is decent amount that goes a long way. That's over $40k at 50 hours a week. That's enough to live on your own in most places. If you have roommates, it goes even further. The problem isn't the $16. It's the circumstances in very very few geographic markets where $16/hour isn't enough because cost of living is out of control in those few markets.

clarky07 6y ago

>I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor. no offense, but this assumes too much about a person. you could make minimum wage $100 an hour, and there will still be poor people because some people make bad decisions. (not even taking into account that that would cause massive inflation etc). just giving a person $100 an hour doesn't guarantee they won't end up poor, as evidence by all the professional athletes that made millions and ended up bankrupt another note, your link above gives massively different outcomes based on life situations (1 adult, 2 adult, 0-3+ kids etc). Do we need to make minimum wage such that it works for 1 adult with 5 kids who somehow got there with no skills whatsoever such that they are still working for minimum wage? Some people make poor choices in life, and we can't just raise minimum wage to a point that makes up for that. It's simply not possible. Now, we can talk about other safety nets, such as a universal basic income, and universal healthcare, etc which I'm 100% for. The gov't should help these people, they shouldn't force small businesses to pay people more than the value they bring to the business. This is just picking winners, amazon will get bigger, and small businesses will get killed. Let the free market decide how much people are worth in the market to a business, and let gov't help keep people out of poverty.

hollandheese 6y ago
If a business can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage it can’t afford to exist. Why should the government have to bail out business that can’t afford to operate?
- clarky07 6y ago
  they can afford to operate. workers have agreed to do the job for the price set today. you want to raise that number arbitrarily, which they can't afford.
  - hollandheese 6y ago
    People being able to feed and house themselves and their children is arbitrary? That “agreement” to work for the current price is compelled by the threat of hunger and homelessness. It is not a fair and free agreement when one party has all of the power. The very very very very least a company could do is pay all of their workers a living wage.

rufus_foreman 6y ago

32K a year is poor? World average is 18K, that's adjusted for purchasing power parity. 32K is at least 2nd quintile, maybe top. Poland is a little less than 32K average, Japan is around 38K, OECD data from 2019. Somewhere between Japan and Poland is where the average worker starts to be poor. Interesting. And that is at the present time, every generation going back to the invention of agriculture had it worse. Someone making 32K a year - PPP adjusted - is in what, the top few percent of all humans that have ever lived? Poor bastard. Learn to code. In the same way that if everything is about politics, nothing is about politics, if everyone is poor, no one is poor. And if these people aren't making a living wage while making what the top few percent of humans have ever made, how did our ancestors manage to live and have children on a sub-living wage? Shouldn't they have died out? I think in this case, "living wage" is just a propaganda term. "Poor" is too I guess. I guess maybe that propaganda term works on people, "living wage". It seems to be effective propaganda, seems to be working. I just cringe every time I read it. Adjusted for inflation, I made $7 an hour working in a factory. Decades later you're going to tell me that isn't a living wage, more than twice what I made back then wasn't a living wage? Was I lucky to survive? That's bullshit by the technical definition of bullshit, and its propaganda. Anyway, these arguments usually split people into two camps, people who worked warehouse or factory jobs before, and people who haven't.