5 ms·

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.
        • peteretep 6y ago
          Why does it need to be different from a welfare state?
          • nvoid 6y ago
            I don't think you have a picture of what a welfare state is. Sometimes it helps to take it to the extreme: You have millions of people sitting in their government provided housing, waiting for their government provided payouts, so they can avoid having to get out and work. This sound familiar yet? Then what you have to do, after production grounds to a halt, is to start to force people to work which is exactly how you get labor camps.
            • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
              Ah yes, the well known labour camps of Scandinavia. I'm pretty sure you may be trolling but if you're not, reading up on the western european welfare states would probably be a good idea.
              • nvoid 6y ago
                I was taking it to the extreme as I said above. Obviously it is possible to have a country that has welfare without labor camps. I was merely trying to point out that by having unemployment benefits, you actively discourage people to get jobs and essentially tax payers pay for people to not work. At least in the UK, we have an inordinate amount of benefits cheats that live off other people's money. If you only extend benefits to people who physically cannot work -i.e. disability benefits, then you stop this happening.
                • peteretep 6y ago
                  > At least in the UK, we have an inordinate amount of benefits cheats that live off other people's money ... > perceptions among the British public were that benefit fraud was high – on average people thought that 27% of the British welfare budget is claimed fraudulently; however, official UK Government figures have stated that the proportion of fraud stands at 0.7% of the total welfare budget in 2011/12 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_fraud_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_fraud_in_the_United_...
    • oezi 6y ago
      I think this argument makes sense in white collar jobs, but productivity in blue collar jobs is very scalable by capital (e.g. automation). People without much qualifications can make a multiple if there are adequate jobs.
    • issamehh 6y ago
      It's a real good thing that all of the money was imaginary in the first place. It can come from wherever. It's just a means to allocate the resources that actually hold the value, but is not valuable itself.
    • d3ckard 6y ago
      That’s a false argument. Pretty much every employee is productive enough to be living a decent life. The same can’t be said about their bargaining power.
  • inglor_cz 6y ago
    With globalized world, many of us compete with people and companies from places with much lower total cost of life. You can definitely manufacture an umbrella or a car cheaper in China or Serbia than in the U.S. This means that there is a natural ceiling on wages in some sectors, unless people start "Buy American" even if the price of the product is considerably higher. Which, in turn, will lower their own purchasing power. As seen in practice, most customers would rather purchase cheaper stuff made abroad by cheaper workforce. The E.U. has a lot of protective measures in various sectors precisely because they know that the same would happen if the restrictions were lifted.
• ajmadesc 6y ago
  The problem with people who think like this is you forget that economics is not a science. Economics exists inside of politics. What happens time and time again if the working class has it too rough in a country with a sizable 'aristocratic' class just below the ruling class?
  • scatters 6y ago
    Not much; people live with it. Revolutions happen when people see an improvement in their living standards halt or go into reverse. Invoking a past golden age is reactionary in effect if not in intent.