4 ms·
Pay people a living wage and a lot of problems would go away
by myko 5y ago
Pay people a living wage and a lot of problems would go away
- tamaharbor 5y agoI have always wondered who pays for this.
- frankbreetz 5y agoThe same people who pay their salary now. If you can't afford to pay people a living wage, you should not be in business.
- CincinnatiMan 5y agoWhat do we do with individuals whose economic output in general is not worth the new higher minimum wage? Maybe similar to people with Down Syndrome, we have a special, lower minimum wage for them? Genuinely unsure.
- mentalpiracy 5y agoMaybe just take care of them because in the grand scheme of things, the actual support cost would be a minuscule fraction of current spending, and, as an accidental byproduct, we’d do some actual unmitigated good in the world.
- lostmsu 5y agoI would not call supporting people unwilling to do any work "unmitigated good".
- pashamur 5y agoNo, we simply change the game. Why is their labor not worth the new minimum wage? Is it outsourcing? Foreign tariffs or import controls. Is it robots/automation? Tax robot productivity and provide a general UBI with the output. Why is the livable wage so high - is the problem affordable housing? How about we provide guaranteed government backed housing loans directly through a federal agency (no intermediation), and force the rate on secondary mortgages and investment mortgages up significantly making investing in real estate less appealing? The market is already not a free one - we know this ever since the FED started bailing out corporations in the 80s. If we are already moving towards a centrally planned system, why not drop the façade and at least do it in a way that benefits the underclass as opposed to the bankers.
- jacob2484 5y agoIt's always just that simple. Say goodbye to 90% of restaurants and most small businesses - problem solved! Why should I pay you $25 an hour when I can get 4 people working for the same money in Mexico or China. What skills do you have to earn the $25/hr?
- quadrangle 5y agoBut it doesn't work with the non-living-wage either. That's just externalizing the costs. If people are actually not making enough to live basic, healthy lives, that means we have a portion of the population scraping by in bad health and even dying early etc etc. and that isn't free of costs. That has massive massive costs, and the burden is going to be paid some way.
- mentalpiracy 5y agoYou aren’t going to get 4 people in Mexico or China to be your line cooks and wait staff.
- myko 5y agoSounds like something a competent business owner could figure out.
- mbrodersen 5y agoSo how do you explain all the restaurants that are alive and well in Western Europe, paying very high minimum wages compared with the US?
- Gunax 5y agoThe concept of a living wage is fluid. Things tend to go from luxury, to aspirational, to ubiquitous. Electricity, cars, internet, non-dirt floors, children having their own bedrooms... none of these are things my grandparents had access to. But now you cannot even build a house like the one they grew up in--it would not meet code. Even a poor person is expected to have access to running water and electricity. I know it's controversial, but I think there is an upward sliding of what we expect the bare minimum to be. You could easily raise a family on minimum wage if you lived like a family 100 years ago.