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I agree with the statement except for the "minimum wage" part - I assume you mean the legal minimum wage. Companies should have no right to exist as much as peo

by m4nu3l 5y ago

I agree with the statement except for the "minimum wage" part - I assume you mean the legal minimum wage. Companies should have no right to exist as much as people should have no right to a government imposed minimum wage. On a practical level a minimum wage is either not effective (so broadly set to what the market is paying already o just above that) or it will inevitably decrease job offer. On a philosophical level, adults should be free to choose what to do with their body and mind - as long as it has no negative effect on third parties.

xyzzy123 5y ago
Employers who create full time positions that don't pay enough for people to live on create a social burden that the rest of society has to deal with. That's the negative externality.
- sershe 5y ago
  They don't really create this externality, though. A person taking this job apparently cannot get a better paying job. With a higher minimum wage in otherwise free market, no jobs for that person would exist, so the social burden would exist just the same. The situation is diametrically opposite - minimum wage forces businesses to engage in welfare. Those who have enough margins to engage in welfare might do it; the others may disappear with the jobs, or cut the jobs by reducing service/automating/outsourcing (again leading to the same "social burden" existing).
- m4nu3l 5y ago
  Hum, I see your point, but I disagree for two reasons. AFAIK most jobs that would pay under what's enough to live on are entry level jobs usually carried out part-time by students. Denying them such job is removing them that source of income - and in case of jobs that require experience denying them a chance to gain that experience. This means you are not reducing any social externality. You are just shifting those externalities to a different set of people. I'm also wary of "daling with" this kind of social externalities even if it was possible. If we apply your argument to drugs than the conclusions would be that alcohol and any other drug should be made illegal because it has a social cost. But I believe people still have the right to do whatever they want with their body and mind as long as there is no direct externality, and I'd rather live with any indirect externality that is the result of that.
  - Alekhine 5y ago
    > AFAIK most jobs that would pay under what's enough to live on are entry level jobs usually carried out part-time by students. This is a rosy view of things, but I don't believe its true. Walk into plenty of markets in poorer or even middle class areas and you will find older people doing these jobs out of necessity. I've seen 'entry level job' used very often as a way to exploit people with not much choice.
    - m4nu3l 5y ago
      Statistical evidence is better than anecdotal evidence. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm Also, so you'd rather have some of those people have no income as long as some luckier ones get more income?
      - Ziggy_Zaggy 5y ago
        Quite the moral dilemma, it seems.
moistly 5y ago
> people should have no right to a government imposed minimum wage Yes, turn your country into the likes of Bangladesh. Brillo!
- m4nu3l 5y ago
  Not sure how to take this. Are you saying that Bangladesh is poor just because they didn't think about raising the minimum wage?
  - moistly 5y ago
    I’m saying that without minimum wage laws, you’ll soon enough see corporations depressing wages to the point where a great many workers will be as desperately impoverished as the Bangladeshi, working 60+ hours a week in dangerous environments for wages that leave them literally starving.
    - m4nu3l 5y ago
      I think that's not going to happen because single corporations have no power in choosing wages. The labor market does. In the labor market the wage will reflect the market value of the job. Almost all current jobs already have market value above minimum wage (only ~2% doesn't). For the ones that don't, it's because well either the job is not valuable/the person is not skilled enough. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm
      - fivea 5y ago
        > I think that's not going to happen because single corporations have no power in choosing wages. The labor market does. The labor market is not a magical entity. It's comprised of companies doing the hiring and people doing the working. If you look at sectors where unskilled work prevails and corporations treat workers as fungible resources then the labour market lies firmly in the supply side, and workers have no alternative other than getting exploited. This means paying the least possible amount, which means less than minimum wage. Think about it for a second: why do you think so many companies pay minimum wage, and not a single cent more? Is is because the workers' negotiating power magically breaks even at the minimum wage level, or is it because labor laws make it illegal to pay less than that?
lucian1900 5y ago
Unlike companies, humans have a right to exist. Working full time should be sufficient for survival, as a bare minimum.
- m4nu3l 5y ago
  A right to exist for humans, to me, means a right not to have interference from others. But still, higher minimum wage means some people will have no income, and some other will have more income. How's that better?
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    Individualism emphasises negative rights, but positive rights are important too: life, health, air, food, etc. Why would some have no income if minimum wage was higher? The other possibility is that profits would be lower. Minimum wage has increased in the past in various countries, the effect is always pro-worker. Or we could rationally plan economies to meet everyone’s needs. Enough homes can be made and we already produce more food than necessary.
    - m4nu3l 5y ago
      > Individualism emphasises negative rights, but positive rights are important too: life, health, air, food, etc. Positive rights and negative rights are in oppositions as you can't have positive rights without violating someone else's negative rights. We have a trade-off right now, but I personally only believe in negative rights for a variety of reasons. > Why would some have no income if minimum wage was higher? The other possibility is that profits would be lower. Minimum wage has increased in the past in various countries, the effect is always pro-worker. Economy 101. Increase the price of something and the quantity bought will be less. Companies will hire fewer people at that price. > Or we could rationally plan economies to meet everyone’s needs. History has proved over and over that's not possible (and there are theoretical well known reason why that is.
      - lucian1900 5y ago
mbrodersen 5y ago
I recommend reading up on the work done by the latest Nobel price winners in Economics. But fair warning: they disagree with your assumptions/conclusions and have found clever ways to verify their assertions using real world data.
- todd8 5y ago
  Interesting, but I see it differently. I believe you might be referring to 2021 Nobel Prize winner David Card’s paper A Re-analysis of the Effect of New Jersey Minimum Wage with Representative Payroll Data (with Alan Krueger) written over 20 years ago. See [1]. This paper compared New Jersey with neighboring Pennsylvania that didn’t raise its minimum wage. Ironically, Joshua Angrist (and a third Economist) shared the 2021 prize with Card, and Angrist had this to say about the research by Card (and Krueger): “[the] data show a slight decline in the employment from February to November 1992 in Pennsylvania, and little change in New Jersey over the same time period. However, the data also reveals substantial year to year employment variations in other periods. These swings often seem to differ substantially in the two states… So Pennsylvania may not provide a very good measure of counterfactual employment rates in New Jersey in the absence of a minimum wage change.” See [2]. [1] https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/reanal-ff-nj.pdf https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/reanal-ff-nj.pdf [2] Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics, page 293, https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691120355/mostly-harmless-econometrics https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691120355/mo...
  - mbrodersen 5y ago
    Yep that’s the problem with Economics. It isn’t a science like physics. And it is easy to find Economists that disagree with each other. The New Jersey experiment needs to be repeated many times in different settings before we can be more confident in its truth value. The same way it is done in sciences. However it is also true that some people will never accept it as being true no matter the evidence. People are a lot less rational than they think they are.
    - m4nu3l 5y ago

by m4nu3l 5y ago

xyzzy123 5y ago

Employers who create full time positions that don't pay enough for people to live on create a social burden that the rest of society has to deal with. That's the negative externality.

sershe 5y ago
They don't really create this externality, though. A person taking this job apparently cannot get a better paying job. With a higher minimum wage in otherwise free market, no jobs for that person would exist, so the social burden would exist just the same. The situation is diametrically opposite - minimum wage forces businesses to engage in welfare. Those who have enough margins to engage in welfare might do it; the others may disappear with the jobs, or cut the jobs by reducing service/automating/outsourcing (again leading to the same "social burden" existing).
m4nu3l 5y ago
Hum, I see your point, but I disagree for two reasons. AFAIK most jobs that would pay under what's enough to live on are entry level jobs usually carried out part-time by students. Denying them such job is removing them that source of income - and in case of jobs that require experience denying them a chance to gain that experience. This means you are not reducing any social externality. You are just shifting those externalities to a different set of people. I'm also wary of "daling with" this kind of social externalities even if it was possible. If we apply your argument to drugs than the conclusions would be that alcohol and any other drug should be made illegal because it has a social cost. But I believe people still have the right to do whatever they want with their body and mind as long as there is no direct externality, and I'd rather live with any indirect externality that is the result of that.
- Alekhine 5y ago
  > AFAIK most jobs that would pay under what's enough to live on are entry level jobs usually carried out part-time by students. This is a rosy view of things, but I don't believe its true. Walk into plenty of markets in poorer or even middle class areas and you will find older people doing these jobs out of necessity. I've seen 'entry level job' used very often as a way to exploit people with not much choice.
  - m4nu3l 5y ago
    Statistical evidence is better than anecdotal evidence. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm Also, so you'd rather have some of those people have no income as long as some luckier ones get more income?
    - Ziggy_Zaggy 5y ago
      Quite the moral dilemma, it seems.

moistly 5y ago

> people should have no right to a government imposed minimum wage Yes, turn your country into the likes of Bangladesh. Brillo!

m4nu3l 5y ago
Not sure how to take this. Are you saying that Bangladesh is poor just because they didn't think about raising the minimum wage?
- moistly 5y ago
  I’m saying that without minimum wage laws, you’ll soon enough see corporations depressing wages to the point where a great many workers will be as desperately impoverished as the Bangladeshi, working 60+ hours a week in dangerous environments for wages that leave them literally starving.
  - m4nu3l 5y ago
    I think that's not going to happen because single corporations have no power in choosing wages. The labor market does. In the labor market the wage will reflect the market value of the job. Almost all current jobs already have market value above minimum wage (only ~2% doesn't). For the ones that don't, it's because well either the job is not valuable/the person is not skilled enough. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm
    - fivea 5y ago
      > I think that's not going to happen because single corporations have no power in choosing wages. The labor market does. The labor market is not a magical entity. It's comprised of companies doing the hiring and people doing the working. If you look at sectors where unskilled work prevails and corporations treat workers as fungible resources then the labour market lies firmly in the supply side, and workers have no alternative other than getting exploited. This means paying the least possible amount, which means less than minimum wage. Think about it for a second: why do you think so many companies pay minimum wage, and not a single cent more? Is is because the workers' negotiating power magically breaks even at the minimum wage level, or is it because labor laws make it illegal to pay less than that?

lucian1900 5y ago

Unlike companies, humans have a right to exist. Working full time should be sufficient for survival, as a bare minimum.

m4nu3l 5y ago
A right to exist for humans, to me, means a right not to have interference from others. But still, higher minimum wage means some people will have no income, and some other will have more income. How's that better?
- lucian1900 5y ago
  Individualism emphasises negative rights, but positive rights are important too: life, health, air, food, etc. Why would some have no income if minimum wage was higher? The other possibility is that profits would be lower. Minimum wage has increased in the past in various countries, the effect is always pro-worker. Or we could rationally plan economies to meet everyone’s needs. Enough homes can be made and we already produce more food than necessary.
  - m4nu3l 5y ago
    > Individualism emphasises negative rights, but positive rights are important too: life, health, air, food, etc. Positive rights and negative rights are in oppositions as you can't have positive rights without violating someone else's negative rights. We have a trade-off right now, but I personally only believe in negative rights for a variety of reasons. > Why would some have no income if minimum wage was higher? The other possibility is that profits would be lower. Minimum wage has increased in the past in various countries, the effect is always pro-worker. Economy 101. Increase the price of something and the quantity bought will be less. Companies will hire fewer people at that price. > Or we could rationally plan economies to meet everyone’s needs. History has proved over and over that's not possible (and there are theoretical well known reason why that is.
    - lucian1900 5y ago

mbrodersen 5y ago

I recommend reading up on the work done by the latest Nobel price winners in Economics. But fair warning: they disagree with your assumptions/conclusions and have found clever ways to verify their assertions using real world data.

todd8 5y ago
Interesting, but I see it differently. I believe you might be referring to 2021 Nobel Prize winner David Card’s paper A Re-analysis of the Effect of New Jersey Minimum Wage with Representative Payroll Data (with Alan Krueger) written over 20 years ago. See [1]. This paper compared New Jersey with neighboring Pennsylvania that didn’t raise its minimum wage. Ironically, Joshua Angrist (and a third Economist) shared the 2021 prize with Card, and Angrist had this to say about the research by Card (and Krueger): “[the] data show a slight decline in the employment from February to November 1992 in Pennsylvania, and little change in New Jersey over the same time period. However, the data also reveals substantial year to year employment variations in other periods. These swings often seem to differ substantially in the two states… So Pennsylvania may not provide a very good measure of counterfactual employment rates in New Jersey in the absence of a minimum wage change.” See [2]. [1] https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/reanal-ff-nj.pdf https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/reanal-ff-nj.pdf [2] Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics, page 293, https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691120355/mostly-harmless-econometrics https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691120355/mo...
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  Yep that’s the problem with Economics. It isn’t a science like physics. And it is easy to find Economists that disagree with each other. The New Jersey experiment needs to be repeated many times in different settings before we can be more confident in its truth value. The same way it is done in sciences. However it is also true that some people will never accept it as being true no matter the evidence. People are a lot less rational than they think they are.
  - m4nu3l 5y ago