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Honest question, what should they be paid? Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. The output is fairly binary, clean

Honest question, what should they be paid? Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. The output is fairly binary, clean or not clean. I am all for fair wages but how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? Interesting how serious questions get so quickly downvoted. I am genuinely curious how you would price a dishwasher when the output is important but the work itself is fairly low value. Line cooks, chefs and most of the rest of the crew are not making much money themselves. Most Michelin restaurants are happy to breakeven for dinner service but make lots of profit on the catering, special events, books, branding area. I am not saying $10 is the right price only asking how do you price it when the industry as a whole does not pay well for back of house. We could say raise labor costs but most are already running razor thin margins.

Y-bar 2y ago
If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. Edit: Check out https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/ for examples based on real-world data.
- didgetmaster 2y ago
  If the job is unskilled (i.e. you can train the next person to do it in less than one hour) and you have several people standing in line to take it if the person doing it, quits; then the current wage is clearly enough. It is just like the price of the meal. If it costs more than people are willing to pay, then it is too expensive; regardless of what you personally think it should cost.
  - callmeal 2y ago
    >if the person doing it, quits If the person doing it (and the role can make or break the business) quits on short notice, then the current wage is clearly not enough.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    There will always be people desperate enough to race to the bottom, but that doesn't make it a good thing for society at scale.
    - cvwright 2y ago
      Especially when we import millions of low-skill / no-skill people every year to compete with the poor people who were born here. Works great for the upper classes - keeps the price down for those fancy Michelin dinners.
      - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
        Our immigrant ancestors were almost all unskilled. I’d rather the government not tell me where I can or cannot live, as a matter of basic human freedom.
      - astrange 2y ago
        Immigrants do not compete with native workers because they have complementary skills (like different native languages). The evidence is very very strong that immigration does not decrease wages. It generally increases them because it provides new demand, though that's not guaranteed.
        carlosjobim 2y ago
        Demand is limitless and makes no benefit. Only production is beneficial.
        astrange 2y ago
        That's certainly what Xi Jinping thinks.
  - dopylitty 2y ago
    It doesn’t matter how easy a job is to learn. What matters is how many people are willing to do it and how important it is to society. Trash collection may be mostly driving trucks and throwing bags in the back but very few people are willing to do it and society grinds to a halt without it so those folks should be making way more than some Facebook coder who adjusts ad pixels all day. The problem is the US economic system is so backwards it values the ad pixel pusher more than the trash collector. At least until there’s a communicable disease going around and suddenly the trash collector is recognized as an essential worker and forced to come to work while the ad pixel pusher “works” from home.
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      > so those folks should be making way more I heard rumours that trash collectors in the US earn pretty good money, in part due to being unionized. I've experienced what happens if binmen go on strike firsthand and / or seen it on the news, it's not pretty. Whereas industries where there's plenty of supply, like the service industry, cannot get a union off the ground because for every unionized employee, there's plenty of un-unionized people waiting to get a job that doesn't pay them enough, but it's a job and that's good enough.
  - romwell 2y ago
    >If the job is unskilled (i.e. you can train the next person to do it in less than one hour) and you have several people standing in line to take it if the person doing it, quits; then the current wage is clearly enough. Enough for whom and for what? For a society with slavery, absolutely. Also for a GULAG. If that's the environment you want to live in, North Korea is the best country! Everyone is getting wages that are enough. >It is just like the price of the meal. If it costs more than people are willing to pay, then it is too expensive; regardless of what you personally think it should cost Yes, meals that people can't afford are too expensive regardless of what you personally think it should cost. And wages that don't support living are too low regardless of what you personally think is enough.
  - atoav 2y ago
    Sure, divide and conquer is the prerequisite to allow the non-working-class to exploit actual labor. I say human dignity is non-negotiable. So there should be a legal minimum wage which is automatically adjusted to the living prices of wherever the person you hire is expected to work. If you are unable (or worse: unwilling) to pay people enough to survive of your work, you are irresponsible and a leech on society that should be out of business anyways. I understand that some have been brain-washed into believing that leveraging your education, inherited wealth or position of power to exploit others is a sign of being smart or some sort other conclusion that coincidentally justifies the desirable outcome — but that doesn't change the self serving nature of anybody discussing for that kind of exploitation. And as markets have shown to suck at respecting any externalities, be it nature, culture, the rights of future generations or human dignity, they have to be regulated to do so. If your business is unable to survive that, it wasn't for the benefit of society anyways.
    - throwaway199129 2y ago
      This makes the assumption that all workers require a living wage. When I worked as a teenager and throughout college, I didn't need to make a living wage since I either lived with my parents or with roommates (admittedly funded by a combination of work and student loans). During that phase of my life, I didn't require a living wage. I just needed some extra money, and so I was willing to accept lower paying jobs that wouldn't necessarily support every expense. Someone who required a living wage couldn't have worked those jobs, but they were perfect for me, so I was glad they existed at the time.
      - atoav 2y ago
        It doesn't matter if you require the living wage or not — there will always be people who don't strictly need it in any society. Just like there will be people on the beach who won't ever need a life guard. Everybody needing a thing is not a precondition for it making sense to exist. If we want a society without exploitation the simple fix is to lift the minimum wage beyond any value that could be considered exploitation within the given context. Not being able to live off your full time job is certainly exploitation. If you don't need that much e.g. because you have the luck of having your parents support, don't work the full job then. Easy. Less hours worked, more time to study.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I’m under the impression that this isn’t the case; restaurants always seem to be hiring, and service is quite poor nowadays due, I guess(?) to understaffing.
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    That’s like saying because slaves do as they’re told, they don’t mind doing it. After all, if they didn’t want to do it, they would refuse. Those people are lining up to take a job that doesn’t pay enough because it’s better than no job or whatever worse job they currently have. We could restructure society so that $5/hour is “enough” for some people and then the rest of could enjoy even cheaper meals. /s
- FredPret 2y ago
  While I agree with your sentiment, that logic doesn't hold. If the wage for a job is too low to afford life, then we can say either the job is underpaid or the job is fairly compensated but simply not worth doing. If dishwashers quit in numbers for other jobs, dishwasher pay would have to rise if restaurants can afford it, or the restaurant industry would wither, and from an economic point of view, deservedly so. Of course, this theory works best in a dynamic economy where people and capital can move around with a minimum amount of friction.
  - romwell 2y ago
    The parent comment said nothing about the job, they commented on a full-time wage. Their point stands.
  - piva00 2y ago
    > Of course, this theory works best in a dynamic economy where people and capital can move around with a minimum amount of friction. This assumption is akin to a spherical cow, frictionless surface, etc. In the real world capital and people won't ever move around with a minimum amount of friction, nor will people retrain for other jobs easily.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Dishwashers can easily move to other low-wage jobs if they exist
    - dfxm12 2y ago
      Spherical cows are more or less a natural impossibility. The economic system in the US is designed to add friction for people like those in these types of situations to switch jobs, retrain, etc. That's an important distinction.
  - bumby 2y ago
    >wage for a job is too low to afford life This also simplifies the scenario to assume that wages are the only income. It would be like building a mental model around people who live at home with their parents and concluding whatever money they make is obviously sufficient to 'afford life'. It ignores all the extraneous ways their life is being subsidized by others. Whether or not those external subsidies are desirable or sustainable are intrinsically related to this problem.
- brainwad 2y ago
  What standard of housing, food, etc? The linked MIT project uses a bunch of median- or near-median costs; it's obviously not reasonable to call 40th-percentile housing costs the basic standard of living, when 40% of the population in fact manage to get by paying less. There are similar objections for other components of their index, such as transportation costs and "civic participation", which appear to take median expenditure in these categories.
  - matthewaveryusa 2y ago
    This is pretty spot-on for where I live (suffolk MA.) Note that there's no saving category, so the 190k/year with 3 kids dual income is to get by comfortably but never retire. Food is based off https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/low-moderate-liberal-food-plans-2007 https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/low-moderate-liberal-food-plan... Housing 40th percentile is a pretty good metric for living wage. What would your metric be, 20th percentile, 10th percentile, something else? Transportation is the true cost of mobility, including insurance, gas, motor oil, basic maintenance of vehicle. Civic Engagement category isn't what you think it is and the methodology spells it out: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, Table 1400 (Entertainment: fees and admissions; Audio and visual equipment and services; Pets; Toys, hobbies, and playground equipment; Entertainment: other supplies, equip., & services; Reading; and Education) I mean sure, cross that category out completely, but humans can't live on bread alone and this is exactly what this is measuring: living wage, not depression wage. You can argue about whether median is a good measure, but the fact that this living wage allocates 0 dollars towards retirement and holidays, for me, is still not truly living wage. Any adjustment to the categories you take umbrage to is washed out by a basic savings plan for retirement.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  > If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. I have seen this meme repeated a lot, e.g. any full time job should automatically provide for a LOT of shit that used to require 2 incomes, or a stay-at-home mom to take care of it. Now the goalposts have moved to provide for food and housing and for "a kid or two". Do you have any evidence that our societal productivity has advanced so far that we can simply pay this "living wage" to everyone working 2000 hours a year, regardless of their profession?
  - eldaisfish 2y ago
    is your alternative that someone washing dishes is not entitled to have and support kids? I would ask you - do you have evidence to show that lowering wages benefits anyone other than the employer? Look at the Nordic countries. Paying everyone a minimum wage and creating a societal safety where education is free and everyone has access to the tools to better themselves results in staggeringly good outcomes.
    - bivargen 2y ago
      While I agree with your sentiments, I must correct you in that Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, never had! Our societal safety also isn't all that it was, but to be sure it's much stronger than the US. For the other nordic countries I can't tell, though I seem to remember that Denmark has a minimum wage and Norway doesn't. As for Finland I have no idea.
      - Ekaros 2y ago
        Finland has none either. It is all done by employee unions negotiating with employer unions. The safety net from social security does ensure that it is pretty hard to starve and not have at least some accommodation.
    - listenallyall 2y ago
      Public K-12 education is free in the United States. Any thoughts on why the outcomes aren't "staggeringly good?"
- trilbyglens 2y ago
  The real answer is that we are super over indexed on service jobs. The only work our economy provides at a scale sufficient to support a population with various levels of skill and ability is service work, and businesses in that space are famously difficult to run profitably.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Also, I have an employee Al who lives with his parents, so he doesn't need to pay anything for housing. Bob is single but has to pay for his own apartment. Carol is a single mom of 4 who needs to pay for her housing and everything for her kids. So should I pay Carol the most, Bob the 2nd most, and then Al the least, even though they're all doing the same job?
  - verall 2y ago
    > Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Because they are afraid of being homeless?
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Most landlords don't accept partial rent if your salary isn't earning you enough.
      - CrispyKerosene 2y ago
        I can tell which side of the track you grew up on. It's called surviving and we do it because the other outcome is death.
      - verall 2y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is - most people will go extreme distances to avoid becoming homeless: - commuting from a lower cost area >60m away - using food banks or not paying less critical bills (like utilities you usually have a few months before they start shutting things off) - begging or selling themselves on the internet - negotiating with their landlord who is often happy to have less money than an onerous eviction None of these are positive things - they all have nasty negative externalities. Jobs that give money but not enough at all to live on leave desperate people in a terrible limbo.
        klabb3 2y ago
- golergka 2y ago
  That's a very weird assumption. Living on your own is not cheat, and having a kid, let alone two, certainly shouldn't be cheap. Why would you expect a person who works the easiest manual labour possible to be able to afford this?
- no_wizard 2y ago
  Dang, this was a humbling experience. I was kinda upset today that my raise I just found out I was getting will barely beat inflation, but according to this MIT site, I make enough, by myself, to support another adult and 3 children, based on where I live. Thats a very different perspective for me today.
- tick_tock_tick 2y ago
  What if a person isn't capable or willing to do work that justifies such a wage? I'd rather see the answer on the other end closer to a UBI then making basic jobs uneconomical by making a "minimum wage" higher then the value of the labor.
darby_nine 2y ago
I get paid six figures to fart in a chair and occasionally type. The idea that I'm more deserving than a dishwasher is insane. Of course I won't turn down the paycheck, but the idea that $10 is anywhere in the ballpark of what the dishwasher deserves is delusional. Certainly they deserve the paycheck more than the vast majority of the people on this forum who get paid orders of magnitude more while doing barely any work (if that).
- jonhohle 2y ago
  Can you take a person off the street and have them washing dishes competently by this afternoon? Can you take a person off the street and have them doing your job competently by this afternoon? The fable of the plumber captures the essence of this.
  - immibis 2y ago
    I literally did this. At the end of Chaos Communication Camp last year I had no reason to immediately leave, so I went to see if they needed some extra help and ended up drying and stacking dishes for an hour.
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      I hope you realize this mostly just reveals you have no clue how hard and skill-intensive kitchen work is. Yes, even dishwashing. The average person is not going to be able to drop into a kitchen and wash thousands of dishes a night.
      - immibis 2y ago
        They are, but it's exhausting. I thought the complaint was that it required skills and training, not that it was exhausting?
      - infecto 2y ago
        I have work lots in kitchen. Your post just shows you’re full of it. We have hired people off the street to wash dishes. Yeah of course people quit on the first day sometimes. Same goes for working other entry level jobs.
atoav 2y ago
How much? Enough to live within 10 miles of the place they are working at sithout having to pinch pennies, while being able to safe something for the future. Sure it isn't a complicated job — but without it the likes of us would not be able to enjoy going to a restaurant. And it is a job that would be both mentally and physically too exhausting for many people. Let's stop doing as if jobs like these are not real jobs. When push comes to shove some of these jobs are way, way more essential than whatever white collar job it is the high brow people who love to reap the results of that labor are doing. People who say dish washer isn't a respectable job are essentially saying Restaurants shouldn't exist without them being able to profit from exploitation. I am not saying this is your position, but if it is I hope you do realize that this is a anti-humanist position.
- infecto 2y ago
  How did we go from asking what is the proper wage to suggesting its "not a real job"? All jobs are real but some are less valuable than others. There is nothing wrong with being a grocery store stocker your whole life but I am not sure how you set the wage for a 5+ year worker that never moved on/up from stocking shelves. I think its a fairly difficult problem to answer and throwing in classism and white collar vs blue collar is just deflection on accepting its hard to come to the right answer here.
  - atoav 2y ago
    I don't think answering that problem isn't at all especially if you feel human dignity is a value that should be honored above all other rights. And I don't think many people disagree that to work a full time job and be unable to live off it in the area it is located in is undignified. Now markets have shown time and time again that precisely that human dignity is ignored within market logic (just as other externalities like air quality, a unpoisioned environment or the rights of future generations). Given the markets inability to honor human dignity I suggest regulating this part of it by mandating a minimum wage that is a living wage and keep that wage updated at least on a yearly basis. Not a radical thing to demand. A real job is one that allows you to lead a dignified life. Being okay with essential jobs being paid below that wage is a problematic stance to take for various reasons and comes across as an egoistic stance to me (e.g. imagine someone saying: "While I enjoy cheap and good coffee, I don't want the batista who made it to afford to live off it.") There are not many reasons to say that, but all of them are to some degree egoistic. You might be a star bucks manager that makes a good living off your workers earning less. You might be a customer that wants to pay as little as possible and is okay to ignore the exploitation. Or you might think this is market logic and go like "they simply have to find another job" (thus admitting it is not a real job anybody should expect to live from). Now my stance — just like yours if I got that right — is that all jobs are real jobs.
barryrandall 2y ago
A lot of "serious questions" asked on the internet include assumptions and assertions that may or may not be true. These questions are often downvoted when people object to those assumptions and assertions.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  Why are you speaking in generalities when we are discussing a specific question: this one. Your comment seems akin to saying "asking questions is suspicious, especially when I disagree with the premise."
  - loa_in_ 2y ago
    > your question seems Well it's not.
    - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
      My apologies I should have made it more clear. Were you advocating against "serious questions" or just explaining why they might have been downvoted?
      - loa_in_ 2y ago
        Just explaining. It's a factual statement which I agree with. It's not making my position any way polarised or argumentative, in a way that I can see.
pakitan 2y ago
> how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? We don't. It's the market's job to determine the wage. If the wage is too low, then businesses won't be able to find the people they need.
- gregors 2y ago
  You're making an assumption there that the educational/opportunity systems in the country aren't designed specifically to feed these jobs in particular.
- kjs3 2y ago
  If the wage is too low, then businesses won't be able to find the people they need. Or complain that "no one is willing to work".
  - infecto 2y ago
    That’s the worst excuse that I think the vocal uneducated minority use. I wish it would stop though.
dls2016 2y ago
I made $10.50/hr washing dishes in 1998 lol it's not a fair wage for anything today, really.
luqtas 2y ago
i dunno where this idea of manual labor being treated as something so simple it shouldn't deserve a decent pay... i worked as a dishy also as a bicycle courier & i bet i'm ballparks more efficient than anyone who never had to these jobs we have a heck of a hard time emulating or creating navigational system for robots, specially if we don't train them million of times for extremely simple tasks like grabbing boxes in a controlled enviroment. let not mention energy usage these things need; point is: maybe reaching a plato of being a dishy is easier than coding/programming C for embedded systems, but we can't deny that a lot of people in tech don't learn or get into different fields projects all the time, so there isn't a "keep learning/tinkering hard all the time" type of thing... is it easier to build a website for a client with an open-source framework that you used for the 100th time or being at a almost 40 °C kitchen washing dishes in a speed way faster than one would do @ their houses?
- infecto 2y ago
  It’s the intersection of skill, risk and mental requirements. Being an old school drill rig guy, high risk, long hours, bad locations. You get high pay. Washing dishes is unpleasant but easy to replace. There are many labor jobs that pay well for a reason. I asked what is the right pay then for a job that anyone can pick up immediately.
  - luqtas 2y ago
    maybe to find a decent pay is to not treat dishies as an easy to replace person?
    - infecto 2y ago
      don’t confuse a fact, that it’s a role that’s easy to replace with how the person is treated. All deserve respect but that does not entirely translate to their wage.
tossandthrow 2y ago
They should be paid enough that the society is roughly equal. That is definitely not the case when you allow people to work for less than $ 20k a year. That makes it a democratic problem to pay people so little.
anon115 2y ago
you sound like an ass right now 'its fairly' binary' have you done the work yourself?
- infecto 2y ago
  Who are you to assume what I have or have not done or use foul language. I have worked as a washer before and it’s hard work. It also took zero skill and have hired people off the street before to do it. The output is binary. Clean or not clean. Nothing wrong with it. Its a job but not meant to be a career
kjs3 2y ago
I am all for fair wages No, you're very obviously not. This line of argument is the very poster child of "if you're not doing something I think is important (and, apparently having clean dishes at a restaurant is by your own words "fairly low value") like being 'innovative' or 'creative', you are of little value and don't deserve adequate pay". Were you twisting your Mises Institute wristband fondly while writing it?
- infecto 2y ago
  Do you have an actual counter point or do you just attack people. What’s the emptiness feel like?
  - kjs3 2y ago
    I don't like what you said, so I'll pretend you didn't say anything. What's being intellectually vapid feel like.
    - infecto 2y ago
      Again do you have anything to bring the conversation besides attacks? I do believe in fair wages but I also believe that entry level positions are a tough one, I believe generally the market figures out the correct price eventually. We can make an argument that min wage needs to be increased but thats not was presented in this thread. "I don't like what you said, so I'll pretend you didn't say anything" Glad you agree your statements follow that logic. Come to the table with real arguments or sit down please.
Flop7331 2y ago
> important but the work itself is fairly low value Because it's important, vital really, it has noun value, but for some reason it is not verb valued. This disconnect is also rampant among nurses and teachers. If you know any, ask and they'll let you know. Dishwashers don't even get an appreciation week.
bwat49 2y ago
> Honest question, what should they be paid? Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. The output is fairly binary, clean or not clean. I am all for fair wages but how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? Have you ever worked as a dishwasher? It may not be complicated, but it's hard work. It's not usually just washing dishes either, you're expected to help all around the kitchen. And if the pastry chef quits in the middle of service, or if some waitstaff doesn't show up for the night, you might find yourself suddenly doing another job with no training (and no extra pay either), while still having to wash the dishes at the same time. I work in IT these days, and honestly my Job is way easier and less stressful than when I washed dishes.
- infecto 2y ago
  Spent plenty of years in a kitchen. Hectic during service but a mental piece of cake . The night would be over in a flash. Have washed dishes before. It’s not pleasant work but not too bad. Again. I am not suggesting the wage is too low, high or right. Only suggesting it’s hard when there is a line out the door to fill that role.
tennisflyi 2y ago
Plenty of answers already, but I have a very small passion project I hope to make my full-time living and one of the first things on my list is to employ one person and pay them a living wage - not, "how little can I pay them, or "what's the market rate" for the type of position." I'm sure money is tight, but that'd be a better framing to start with
tennisflyi 2y ago
> Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. So is that cushy-ass PM job with a plethora of fringe benefits. How much do they make? > We could say raise labor costs but most are already running razor thin margins. Absolutely true
pharrington 2y ago
I think you're confusing value with scarcity.

Y-bar 2y ago

If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. Edit: Check out https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/ for examples based on real-world data.

didgetmaster 2y ago
If the job is unskilled (i.e. you can train the next person to do it in less than one hour) and you have several people standing in line to take it if the person doing it, quits; then the current wage is clearly enough. It is just like the price of the meal. If it costs more than people are willing to pay, then it is too expensive; regardless of what you personally think it should cost.
- callmeal 2y ago
  >if the person doing it, quits If the person doing it (and the role can make or break the business) quits on short notice, then the current wage is clearly not enough.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  There will always be people desperate enough to race to the bottom, but that doesn't make it a good thing for society at scale.
  - cvwright 2y ago
    Especially when we import millions of low-skill / no-skill people every year to compete with the poor people who were born here. Works great for the upper classes - keeps the price down for those fancy Michelin dinners.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      Our immigrant ancestors were almost all unskilled. I’d rather the government not tell me where I can or cannot live, as a matter of basic human freedom.
    - astrange 2y ago
      Immigrants do not compete with native workers because they have complementary skills (like different native languages). The evidence is very very strong that immigration does not decrease wages. It generally increases them because it provides new demand, though that's not guaranteed.
      - carlosjobim 2y ago
        Demand is limitless and makes no benefit. Only production is beneficial.
        astrange 2y ago
        That's certainly what Xi Jinping thinks.
- dopylitty 2y ago
  It doesn’t matter how easy a job is to learn. What matters is how many people are willing to do it and how important it is to society. Trash collection may be mostly driving trucks and throwing bags in the back but very few people are willing to do it and society grinds to a halt without it so those folks should be making way more than some Facebook coder who adjusts ad pixels all day. The problem is the US economic system is so backwards it values the ad pixel pusher more than the trash collector. At least until there’s a communicable disease going around and suddenly the trash collector is recognized as an essential worker and forced to come to work while the ad pixel pusher “works” from home.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    > so those folks should be making way more I heard rumours that trash collectors in the US earn pretty good money, in part due to being unionized. I've experienced what happens if binmen go on strike firsthand and / or seen it on the news, it's not pretty. Whereas industries where there's plenty of supply, like the service industry, cannot get a union off the ground because for every unionized employee, there's plenty of un-unionized people waiting to get a job that doesn't pay them enough, but it's a job and that's good enough.
- romwell 2y ago
  >If the job is unskilled (i.e. you can train the next person to do it in less than one hour) and you have several people standing in line to take it if the person doing it, quits; then the current wage is clearly enough. Enough for whom and for what? For a society with slavery, absolutely. Also for a GULAG. If that's the environment you want to live in, North Korea is the best country! Everyone is getting wages that are enough. >It is just like the price of the meal. If it costs more than people are willing to pay, then it is too expensive; regardless of what you personally think it should cost Yes, meals that people can't afford are too expensive regardless of what you personally think it should cost. And wages that don't support living are too low regardless of what you personally think is enough.
- atoav 2y ago
  Sure, divide and conquer is the prerequisite to allow the non-working-class to exploit actual labor. I say human dignity is non-negotiable. So there should be a legal minimum wage which is automatically adjusted to the living prices of wherever the person you hire is expected to work. If you are unable (or worse: unwilling) to pay people enough to survive of your work, you are irresponsible and a leech on society that should be out of business anyways. I understand that some have been brain-washed into believing that leveraging your education, inherited wealth or position of power to exploit others is a sign of being smart or some sort other conclusion that coincidentally justifies the desirable outcome — but that doesn't change the self serving nature of anybody discussing for that kind of exploitation. And as markets have shown to suck at respecting any externalities, be it nature, culture, the rights of future generations or human dignity, they have to be regulated to do so. If your business is unable to survive that, it wasn't for the benefit of society anyways.
  - throwaway199129 2y ago
    This makes the assumption that all workers require a living wage. When I worked as a teenager and throughout college, I didn't need to make a living wage since I either lived with my parents or with roommates (admittedly funded by a combination of work and student loans). During that phase of my life, I didn't require a living wage. I just needed some extra money, and so I was willing to accept lower paying jobs that wouldn't necessarily support every expense. Someone who required a living wage couldn't have worked those jobs, but they were perfect for me, so I was glad they existed at the time.
    - atoav 2y ago
      It doesn't matter if you require the living wage or not — there will always be people who don't strictly need it in any society. Just like there will be people on the beach who won't ever need a life guard. Everybody needing a thing is not a precondition for it making sense to exist. If we want a society without exploitation the simple fix is to lift the minimum wage beyond any value that could be considered exploitation within the given context. Not being able to live off your full time job is certainly exploitation. If you don't need that much e.g. because you have the luck of having your parents support, don't work the full job then. Easy. Less hours worked, more time to study.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I’m under the impression that this isn’t the case; restaurants always seem to be hiring, and service is quite poor nowadays due, I guess(?) to understaffing.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  That’s like saying because slaves do as they’re told, they don’t mind doing it. After all, if they didn’t want to do it, they would refuse. Those people are lining up to take a job that doesn’t pay enough because it’s better than no job or whatever worse job they currently have. We could restructure society so that $5/hour is “enough” for some people and then the rest of could enjoy even cheaper meals. /s
FredPret 2y ago
While I agree with your sentiment, that logic doesn't hold. If the wage for a job is too low to afford life, then we can say either the job is underpaid or the job is fairly compensated but simply not worth doing. If dishwashers quit in numbers for other jobs, dishwasher pay would have to rise if restaurants can afford it, or the restaurant industry would wither, and from an economic point of view, deservedly so. Of course, this theory works best in a dynamic economy where people and capital can move around with a minimum amount of friction.
- romwell 2y ago
  The parent comment said nothing about the job, they commented on a full-time wage. Their point stands.
- piva00 2y ago
  > Of course, this theory works best in a dynamic economy where people and capital can move around with a minimum amount of friction. This assumption is akin to a spherical cow, frictionless surface, etc. In the real world capital and people won't ever move around with a minimum amount of friction, nor will people retrain for other jobs easily.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Dishwashers can easily move to other low-wage jobs if they exist
  - dfxm12 2y ago
    Spherical cows are more or less a natural impossibility. The economic system in the US is designed to add friction for people like those in these types of situations to switch jobs, retrain, etc. That's an important distinction.
- bumby 2y ago
  >wage for a job is too low to afford life This also simplifies the scenario to assume that wages are the only income. It would be like building a mental model around people who live at home with their parents and concluding whatever money they make is obviously sufficient to 'afford life'. It ignores all the extraneous ways their life is being subsidized by others. Whether or not those external subsidies are desirable or sustainable are intrinsically related to this problem.
brainwad 2y ago
What standard of housing, food, etc? The linked MIT project uses a bunch of median- or near-median costs; it's obviously not reasonable to call 40th-percentile housing costs the basic standard of living, when 40% of the population in fact manage to get by paying less. There are similar objections for other components of their index, such as transportation costs and "civic participation", which appear to take median expenditure in these categories.
- matthewaveryusa 2y ago
  This is pretty spot-on for where I live (suffolk MA.) Note that there's no saving category, so the 190k/year with 3 kids dual income is to get by comfortably but never retire. Food is based off https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/low-moderate-liberal-food-plans-2007 https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/low-moderate-liberal-food-plan... Housing 40th percentile is a pretty good metric for living wage. What would your metric be, 20th percentile, 10th percentile, something else? Transportation is the true cost of mobility, including insurance, gas, motor oil, basic maintenance of vehicle. Civic Engagement category isn't what you think it is and the methodology spells it out: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, Table 1400 (Entertainment: fees and admissions; Audio and visual equipment and services; Pets; Toys, hobbies, and playground equipment; Entertainment: other supplies, equip., & services; Reading; and Education) I mean sure, cross that category out completely, but humans can't live on bread alone and this is exactly what this is measuring: living wage, not depression wage. You can argue about whether median is a good measure, but the fact that this living wage allocates 0 dollars towards retirement and holidays, for me, is still not truly living wage. Any adjustment to the categories you take umbrage to is washed out by a basic savings plan for retirement.
antisthenes 2y ago
> If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. I have seen this meme repeated a lot, e.g. any full time job should automatically provide for a LOT of shit that used to require 2 incomes, or a stay-at-home mom to take care of it. Now the goalposts have moved to provide for food and housing and for "a kid or two". Do you have any evidence that our societal productivity has advanced so far that we can simply pay this "living wage" to everyone working 2000 hours a year, regardless of their profession?
- eldaisfish 2y ago
  is your alternative that someone washing dishes is not entitled to have and support kids? I would ask you - do you have evidence to show that lowering wages benefits anyone other than the employer? Look at the Nordic countries. Paying everyone a minimum wage and creating a societal safety where education is free and everyone has access to the tools to better themselves results in staggeringly good outcomes.
  - bivargen 2y ago
    While I agree with your sentiments, I must correct you in that Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, never had! Our societal safety also isn't all that it was, but to be sure it's much stronger than the US. For the other nordic countries I can't tell, though I seem to remember that Denmark has a minimum wage and Norway doesn't. As for Finland I have no idea.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      Finland has none either. It is all done by employee unions negotiating with employer unions. The safety net from social security does ensure that it is pretty hard to starve and not have at least some accommodation.
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    Public K-12 education is free in the United States. Any thoughts on why the outcomes aren't "staggeringly good?"
trilbyglens 2y ago
The real answer is that we are super over indexed on service jobs. The only work our economy provides at a scale sufficient to support a population with various levels of skill and ability is service work, and businesses in that space are famously difficult to run profitably.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Also, I have an employee Al who lives with his parents, so he doesn't need to pay anything for housing. Bob is single but has to pay for his own apartment. Carol is a single mom of 4 who needs to pay for her housing and everything for her kids. So should I pay Carol the most, Bob the 2nd most, and then Al the least, even though they're all doing the same job?
- verall 2y ago
  > Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Because they are afraid of being homeless?
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Most landlords don't accept partial rent if your salary isn't earning you enough.
    - CrispyKerosene 2y ago
      I can tell which side of the track you grew up on. It's called surviving and we do it because the other outcome is death.
    - verall 2y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is - most people will go extreme distances to avoid becoming homeless: - commuting from a lower cost area >60m away - using food banks or not paying less critical bills (like utilities you usually have a few months before they start shutting things off) - begging or selling themselves on the internet - negotiating with their landlord who is often happy to have less money than an onerous eviction None of these are positive things - they all have nasty negative externalities. Jobs that give money but not enough at all to live on leave desperate people in a terrible limbo.
      - klabb3 2y ago
golergka 2y ago
That's a very weird assumption. Living on your own is not cheat, and having a kid, let alone two, certainly shouldn't be cheap. Why would you expect a person who works the easiest manual labour possible to be able to afford this?
no_wizard 2y ago
Dang, this was a humbling experience. I was kinda upset today that my raise I just found out I was getting will barely beat inflation, but according to this MIT site, I make enough, by myself, to support another adult and 3 children, based on where I live. Thats a very different perspective for me today.
tick_tock_tick 2y ago
What if a person isn't capable or willing to do work that justifies such a wage? I'd rather see the answer on the other end closer to a UBI then making basic jobs uneconomical by making a "minimum wage" higher then the value of the labor.

darby_nine 2y ago

I get paid six figures to fart in a chair and occasionally type. The idea that I'm more deserving than a dishwasher is insane. Of course I won't turn down the paycheck, but the idea that $10 is anywhere in the ballpark of what the dishwasher deserves is delusional. Certainly they deserve the paycheck more than the vast majority of the people on this forum who get paid orders of magnitude more while doing barely any work (if that).

jonhohle 2y ago
Can you take a person off the street and have them washing dishes competently by this afternoon? Can you take a person off the street and have them doing your job competently by this afternoon? The fable of the plumber captures the essence of this.
- immibis 2y ago
  I literally did this. At the end of Chaos Communication Camp last year I had no reason to immediately leave, so I went to see if they needed some extra help and ended up drying and stacking dishes for an hour.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    I hope you realize this mostly just reveals you have no clue how hard and skill-intensive kitchen work is. Yes, even dishwashing. The average person is not going to be able to drop into a kitchen and wash thousands of dishes a night.
    - immibis 2y ago
      They are, but it's exhausting. I thought the complaint was that it required skills and training, not that it was exhausting?
    - infecto 2y ago
      I have work lots in kitchen. Your post just shows you’re full of it. We have hired people off the street to wash dishes. Yeah of course people quit on the first day sometimes. Same goes for working other entry level jobs.

atoav 2y ago

How much? Enough to live within 10 miles of the place they are working at sithout having to pinch pennies, while being able to safe something for the future. Sure it isn't a complicated job — but without it the likes of us would not be able to enjoy going to a restaurant. And it is a job that would be both mentally and physically too exhausting for many people. Let's stop doing as if jobs like these are not real jobs. When push comes to shove some of these jobs are way, way more essential than whatever white collar job it is the high brow people who love to reap the results of that labor are doing. People who say dish washer isn't a respectable job are essentially saying Restaurants shouldn't exist without them being able to profit from exploitation. I am not saying this is your position, but if it is I hope you do realize that this is a anti-humanist position.

infecto 2y ago
How did we go from asking what is the proper wage to suggesting its "not a real job"? All jobs are real but some are less valuable than others. There is nothing wrong with being a grocery store stocker your whole life but I am not sure how you set the wage for a 5+ year worker that never moved on/up from stocking shelves. I think its a fairly difficult problem to answer and throwing in classism and white collar vs blue collar is just deflection on accepting its hard to come to the right answer here.
- atoav 2y ago
  I don't think answering that problem isn't at all especially if you feel human dignity is a value that should be honored above all other rights. And I don't think many people disagree that to work a full time job and be unable to live off it in the area it is located in is undignified. Now markets have shown time and time again that precisely that human dignity is ignored within market logic (just as other externalities like air quality, a unpoisioned environment or the rights of future generations). Given the markets inability to honor human dignity I suggest regulating this part of it by mandating a minimum wage that is a living wage and keep that wage updated at least on a yearly basis. Not a radical thing to demand. A real job is one that allows you to lead a dignified life. Being okay with essential jobs being paid below that wage is a problematic stance to take for various reasons and comes across as an egoistic stance to me (e.g. imagine someone saying: "While I enjoy cheap and good coffee, I don't want the batista who made it to afford to live off it.") There are not many reasons to say that, but all of them are to some degree egoistic. You might be a star bucks manager that makes a good living off your workers earning less. You might be a customer that wants to pay as little as possible and is okay to ignore the exploitation. Or you might think this is market logic and go like "they simply have to find another job" (thus admitting it is not a real job anybody should expect to live from). Now my stance — just like yours if I got that right — is that all jobs are real jobs.

barryrandall 2y ago

A lot of "serious questions" asked on the internet include assumptions and assertions that may or may not be true. These questions are often downvoted when people object to those assumptions and assertions.

DiggyJohnson 2y ago
Why are you speaking in generalities when we are discussing a specific question: this one. Your comment seems akin to saying "asking questions is suspicious, especially when I disagree with the premise."
- loa_in_ 2y ago
  > your question seems Well it's not.
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    My apologies I should have made it more clear. Were you advocating against "serious questions" or just explaining why they might have been downvoted?
    - loa_in_ 2y ago
      Just explaining. It's a factual statement which I agree with. It's not making my position any way polarised or argumentative, in a way that I can see.

pakitan 2y ago

> how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? We don't. It's the market's job to determine the wage. If the wage is too low, then businesses won't be able to find the people they need.

gregors 2y ago
You're making an assumption there that the educational/opportunity systems in the country aren't designed specifically to feed these jobs in particular.
kjs3 2y ago
If the wage is too low, then businesses won't be able to find the people they need. Or complain that "no one is willing to work".
- infecto 2y ago
  That’s the worst excuse that I think the vocal uneducated minority use. I wish it would stop though.

dls2016 2y ago

I made $10.50/hr washing dishes in 1998 lol it's not a fair wage for anything today, really.

luqtas 2y ago

i dunno where this idea of manual labor being treated as something so simple it shouldn't deserve a decent pay... i worked as a dishy also as a bicycle courier & i bet i'm ballparks more efficient than anyone who never had to these jobs we have a heck of a hard time emulating or creating navigational system for robots, specially if we don't train them million of times for extremely simple tasks like grabbing boxes in a controlled enviroment. let not mention energy usage these things need; point is: maybe reaching a plato of being a dishy is easier than coding/programming C for embedded systems, but we can't deny that a lot of people in tech don't learn or get into different fields projects all the time, so there isn't a "keep learning/tinkering hard all the time" type of thing... is it easier to build a website for a client with an open-source framework that you used for the 100th time or being at a almost 40 °C kitchen washing dishes in a speed way faster than one would do @ their houses?

infecto 2y ago
It’s the intersection of skill, risk and mental requirements. Being an old school drill rig guy, high risk, long hours, bad locations. You get high pay. Washing dishes is unpleasant but easy to replace. There are many labor jobs that pay well for a reason. I asked what is the right pay then for a job that anyone can pick up immediately.
- luqtas 2y ago
  maybe to find a decent pay is to not treat dishies as an easy to replace person?
  - infecto 2y ago
    don’t confuse a fact, that it’s a role that’s easy to replace with how the person is treated. All deserve respect but that does not entirely translate to their wage.

tossandthrow 2y ago

They should be paid enough that the society is roughly equal. That is definitely not the case when you allow people to work for less than $ 20k a year. That makes it a democratic problem to pay people so little.

anon115 2y ago

you sound like an ass right now 'its fairly' binary' have you done the work yourself?

infecto 2y ago
Who are you to assume what I have or have not done or use foul language. I have worked as a washer before and it’s hard work. It also took zero skill and have hired people off the street before to do it. The output is binary. Clean or not clean. Nothing wrong with it. Its a job but not meant to be a career

kjs3 2y ago

I am all for fair wages No, you're very obviously not. This line of argument is the very poster child of "if you're not doing something I think is important (and, apparently having clean dishes at a restaurant is by your own words "fairly low value") like being 'innovative' or 'creative', you are of little value and don't deserve adequate pay". Were you twisting your Mises Institute wristband fondly while writing it?

infecto 2y ago
Do you have an actual counter point or do you just attack people. What’s the emptiness feel like?
- kjs3 2y ago
  I don't like what you said, so I'll pretend you didn't say anything. What's being intellectually vapid feel like.
  - infecto 2y ago
    Again do you have anything to bring the conversation besides attacks? I do believe in fair wages but I also believe that entry level positions are a tough one, I believe generally the market figures out the correct price eventually. We can make an argument that min wage needs to be increased but thats not was presented in this thread. "I don't like what you said, so I'll pretend you didn't say anything" Glad you agree your statements follow that logic. Come to the table with real arguments or sit down please.

Flop7331 2y ago

> important but the work itself is fairly low value Because it's important, vital really, it has noun value, but for some reason it is not verb valued. This disconnect is also rampant among nurses and teachers. If you know any, ask and they'll let you know. Dishwashers don't even get an appreciation week.

bwat49 2y ago

> Honest question, what should they be paid? Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. The output is fairly binary, clean or not clean. I am all for fair wages but how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? Have you ever worked as a dishwasher? It may not be complicated, but it's hard work. It's not usually just washing dishes either, you're expected to help all around the kitchen. And if the pastry chef quits in the middle of service, or if some waitstaff doesn't show up for the night, you might find yourself suddenly doing another job with no training (and no extra pay either), while still having to wash the dishes at the same time. I work in IT these days, and honestly my Job is way easier and less stressful than when I washed dishes.

infecto 2y ago
Spent plenty of years in a kitchen. Hectic during service but a mental piece of cake . The night would be over in a flash. Have washed dishes before. It’s not pleasant work but not too bad. Again. I am not suggesting the wage is too low, high or right. Only suggesting it’s hard when there is a line out the door to fill that role.

tennisflyi 2y ago

Plenty of answers already, but I have a very small passion project I hope to make my full-time living and one of the first things on my list is to employ one person and pay them a living wage - not, "how little can I pay them, or "what's the market rate" for the type of position." I'm sure money is tight, but that'd be a better framing to start with

tennisflyi 2y ago

> Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. So is that cushy-ass PM job with a plethora of fringe benefits. How much do they make? > We could say raise labor costs but most are already running razor thin margins. Absolutely true

pharrington 2y ago

I think you're confusing value with scarcity.