4 ms·

pay people a living wage for their labor I truly don’t understand why so many think that someone doing less than what it takes to live (alone, independently) s

pay people a living wage for their labor I truly don’t understand why so many think that someone doing less than what it takes to live (alone, independently) should be paid a living wage. Food, housing, energy, care, ... all take productivity; if someone can’t produce enough to cover their own needs, they need be recognized as a dependent and treated as such. It’s not your obligation to pay me a living wage just because you need floors swept or burgers flipped.

astrange 6y ago
You don't really need that service performed that badly if you can't pay that much for it either. Offering crappy jobs is bad because people might actually take them; now they don't have the free time needed to find better ones. It reduces economic productivity and it might be cheaper to just pay them unemployment. Makes traffic better too since they're not commuting.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  What of those unable to produce more than some value less than minimum wage? Not everyone is capable of $15/hr productivity, why would you deny them work? nobody is expecting them to achieve independence (say, bc Down’s Syndrome) but they can still produce some value and have a right to earn what they can. There are tasks I’d hire people to do, but it’s not worth enough to pay housing/food/care/heat/etc for.
  - astrange 6y ago
    Those people are already exempted. Group homes for people who can't live independently do have work placement programs, although I don't know how you prevent them from displacing "real" workers - presumably it's not that much of a problem. Besides that, just paying people to do nothing works fine because they can do non-economic work (childcare/caretaking) or speculative things (write a book, go back to school) and US policy is heading back in this direction. We stopped with Reagan because voters tend to turn against welfare policies when you point out that black people are getting them.
    - ctdonath 6y ago
      You’re assuming a system which can easily & correctly identify “exempted” people, the police power of the state being benevolently withheld to allow paying some less. Hardly realistic. You’re assuming paying people to do nothing will result in “unpaid” productivity greater than their UBI. This is not dominant human nature; all basic needs met, most turn to fighting/copulation/gluttony/drugs/sloth. Oh, just noticed your racist BS at the end. Bye.
      - astrange 6y ago
        > This is not dominant human nature; all basic needs met, most turn to fighting/copulation/gluttony/drugs/sloth. I am confident demand is infinite and people will not want to stop working if more basic needs are met[1]. It's the opposite - people don't produce efficiently if they're starving and they can't be matched to better jobs because they don't have the free time to find them. > Oh, just noticed your racist BS at the end. Bye. You seem confused since you're the one arguing poor people are naturally idle and will just get in fights with each other if made less poor! Luckily, I have the normal opinions of a person in 2020 and we can all see through through Reagan's "welfare queens" propaganda at this point. As for the evidence about American voters, you should see the people they elect, but also David Shor[2]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre... - note the part about poor people being idle became steadily less true until March 2020 and seems to be caused by poor Fed policy, not video games. [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-culture-2020-election-theory-polls.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu...
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > You don't really need that service performed that badly if you can't pay that much for it either. You don't really need US-made goods, just buy the ones made in China. You don't really need an appliance repair service, just throw it out and buy another one. Fixed income people don't really need low priced goods and services, they can just pay more (somehow). You're making the assumption that the alternative isn't worse. > Makes traffic better too since they're not commuting. Or makes traffic worse in the alternative because the higher-paying job involves a longer commute (and higher transportation costs that eat the extra money), which is what had made the lower-paying job viable to begin with. > Offering crappy jobs is bad because people might actually take them; now they don't have the free time needed to find better ones. This is patronizing. If something is really worse for people then why are they doing it? Are you certain that you're smarter than them and know more about their circumstances than they do? > It reduces economic productivity and it might be cheaper to just pay them unemployment. You've identified a serious flaw in the unemployment system. Taking a bad job causes you to lose it, remaining unemployed doesn't. Replace unemployment with a UBI. Now you don't need a minimum wage.
  - astrange 6y ago
    > You don't really need US-made goods, just buy the ones made in China. That's right, that's what we're doing. There are better systems than a flat minimum wage like wage boards since they're more flexible, but Australia uses that system a lot and yet also has a $20/hr min wage underlying it. (The Nordics don't have one at all because they use sectoral bargaining contracts. Should probably get one though.) > This is patronizing. If something is really worse for people then why are they doing it? Personal responsibility doesn't exist at the level of societies. Sometimes you just get scammed, and it takes a while to get out of the situation if you do. Banning bad jobs is useful the same way banning any other scam is. > Replace unemployment with a UBI. Now you don't need a minimum wage. UBI substitutes for unemployment here but it's not the same because the funding source is different. In particular the one for UBI doesn't exist. The US did just pass basic income for childcare though. UBI does not substitute for minimum wage though, because it doesn't have the effect of eliminating bad jobs. In practice min wage seems to have other positive effects from this like forcing employee productivity to increase faster; in the limiting case with a monopsony employer it even increases employment because they have no other pressure to offer a market clearing wage.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  Who are you to decide and enforce that? You’re impeding progress on arbitrary grounds that it’s not progressing enough. I want to start a coffee roastery. Margins won’t be “livable” for a while, but do need added labor to start; you (a complete stranger) would punish me for not starting better than where the starting point is.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
If we can't guarantee a minimum quality of life then we should enforce a maximum quality of life by limiting the spread. Tie the prosperity of the least productive to that of the most. It is effectively illegal to be poor. The punishment is slavery or deaths of exposure and despair. Billionaires are a failure of policy and should be treated as pirates, raiding the homes of their customers and employees.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  It already is tied. Western capitalism recognizes that expanding customer base and increasing customer wealth is good for business (see Henry Ford’s aphorism about paying workers a wage suitable to buy his product). It is illegal to be poor because progressives impose laws making zoning, housing, food, jobs, etc too costly and punishing any who attempt to make lower wages livable. Billionaires are because they make accessible goods/services to greater percentages of limited populations. World abject poverty has plummeted from majority to near zero in my lifetime. That was capitalism improving productivity of all.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    >It is illegal to be poor because progressives impose laws making zoning, housing, food, jobs, etc too costly and punishing any who attempt to make lower wages livable. Pretty sure you mean Nimbys, unless you're suggesting that building high density houses next to coal burning plants is perfectly fine and should never have been banned. There's a difference between zoning that increases prosperity, and zoning for selfish incentives that you would be wise to consider before casting zoning laws as progressive, when that's patently false[0]. >Billionaires are because they make accessible goods/services to greater percentages of limited populations. >World abject poverty has plummeted from majority to near zero in my lifetime. That was capitalism improving productivity of all. You imply causation without evidence. Billionaires use extractive and ethically bankrupt methods to undercut their competitors while skimming their plunder off margin between a fair price and their true cost. This is neither necessary, nor sustainable to ensure prosperity for all. This randian perspective is emotionally comfortable for the winners but tragically harmful to literally everyone else. 0. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/zoning-reform-is-not-leftism/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/zoning-reform-i...
cosmodisk 6y ago
Because otherwise you have race to bottom in no time at all. There are low paid jobs,but limited options to go for cheap options forces companies to think how to increase productivity.

astrange 6y ago

You don't really need that service performed that badly if you can't pay that much for it either. Offering crappy jobs is bad because people might actually take them; now they don't have the free time needed to find better ones. It reduces economic productivity and it might be cheaper to just pay them unemployment. Makes traffic better too since they're not commuting.

ctdonath 6y ago
What of those unable to produce more than some value less than minimum wage? Not everyone is capable of $15/hr productivity, why would you deny them work? nobody is expecting them to achieve independence (say, bc Down’s Syndrome) but they can still produce some value and have a right to earn what they can. There are tasks I’d hire people to do, but it’s not worth enough to pay housing/food/care/heat/etc for.
- astrange 6y ago
  Those people are already exempted. Group homes for people who can't live independently do have work placement programs, although I don't know how you prevent them from displacing "real" workers - presumably it's not that much of a problem. Besides that, just paying people to do nothing works fine because they can do non-economic work (childcare/caretaking) or speculative things (write a book, go back to school) and US policy is heading back in this direction. We stopped with Reagan because voters tend to turn against welfare policies when you point out that black people are getting them.
  - ctdonath 6y ago
    You’re assuming a system which can easily & correctly identify “exempted” people, the police power of the state being benevolently withheld to allow paying some less. Hardly realistic. You’re assuming paying people to do nothing will result in “unpaid” productivity greater than their UBI. This is not dominant human nature; all basic needs met, most turn to fighting/copulation/gluttony/drugs/sloth. Oh, just noticed your racist BS at the end. Bye.
    - astrange 6y ago
      > This is not dominant human nature; all basic needs met, most turn to fighting/copulation/gluttony/drugs/sloth. I am confident demand is infinite and people will not want to stop working if more basic needs are met[1]. It's the opposite - people don't produce efficiently if they're starving and they can't be matched to better jobs because they don't have the free time to find them. > Oh, just noticed your racist BS at the end. Bye. You seem confused since you're the one arguing poor people are naturally idle and will just get in fights with each other if made less poor! Luckily, I have the normal opinions of a person in 2020 and we can all see through through Reagan's "welfare queens" propaganda at this point. As for the evidence about American voters, you should see the people they elect, but also David Shor[2]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre... - note the part about poor people being idle became steadily less true until March 2020 and seems to be caused by poor Fed policy, not video games. [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-culture-2020-election-theory-polls.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu...
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> You don't really need that service performed that badly if you can't pay that much for it either. You don't really need US-made goods, just buy the ones made in China. You don't really need an appliance repair service, just throw it out and buy another one. Fixed income people don't really need low priced goods and services, they can just pay more (somehow). You're making the assumption that the alternative isn't worse. > Makes traffic better too since they're not commuting. Or makes traffic worse in the alternative because the higher-paying job involves a longer commute (and higher transportation costs that eat the extra money), which is what had made the lower-paying job viable to begin with. > Offering crappy jobs is bad because people might actually take them; now they don't have the free time needed to find better ones. This is patronizing. If something is really worse for people then why are they doing it? Are you certain that you're smarter than them and know more about their circumstances than they do? > It reduces economic productivity and it might be cheaper to just pay them unemployment. You've identified a serious flaw in the unemployment system. Taking a bad job causes you to lose it, remaining unemployed doesn't. Replace unemployment with a UBI. Now you don't need a minimum wage.
- astrange 6y ago
  > You don't really need US-made goods, just buy the ones made in China. That's right, that's what we're doing. There are better systems than a flat minimum wage like wage boards since they're more flexible, but Australia uses that system a lot and yet also has a $20/hr min wage underlying it. (The Nordics don't have one at all because they use sectoral bargaining contracts. Should probably get one though.) > This is patronizing. If something is really worse for people then why are they doing it? Personal responsibility doesn't exist at the level of societies. Sometimes you just get scammed, and it takes a while to get out of the situation if you do. Banning bad jobs is useful the same way banning any other scam is. > Replace unemployment with a UBI. Now you don't need a minimum wage. UBI substitutes for unemployment here but it's not the same because the funding source is different. In particular the one for UBI doesn't exist. The US did just pass basic income for childcare though. UBI does not substitute for minimum wage though, because it doesn't have the effect of eliminating bad jobs. In practice min wage seems to have other positive effects from this like forcing employee productivity to increase faster; in the limiting case with a monopsony employer it even increases employment because they have no other pressure to offer a market clearing wage.
ctdonath 6y ago
Who are you to decide and enforce that? You’re impeding progress on arbitrary grounds that it’s not progressing enough. I want to start a coffee roastery. Margins won’t be “livable” for a while, but do need added labor to start; you (a complete stranger) would punish me for not starting better than where the starting point is.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago

If we can't guarantee a minimum quality of life then we should enforce a maximum quality of life by limiting the spread. Tie the prosperity of the least productive to that of the most. It is effectively illegal to be poor. The punishment is slavery or deaths of exposure and despair. Billionaires are a failure of policy and should be treated as pirates, raiding the homes of their customers and employees.

ctdonath 6y ago
It already is tied. Western capitalism recognizes that expanding customer base and increasing customer wealth is good for business (see Henry Ford’s aphorism about paying workers a wage suitable to buy his product). It is illegal to be poor because progressives impose laws making zoning, housing, food, jobs, etc too costly and punishing any who attempt to make lower wages livable. Billionaires are because they make accessible goods/services to greater percentages of limited populations. World abject poverty has plummeted from majority to near zero in my lifetime. That was capitalism improving productivity of all.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  >It is illegal to be poor because progressives impose laws making zoning, housing, food, jobs, etc too costly and punishing any who attempt to make lower wages livable. Pretty sure you mean Nimbys, unless you're suggesting that building high density houses next to coal burning plants is perfectly fine and should never have been banned. There's a difference between zoning that increases prosperity, and zoning for selfish incentives that you would be wise to consider before casting zoning laws as progressive, when that's patently false[0]. >Billionaires are because they make accessible goods/services to greater percentages of limited populations. >World abject poverty has plummeted from majority to near zero in my lifetime. That was capitalism improving productivity of all. You imply causation without evidence. Billionaires use extractive and ethically bankrupt methods to undercut their competitors while skimming their plunder off margin between a fair price and their true cost. This is neither necessary, nor sustainable to ensure prosperity for all. This randian perspective is emotionally comfortable for the winners but tragically harmful to literally everyone else. 0. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/zoning-reform-is-not-leftism/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/zoning-reform-i...

cosmodisk 6y ago

Because otherwise you have race to bottom in no time at all. There are low paid jobs,but limited options to go for cheap options forces companies to think how to increase productivity.