7 ms·

> Inflation-adjusted minimum wage imposed to all businesses/states. If they can't afford, they can go bust, like with any other cost of doing business. How doe

by darawk 5y ago

> Inflation-adjusted minimum wage imposed to all businesses/states. If they can't afford, they can go bust, like with any other cost of doing business. How does this help, exactly? If the businesses who can't afford to pay at the standard you want go bust, you can't just assume there will be others who can. If the unit of labor a person can provide is worth less than its state mandated cost, that unit of labor will go unemployed. People don't buy things for more than their value to them.

ddingus 5y ago
People cost money to exist and show up for work. A business that cannot fully fund it's labor is not a business. Who wants to pay a subsidy, which is exactly what happens when labor is underfunded, just so someone can mooch for profit? I don't. The answer to your question is we simply do that labor ourselves.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Of course, by "fully fund" you mean "meet my arbitrary price floor".
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Don't ask me. Ask the people currently failing to earn enough from their labor to exist and show up for work.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Right. And businesses can always get creative by improving productivity (via automation) to survive with rising labor costs. Those that cannot simply cease to exist, entire industries die out all the time.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > And businesses can always get creative by improving productivity (via automation) to survive with rising labor costs. Those that cannot simply cease to exist, entire industries die out all the time. This takes commerce as a given. Another outcome is that those that cannot cease to exist and are replaced by nothing, leading to more poverty. That has been a common failure mode of that policy.
- darawk 5y ago
  Who said the business can't fully fund itself? If the worker isn't making enough to survive, they have no reason to take the job. So, the condition you're describing does not exist, at least not in such a simple form.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    What happens when business operates on less income than it costs to operate? It dies. Same is true for people who are required to labor for more than it costs them to labor. It just so happens we will fund people who cannot exist otherwise, right? And there is the problem. We have many companies perfectly happy to underpay their labor, mooch off the public, and bank that for profit. The likes of McDees, Walmart and many others can and should be fully funding their labor and they don't.
    - darawk 5y ago
      There are plenty of countries with lower minimum wage laws than the US. Are you under the impression that their laborers are dying en masse?
      - ddingus 5y ago
        No. The balance of power between labor and employers is different in those nations, which works to reduce the need for minimums. The ones I have looked at also have assistance / subsidy policy that is lower friction and generally not associated with the near constant blame and shame seen here. That's a big deal frankly. Having robust norms well aligned with human quality of life basics is necessary for the help to work as intended. Labor law is a contributor to that balance of power too. "At will" type policies, "right to work for less" policies are examples where the lack of labor protections very significantly bias labor negotiation power toward employers, who tend to get a better deal. Implications here should be obvious. I tend to use business and labor dying when they are not funded well enough to exist as a strong rhetorical tool. This meta discussion is one negative artifact of that. No easy answers, IMHO.
phkahler 5y ago
Probably 90 percent of minimum wage jobs will still be around if they raise it 50 percent. That would mean a large increase in money going to the bottom of the economy. That should help a lot of things. What to do about the 10 percent that end up jobless I dont know.
- gruez 5y ago
  The profession might not dissapear if you raise minimum wage, but the jobs sure will. People who are willing to pay for $10 big macs are far less than the people who are willing to pay for $5 big macs.
  - toomanydoubts 5y ago
    Maybe instead of doubling the price, McDonald's could cut their profits? I'm sure the shareholders would still do just fine with $3.75 billions per year instead of $7.5. But the poor shareholders would be very sad with that, they don't deserve such a misfortune. It's better and easier to just underpay their employees, they don't need to make a living anyway.
    - maccolgan 5y ago
      I don't know what cartoonish depiction of shareholders you are alleging here but they probably wouldn't be very happy to have a sudden 50% drop in profits without any prior planning or intimation.
      - toomanydoubts 5y ago
        Yeah, I get it. The employees should be living paycheck to paycheck on the verge of poverty so the shareholders can rake in that extra 3.5bi. These employees are such crybabies, they just need to budget better.
        maccolgan 5y ago
        Who do you think the shareholders are? One unified group of cartoonishly evil mustache-twirling villains? I'd be very pissed off if dividends or bond yields from across the industry dropped 50% overnight. Of the largest shareholders of major corporations are mutual funds, pension funds and such that fund people who are completely dependent on investment income to live. A policy that causes a 50% change in profits would be a massive shock to those people.
naasking 5y ago
Arguably, if the value people will pay for something can't support the human dignity of the people who make them, then it's not worth subsidizing so that it is affordable. Do you have an counterexample?
- makomk 5y ago
  There's an obvious problem with your argument: in order for wages to support the human dignity of workers, those workers must be able to actually buy things with their wages. The sectors that would have trouble increaing wages due to the limited amount people can pay for them include stuff like food. You're treating the workers producing the goods and the people buying the goods as two seperate groups when in fact they're broadly one and the same, which obscures the fact that the actual end result of your proposal is that people whose economic value falls below whatever minimum standard of permissible human dignity don't get to eat anymore.
  - naasking 5y ago
    Increased wages also drives more automation. For critical goods like food, that's what would replace those workers if their labour value is below minimum wage, and they would have to move into positions that can pay better. That's arguably better than leaving them in poverty working below a living wage.
    - nyhc99 5y ago
      If those people could move into positions that can pay better, they already would have done so, no? Eliminating their jobs through automation isn't going to get them promoted, it's going to get them fired and unemployed
      - naasking 5y ago
        > If those people could move into positions that can pay better, they already would have done so, no? No, because those positions pay the same as what they're currently getting, but not how much they would pay with a higher minimum wage. The context is that a person's current position is unprofitable under a higher minimum wage, but other positions would not be, thus their wage ends up boosted even if it means getting a new position. Furthermore, targeted automation has tended to increase employment in other industries, historically.

by darawk 5y ago

ddingus 5y ago

People cost money to exist and show up for work. A business that cannot fully fund it's labor is not a business. Who wants to pay a subsidy, which is exactly what happens when labor is underfunded, just so someone can mooch for profit? I don't. The answer to your question is we simply do that labor ourselves.

missedthecue 5y ago
Of course, by "fully fund" you mean "meet my arbitrary price floor".
- ddingus 5y ago
  Don't ask me. Ask the people currently failing to earn enough from their labor to exist and show up for work.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Right. And businesses can always get creative by improving productivity (via automation) to survive with rising labor costs. Those that cannot simply cease to exist, entire industries die out all the time.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > And businesses can always get creative by improving productivity (via automation) to survive with rising labor costs. Those that cannot simply cease to exist, entire industries die out all the time. This takes commerce as a given. Another outcome is that those that cannot cease to exist and are replaced by nothing, leading to more poverty. That has been a common failure mode of that policy.
darawk 5y ago
Who said the business can't fully fund itself? If the worker isn't making enough to survive, they have no reason to take the job. So, the condition you're describing does not exist, at least not in such a simple form.
- ddingus 5y ago
  What happens when business operates on less income than it costs to operate? It dies. Same is true for people who are required to labor for more than it costs them to labor. It just so happens we will fund people who cannot exist otherwise, right? And there is the problem. We have many companies perfectly happy to underpay their labor, mooch off the public, and bank that for profit. The likes of McDees, Walmart and many others can and should be fully funding their labor and they don't.
  - darawk 5y ago
    There are plenty of countries with lower minimum wage laws than the US. Are you under the impression that their laborers are dying en masse?
    - ddingus 5y ago
      No. The balance of power between labor and employers is different in those nations, which works to reduce the need for minimums. The ones I have looked at also have assistance / subsidy policy that is lower friction and generally not associated with the near constant blame and shame seen here. That's a big deal frankly. Having robust norms well aligned with human quality of life basics is necessary for the help to work as intended. Labor law is a contributor to that balance of power too. "At will" type policies, "right to work for less" policies are examples where the lack of labor protections very significantly bias labor negotiation power toward employers, who tend to get a better deal. Implications here should be obvious. I tend to use business and labor dying when they are not funded well enough to exist as a strong rhetorical tool. This meta discussion is one negative artifact of that. No easy answers, IMHO.

phkahler 5y ago

Probably 90 percent of minimum wage jobs will still be around if they raise it 50 percent. That would mean a large increase in money going to the bottom of the economy. That should help a lot of things. What to do about the 10 percent that end up jobless I dont know.

gruez 5y ago
The profession might not dissapear if you raise minimum wage, but the jobs sure will. People who are willing to pay for $10 big macs are far less than the people who are willing to pay for $5 big macs.
- toomanydoubts 5y ago
  Maybe instead of doubling the price, McDonald's could cut their profits? I'm sure the shareholders would still do just fine with $3.75 billions per year instead of $7.5. But the poor shareholders would be very sad with that, they don't deserve such a misfortune. It's better and easier to just underpay their employees, they don't need to make a living anyway.
  - maccolgan 5y ago
    I don't know what cartoonish depiction of shareholders you are alleging here but they probably wouldn't be very happy to have a sudden 50% drop in profits without any prior planning or intimation.
    - toomanydoubts 5y ago
      Yeah, I get it. The employees should be living paycheck to paycheck on the verge of poverty so the shareholders can rake in that extra 3.5bi. These employees are such crybabies, they just need to budget better.
      - maccolgan 5y ago
        Who do you think the shareholders are? One unified group of cartoonishly evil mustache-twirling villains? I'd be very pissed off if dividends or bond yields from across the industry dropped 50% overnight. Of the largest shareholders of major corporations are mutual funds, pension funds and such that fund people who are completely dependent on investment income to live. A policy that causes a 50% change in profits would be a massive shock to those people.

naasking 5y ago

Arguably, if the value people will pay for something can't support the human dignity of the people who make them, then it's not worth subsidizing so that it is affordable. Do you have an counterexample?

makomk 5y ago
There's an obvious problem with your argument: in order for wages to support the human dignity of workers, those workers must be able to actually buy things with their wages. The sectors that would have trouble increaing wages due to the limited amount people can pay for them include stuff like food. You're treating the workers producing the goods and the people buying the goods as two seperate groups when in fact they're broadly one and the same, which obscures the fact that the actual end result of your proposal is that people whose economic value falls below whatever minimum standard of permissible human dignity don't get to eat anymore.
- naasking 5y ago
  Increased wages also drives more automation. For critical goods like food, that's what would replace those workers if their labour value is below minimum wage, and they would have to move into positions that can pay better. That's arguably better than leaving them in poverty working below a living wage.
  - nyhc99 5y ago
    If those people could move into positions that can pay better, they already would have done so, no? Eliminating their jobs through automation isn't going to get them promoted, it's going to get them fired and unemployed
    - naasking 5y ago
      > If those people could move into positions that can pay better, they already would have done so, no? No, because those positions pay the same as what they're currently getting, but not how much they would pay with a higher minimum wage. The context is that a person's current position is unprofitable under a higher minimum wage, but other positions would not be, thus their wage ends up boosted even if it means getting a new position. Furthermore, targeted automation has tended to increase employment in other industries, historically.