9 ms·

We could "kill" low wage jobs by making sure that 35h a week pay enough for yourself and a child or two.

aminozuur 6y ago
You can start a company and pay your otherwise underpaid employees whatever you want. Be the change you want to see in the world.
- gambiting 6y ago
  If you see companies using child labour, the solution obviously isn't to start your own company that doesn't exploit children just to prove a point. This stuff is regulated for a reason. You could argue that an employer should be able to offer any wage they want, but the argument against it is that people on poverty wages then have to use public assistance to survive. So essentially private companies use public money to have cheap labour which they wouldn't be able to access otherwise - that's obviously not ok either.
- gerbler 6y ago
  Why do you assume I have not done this? (I have) My main point about this article is that it's not considering why we are roped into an alarm clock culture - it's not because we want to be woken up this way, it's because sometimes it's an economic necessity.
- adrianN 6y ago
  You don't fix races to the bottom by individual action.
  - nvoid 6y ago
    This is exactly how you do it! If everyone is encouraged to take responsibility and make a good life for them and their family, a society will improve massively.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Companies have no family and making a good life for themselves means externalizing as many costs as possible on society. You might enjoy skimming this very long essay https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...
    - gambiting 6y ago
      If you run a company that produces something, but your competitor undercuts your prices by half because they don't pay taxes, dump their waste in a river and hire children, you doing all things right will have absolutely zero impact on fixing the situation. You will be priced out of the market because you can't possibly compete with someone who has lower costs through illegal actions. Again, the answer is regulation, not hoping that people will behave morally and decently out of the goodness of their hearts.
      - nvoid 6y ago
        The answer can sometimes be -good- regulation. But another solution would be to employ a skin in the game approach. If a company behaves in this way, they will be sued to the heavens, therefore discouraging this kind of behavior. Besides, the way the regulatory system works now, new regulations only seem to benefit large corporations who can afford to lobby and get around the regulations. They actively hurt small businesses.
jpxw 6y ago
How do you propose doing that? Minimum wage increases? Why not increase the minimum wage to $10,000 an hour?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Yeah why not? I mean you're doing an argumentum ad absurdum but you have the right idea. Minimum wage and employee protection laws are the way forward. Everybody should be able to live comfortably, working at most 40 hours / week. Minimum wage is bad in its own way, because it sets a "what is the least we can get away with" boundary for employers, but in the current employment climate, employers can and do get away with paying less (see the service industry where employees are expected to collect tips to stipend their wages, see the gig industry where the employer doesn't give a shit that the employee has to struggle full days to get enough work to get paid).
  - jpxw 6y ago
    > Everybody should be able to live comfortably, working at most 40 hours / week. What if they aren’t productive enough to earn that amount of money? Where does the money come from?
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Other people of course. Just like for people who can't work at all, for example because their health doesn't allow it.
      - jpxw 6y ago
        How is this any different to a welfare state, then?
        AndrewDucker 6y ago
        It's not any different. If by "welfare state" you mean "a decent social safety net". Which the USA should definitely have.
nvoid 6y ago
Pretty much the first thing about economics. You have/raise a minimum wage, consumer prices inflate and then it costs more to live with that minimum wage. What do you want to do, keep raising it every year? The market will outrun the government. This kind of thinking is how you end up with a welfare state, where the only way people can live is with their pitiful stimulus check from the government. People want to earn their own money not freeload of other taxpayers whilst sitting on the couch. I am not going to be that guy that points out a problem and doesn't propose a solution though. The solution is cut back corporation tax and regulation and make it easier for companies to hire people. This of course is what made the west as great as it is today.
- adrianN 6y ago
  I'm not sure whether you're joking or not. Just have a look at rich countries other than the US how they treat workers and what the rate of people having more than one job but still living in poverty is.
- zajio1am 6y ago
  Not really, in countries with reasonable sized minimum wage (say 1/2 of median wage) only small percentage of workers have minimum wage.
- eertami 6y ago
  >You have/raise a minimum wage, consumer prices inflate and then it costs more to live with that minimum wage. I've never understood why people continue to make this argument when there are easily demonstrable counter-examples to the "But you won't be able to afford anything!!!" line of thought. Look at countries like Switzerland, or even in the US there is Washington DC where minimum wage is $15, and society isn't collapsing.
  - nvoid 6y ago
    Have you been to Switzerland? If you had, you would understand that exactly what I said would happen has happened has happened there. No society wouldn't collapse with a minimum wage, that is not my argument. Logic would dictate that if everyone in a town was making $15 an hour then prices would naturally increase. How can you not see this?

You can start a company and pay your otherwise underpaid employees whatever you want. Be the change you want to see in the world.

gambiting 6y ago
If you see companies using child labour, the solution obviously isn't to start your own company that doesn't exploit children just to prove a point. This stuff is regulated for a reason. You could argue that an employer should be able to offer any wage they want, but the argument against it is that people on poverty wages then have to use public assistance to survive. So essentially private companies use public money to have cheap labour which they wouldn't be able to access otherwise - that's obviously not ok either.
gerbler 6y ago
Why do you assume I have not done this? (I have) My main point about this article is that it's not considering why we are roped into an alarm clock culture - it's not because we want to be woken up this way, it's because sometimes it's an economic necessity.
adrianN 6y ago
You don't fix races to the bottom by individual action.
- nvoid 6y ago
  This is exactly how you do it! If everyone is encouraged to take responsibility and make a good life for them and their family, a society will improve massively.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Companies have no family and making a good life for themselves means externalizing as many costs as possible on society. You might enjoy skimming this very long essay https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...
  - gambiting 6y ago
    If you run a company that produces something, but your competitor undercuts your prices by half because they don't pay taxes, dump their waste in a river and hire children, you doing all things right will have absolutely zero impact on fixing the situation. You will be priced out of the market because you can't possibly compete with someone who has lower costs through illegal actions. Again, the answer is regulation, not hoping that people will behave morally and decently out of the goodness of their hearts.
    - nvoid 6y ago
      The answer can sometimes be -good- regulation. But another solution would be to employ a skin in the game approach. If a company behaves in this way, they will be sued to the heavens, therefore discouraging this kind of behavior. Besides, the way the regulatory system works now, new regulations only seem to benefit large corporations who can afford to lobby and get around the regulations. They actively hurt small businesses.

jpxw 6y ago

How do you propose doing that? Minimum wage increases? Why not increase the minimum wage to $10,000 an hour?

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Yeah why not? I mean you're doing an argumentum ad absurdum but you have the right idea. Minimum wage and employee protection laws are the way forward. Everybody should be able to live comfortably, working at most 40 hours / week. Minimum wage is bad in its own way, because it sets a "what is the least we can get away with" boundary for employers, but in the current employment climate, employers can and do get away with paying less (see the service industry where employees are expected to collect tips to stipend their wages, see the gig industry where the employer doesn't give a shit that the employee has to struggle full days to get enough work to get paid).
- jpxw 6y ago
  > Everybody should be able to live comfortably, working at most 40 hours / week. What if they aren’t productive enough to earn that amount of money? Where does the money come from?
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Other people of course. Just like for people who can't work at all, for example because their health doesn't allow it.
    - jpxw 6y ago
      How is this any different to a welfare state, then?
      - AndrewDucker 6y ago
        It's not any different. If by "welfare state" you mean "a decent social safety net". Which the USA should definitely have.

nvoid 6y ago

Pretty much the first thing about economics. You have/raise a minimum wage, consumer prices inflate and then it costs more to live with that minimum wage. What do you want to do, keep raising it every year? The market will outrun the government. This kind of thinking is how you end up with a welfare state, where the only way people can live is with their pitiful stimulus check from the government. People want to earn their own money not freeload of other taxpayers whilst sitting on the couch. I am not going to be that guy that points out a problem and doesn't propose a solution though. The solution is cut back corporation tax and regulation and make it easier for companies to hire people. This of course is what made the west as great as it is today.

adrianN 6y ago
I'm not sure whether you're joking or not. Just have a look at rich countries other than the US how they treat workers and what the rate of people having more than one job but still living in poverty is.
zajio1am 6y ago
Not really, in countries with reasonable sized minimum wage (say 1/2 of median wage) only small percentage of workers have minimum wage.
eertami 6y ago
>You have/raise a minimum wage, consumer prices inflate and then it costs more to live with that minimum wage. I've never understood why people continue to make this argument when there are easily demonstrable counter-examples to the "But you won't be able to afford anything!!!" line of thought. Look at countries like Switzerland, or even in the US there is Washington DC where minimum wage is $15, and society isn't collapsing.
- nvoid 6y ago
  Have you been to Switzerland? If you had, you would understand that exactly what I said would happen has happened has happened there. No society wouldn't collapse with a minimum wage, that is not my argument. Logic would dictate that if everyone in a town was making $15 an hour then prices would naturally increase. How can you not see this?