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"The reason why many very hard jobs pay so low is because there’s lots of people who will do them." There's a hell of a lot more to it than that. From hiring b
by mandmandam 5y ago
"The reason why many very hard jobs pay so low is because there’s lots of people who will do them."
There's a hell of a lot more to it than that. From hiring bias, to school bias, to class bias, to name bias, to area bias - from sheer propaganda to straight up coercion. From lobbying, to perverse subsidies, to externalization of costs, etc, etc, ad nauseaum.
"Understanding how wages work at the macro level gave me some mental peace."
Are you quite sure that said mental peace isn't blissful ignorance... Because ignorance is only blisfful to the ignorant. America's wages at the macro level are deeply, catastrophically, even systematically unjust, in horrifically short-sighted ways.
- prepend 5y agoMacro factors in all those things you mentioned. Of course there are micro instances with particulars to a situation, but the main driver for wages is supply and demand. The reason the janitorial service only gets $12/hour is not a result of all the biases you mentioned, even though it’s hard work- unpleasant, time constrained, shift work hours. The wage is low because many, many people are capable of doing the job. I’m not sure why you would think America’s wages are unjust. But that can exist at the same time as supply and demand issues. Perhaps it is unjust that people make too little, but the reason isn’t that the universe is an asshole. The reason is that lots of people are capable of doing jobs that are hard, so it’s easy to pay less. So the injustice is because people need more skills and are only capable of taking jobs that lots of other people can do, and few demand. But again, wages aren’t set based on difficulty, or value, or the intrinsic need for human dignity of the people performing them. Wages are set by supply and demand.