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Aside from that not being how labor economics work: no, it reduces the business model of profiting off public and NPO social assistance programs that enable cor
by KennyBlanken 3y ago
Aside from that not being how labor economics work: no, it reduces the business model of profiting off public and NPO social assistance programs that enable corporations to employ people at starvation wages.
If a business model relies upon paying people wages so low they can't afford to live without government assistance, then that business model is government subsidized.
The best example of this would be Walmart, who rake in massive profits year after year while having employees whose sole duty is to help employees with finding and filing for public assistance programs, which the employees need because they're paid so little.
No person in the US working a full-time job should be paid so little that they cannot afford at a minimum the essentials for living a healthy and happy life (ie, not just food/shelter but for things like enough to be able to do something in celebration of life's events, raise a child if they wish, put money away for when they are at retirement, etc.)
Among other things, this would substantially free up money and administration resources to provide for those who are not working and need help getting their life back together enough to be employable again.
- hellojesus 3y agoThe government could easily solve this by not offering welfare or social assistance programs. In such cases, workers would simply be unwilling to work somewhere that cannot provide an income to meet their needs. You describe a problem generated through moral hazard.
- gadflyinyoureye 3y agoThose employees need to survive long enough to find better employment. While I agree with the moral hazard, we’d have to allow lynching of corporate officials by those same poor as a means to counter power imbalance on the corporate side.
- hellojesus 3y agoIt seems unreasonable to demand that person A gets to murder person B unless person B gives person A their property while simultaneously saying person B isn't allowed to murder person A for theirs. We have private charity to help fill the gap between a skills/resource deficiency and a paying job.
- gadflyinyoureye 3y agoWe tried that. It collapsed during the Great Depression. If you look at the real unemployment rate is presently around 7%. During the 2020 downturn it was around the same as Great Depression. https://www.thebalancemoney.com/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate-3306198 https://www.thebalancemoney.com/what-is-the-real-unemploymen... I want private charity to work. Sadly I think you’ll need to have a public private partnership.
- hellojesus 3y agoThe length of the great depression was a direct cause of failed government intervention, first by Hoover then by FDR. This article does a great job explaining why: https://fee.org/articles/what-caused-the-great-depression/ https://fee.org/articles/what-caused-the-great-depression/ Here's a quote related to the affect of FDR's imposed federal minimum wage; the consequences are similar to what I've argued above: """ The President’s Re-employment Agreement called for a minimum wage of 400 an hour ($12 to $15 a week in smaller communities), a 35-hour work week for industrial workers and 40 hours for white collar workers, and a ban on all youth labor. This was a naive attempt at "increasing purchasing power" by increasing payrolls. But, the immense increase in business costs through shorter hours and higher wage rates worked naturally as an anti revival measure. After passage of the Act, unemployment rose to nearly 13 million. The South, especially, suffered severely from the minimum wage provisions: the Act forced 500,000 Blacks out of work. """ Here is a paper that argues New Deal spending crowded out 30% of faith-based benevolent charity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272706001526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
- gadflyinyoureye 3y agoThank you. I look forward to reading them.