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We should have a $0 minimum wage, but the arguments for it are not nearly as straightforward or compact. But they are, I think, much more humanitarian than peop

We should have a $0 minimum wage, but the arguments for it are not nearly as straightforward or compact. But they are, I think, much more humanitarian than people trying to fiddle with where to cut-off work. I will try to put them as compactly as possible with a few counter-example questions. What if a 16 year old wants to partly make money, partly learn the ropes of some job, and some place could use "some" help but not get meaningfully enough work to pay a kid [$X min wage]? Right now, these kids and businesses are out of luck. This would make them even more worse off. What if a 60 year old is feeling lonely and wants to be a greeter or lecter or something helpful, and they need this meaning and sociability more than they need money, but it is not worth [$X min wage] for 99% of places to have such a job? Right now, these old folk and businesses are out of luck. The sheer amount of work you exclude when you require all jobs to be [minmimum | livable | comfortable] is huge. Just enormous. Not everyone is trying to strike it out on their own. Some people want to help in small ways and are fine with commensurate pay. Why force these jobs out of existence? Are you sure doing so is solving the problem you want to solve, while creating no others? Why do people think money is the only operative thing here, or the only one ever possible, for all possible jobs for all possible people? It suggests a lack of imagination that I find a little frightening. I have written about this in a very circumspect way in a few places before, because I think people have trouble with the straightforward argument. One of them got popular here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27695181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27695181

Pelerin 4y ago
I don't understand how those situations you mentioned should be given high priority given the number of people who are being paid poverty-level wages currently. I'll grant there is a high count of counter-examples, but the number of potential employees that match those counter-examples feels quite low.
csomar 4y ago
You are trying to build your arguments with particular cases. It's more fundamental than that in my opinion: Freedom, necessitates, that people are free to chose how much they sell their labor for. Now if you care for fairness, you should look that people are paid fairly in proportion to how much wealth they have generated for the business. That's obviously something people like Sam Altman wouldn't want you to think: That means tech businesses would have to share their bounty with software developers (and other employees) relatively to how much they contributed. The bounty share should remain for the lifetime of the company. Obviously, no one in the leadership of the tech industry will want to entertain that. They would rather focus on hospitality businesses and businesses they have no business in.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
  I would be fine with a $0.00 minimum wage if, and only if, the employees are paid 100% off the value they create. Since this is impossible and would be gamed we must consider alternatives like minimum wages pegged to the real cost of living and forcing localities to address systemic issues in access to housing and other necessities.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Also value is quite interesting question once we move out of pure software. Let's take a smartphone. What is the split in value between the coder of OS or some feature and the person who puts it together? Clearly the later should have much more value as without their work out side licensing the first work have zero value or even negative in spend resources. So shouldn't they really be paid larger share of smartphone price than the software developer.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  > Freedom, necessitates, that people are free to chose how much they sell their labor for. Does it also necessitate which health and safety standards to follow? Or which anti-discrimination laws? What about a manager insisting that the employee thirty years younger than them submit sexually to them? After all, it’s categorically more free if employees are offered the choice in all of these matters, right? And “freedom, necessitates, that the people are free” to “agree” to these arrangements. Except, of course, people who are faced with “do this or your children starve” are NOT free in any meaningful sense of the word.
chung8123 4y ago
I think a $0 minimum wage should be accompanied by some sort of UBI.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
There were no minimum wages laws prior to the late 19th century. I was curious what people at the time thought, so I dug up [1]: This is the basis of the oft-repeated accusation [...] that it prevents an employer from preferentially selecting an old man, or a physical or moral invalid, when there is a vacancy to be filled. [...] If the old man is engaged instead of the man in the prime of life, because he can be hired at a lower rate, the man of irregular habits rather than the steady worker, because the former is prepared to take smaller wages, there is a clear loss all round. The fact that the employer's mind no longer able to seek profit by "nibbling" at wages is constantly intent on getting the best possible workmen [...]. The young workman, knowing that he cannot secure a preference for employment by offering to put up with worse conditions than the standard, seeks to commend himself by a good character, technical skill, and general intelligence. If the conditions of employment are unregulated, it will frequently "pay " an employer (though it does not pay the community for him to do so) not to select the best workman, but to give the preference to an incompetent or infirm man, a "boozer" or a person of bad character, provided that he can hire him at a sufficiently low wage, make him work excessive and irregular hours, or subject him to insanitary or dangerous conditions. Some other arguments that were already tired by 1915: In 1896 [...] provision was made for the enforcement in those trades of a Legal Minimum Wage. Naturally this was opposed by all the arguments with which we are familiar - that it was "against the laws of Political Economy",that it would cause the most hardly pressed businesses to shut down, that it would restrict employment, that it would drive away Capital, that it would be cruel to the aged worker and the poor widow, that it could not be carried out in practice, and so on and so forth. And interesting context: In the five sweated trades to which the law was first applied sixteen years ago, wages have gone up from 12 to 35 per cent, the hours of labor have invariably been reduced, and the actual number of persons employed, far from falling, has in all cases, relatively to the total population, greatly increased. Still more convincing, however, are the continuous demands from the other trades, as they witnessed the actual results of the Legal Minimum Wage where it was in force, to be brought under the same law. All the "moral character" stuff didn't age well, but I'm more disappointed that we're rehashing otherwise identical arguments more than a century later. [1] http://doi.org/10.1086/252125 http://doi.org/10.1086/252125

Pelerin 4y ago

I don't understand how those situations you mentioned should be given high priority given the number of people who are being paid poverty-level wages currently. I'll grant there is a high count of counter-examples, but the number of potential employees that match those counter-examples feels quite low.

csomar 4y ago

You are trying to build your arguments with particular cases. It's more fundamental than that in my opinion: Freedom, necessitates, that people are free to chose how much they sell their labor for. Now if you care for fairness, you should look that people are paid fairly in proportion to how much wealth they have generated for the business. That's obviously something people like Sam Altman wouldn't want you to think: That means tech businesses would have to share their bounty with software developers (and other employees) relatively to how much they contributed. The bounty share should remain for the lifetime of the company. Obviously, no one in the leadership of the tech industry will want to entertain that. They would rather focus on hospitality businesses and businesses they have no business in.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
I would be fine with a $0.00 minimum wage if, and only if, the employees are paid 100% off the value they create. Since this is impossible and would be gamed we must consider alternatives like minimum wages pegged to the real cost of living and forcing localities to address systemic issues in access to housing and other necessities.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Also value is quite interesting question once we move out of pure software. Let's take a smartphone. What is the split in value between the coder of OS or some feature and the person who puts it together? Clearly the later should have much more value as without their work out side licensing the first work have zero value or even negative in spend resources. So shouldn't they really be paid larger share of smartphone price than the software developer.
alasdair_ 4y ago
> Freedom, necessitates, that people are free to chose how much they sell their labor for. Does it also necessitate which health and safety standards to follow? Or which anti-discrimination laws? What about a manager insisting that the employee thirty years younger than them submit sexually to them? After all, it’s categorically more free if employees are offered the choice in all of these matters, right? And “freedom, necessitates, that the people are free” to “agree” to these arrangements. Except, of course, people who are faced with “do this or your children starve” are NOT free in any meaningful sense of the word.

chung8123 4y ago

I think a $0 minimum wage should be accompanied by some sort of UBI.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

There were no minimum wages laws prior to the late 19th century. I was curious what people at the time thought, so I dug up [1]: This is the basis of the oft-repeated accusation [...] that it prevents an employer from preferentially selecting an old man, or a physical or moral invalid, when there is a vacancy to be filled. [...] If the old man is engaged instead of the man in the prime of life, because he can be hired at a lower rate, the man of irregular habits rather than the steady worker, because the former is prepared to take smaller wages, there is a clear loss all round. The fact that the employer's mind no longer able to seek profit by "nibbling" at wages is constantly intent on getting the best possible workmen [...]. The young workman, knowing that he cannot secure a preference for employment by offering to put up with worse conditions than the standard, seeks to commend himself by a good character, technical skill, and general intelligence. If the conditions of employment are unregulated, it will frequently "pay " an employer (though it does not pay the community for him to do so) not to select the best workman, but to give the preference to an incompetent or infirm man, a "boozer" or a person of bad character, provided that he can hire him at a sufficiently low wage, make him work excessive and irregular hours, or subject him to insanitary or dangerous conditions. Some other arguments that were already tired by 1915: In 1896 [...] provision was made for the enforcement in those trades of a Legal Minimum Wage. Naturally this was opposed by all the arguments with which we are familiar - that it was "against the laws of Political Economy",that it would cause the most hardly pressed businesses to shut down, that it would restrict employment, that it would drive away Capital, that it would be cruel to the aged worker and the poor widow, that it could not be carried out in practice, and so on and so forth. And interesting context: In the five sweated trades to which the law was first applied sixteen years ago, wages have gone up from 12 to 35 per cent, the hours of labor have invariably been reduced, and the actual number of persons employed, far from falling, has in all cases, relatively to the total population, greatly increased. Still more convincing, however, are the continuous demands from the other trades, as they witnessed the actual results of the Legal Minimum Wage where it was in force, to be brought under the same law. All the "moral character" stuff didn't age well, but I'm more disappointed that we're rehashing otherwise identical arguments more than a century later. [1] http://doi.org/10.1086/252125 http://doi.org/10.1086/252125