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>I’d say if we mandated a living wage this problem would likely sort itself out. The minimum wage is already a "living wage"; people's expectations just keep g

>I’d say if we mandated a living wage this problem would likely sort itself out. The minimum wage is already a "living wage"; people's expectations just keep getting higher and higher. Someone on the minimum wage is eating much better than somebody in Africa, and can afford much better accommodation (clean water, a roof over their head, albeit maybe a shared room). So if a person on Africa can live on much less, why does an American deserve more? If anything, if the world was fair then the American minimum wage would be lower, with that money diverted to people in underdeveloped places like Africa instead.

arcticbull 4y ago
> The minimum wage is already a "living wage" We're not going to agree that $7.25 is a living wage. In 1970 it was the equivalent of $12 today meanwhile house prices across the US exploded. > So if a person on Africa can live on much less, why does an American deserve more? If anything, if the world was fair then the American minimum wage would be lower, with that money diverted to people in underdeveloped places like Africa instead. I just don't understand when you see two disparate groups the desire not to raise the lower one up, but hold back the better off group. You can make both groups better off at the same time. Labor advocacy matters. Things will regress if laborers don't constantly push for better. The discontent we see in society is imo in large part due to the decoupling of wage gains and productivity gains that started under Reagan. And yeah, everyone deserves better because we can afford better thanks to massively higher productivity. The whole point of higher productivity is that everyone should benefit.
- logicchains 4y ago
  >I just don't understand when you see two disparate groups the desire not to raise the lower one up, but hold back the better off group. You can make both groups better off at the same time No you can't. Wealth transfers move wealth between people, they don't create wealth. If it did then raising the minimum wage to $100 would make everyone wealthy, but economics/physics doesn't work like that. And in the same manner that mandating a $100 minimum wage would make everyone worse off due to heavily distorting the market, mandating a $20 minimum wage makes everyone worse off to a smaller degree. >The whole point of higher productivity is that everyone should benefit Productivity comes from investment in tools and technology; from _capital_. If you take a modern worker back in time 100 years they won't be as productive as today, because they don't have access to the same tools, equipment, technology etc. That's why the people who make such investments deserve to reap the rewards of what they sowed. If we take all that and give it to workers who've done nothing but show up, then nobody has incentive to invest in further increasing productivity and productivity growth stagnates. Really what you're saying is people are entitled to the fruits of other people's efforts just for virtue of being born, which is an incredibly entitled way of looking at things.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> If anything, if the world was fair then the American minimum wage would be lower, with that money diverted to people in underdeveloped places like Africa instead. In practice, the American minimum wage being higher diverts more money to people in underdeveloped places like Africa. Both because it directly makes them more price-competitive in low-end, easily offshorable, labor, and because distribution downward from capital to labor in the US for the jobs that can’t be offshored increases consumption and imports.

arcticbull 4y ago

> The minimum wage is already a "living wage" We're not going to agree that $7.25 is a living wage. In 1970 it was the equivalent of $12 today meanwhile house prices across the US exploded. > So if a person on Africa can live on much less, why does an American deserve more? If anything, if the world was fair then the American minimum wage would be lower, with that money diverted to people in underdeveloped places like Africa instead. I just don't understand when you see two disparate groups the desire not to raise the lower one up, but hold back the better off group. You can make both groups better off at the same time. Labor advocacy matters. Things will regress if laborers don't constantly push for better. The discontent we see in society is imo in large part due to the decoupling of wage gains and productivity gains that started under Reagan. And yeah, everyone deserves better because we can afford better thanks to massively higher productivity. The whole point of higher productivity is that everyone should benefit.

logicchains 4y ago
>I just don't understand when you see two disparate groups the desire not to raise the lower one up, but hold back the better off group. You can make both groups better off at the same time No you can't. Wealth transfers move wealth between people, they don't create wealth. If it did then raising the minimum wage to $100 would make everyone wealthy, but economics/physics doesn't work like that. And in the same manner that mandating a $100 minimum wage would make everyone worse off due to heavily distorting the market, mandating a $20 minimum wage makes everyone worse off to a smaller degree. >The whole point of higher productivity is that everyone should benefit Productivity comes from investment in tools and technology; from _capital_. If you take a modern worker back in time 100 years they won't be as productive as today, because they don't have access to the same tools, equipment, technology etc. That's why the people who make such investments deserve to reap the rewards of what they sowed. If we take all that and give it to workers who've done nothing but show up, then nobody has incentive to invest in further increasing productivity and productivity growth stagnates. Really what you're saying is people are entitled to the fruits of other people's efforts just for virtue of being born, which is an incredibly entitled way of looking at things.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> If anything, if the world was fair then the American minimum wage would be lower, with that money diverted to people in underdeveloped places like Africa instead. In practice, the American minimum wage being higher diverts more money to people in underdeveloped places like Africa. Both because it directly makes them more price-competitive in low-end, easily offshorable, labor, and because distribution downward from capital to labor in the US for the jobs that can’t be offshored increases consumption and imports.