4 ms·

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

by 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.
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    We could establish UBI, and then we wouldn't need a minimum wage. We could decide as a society that we want everyone to have a baseline level of support, rather than doing it indirectly (and less effectively) by forcing the nonexistence of low-paying jobs.
    - atoav 2y ago
      Sure, that would also be a way to address the problem. Quite frankly I haven't read up on the UBI enough to give a qualified answer about it, but given the observation that many places appear to try it out we will probably have very conclusive data soon.
      - bumby 2y ago
        OpenResearch's recent UBI example didn't appear to be a resounding success. While people receiving the higher income appeared to have more interest in starting a business or continuing education, it didn't actually significantly translate to those getting accomplished.
    - astrange 2y ago
      Minimum wages are good on their own and do not appear to have downsides in practice. You don't need to "not need" them. Basically think of it as banning wasting people's time by offering them really bad jobs. (This is the "search theory" explanation, but there's also the "monopsony theory" explanation, which is that they can increase employment!) Of course, wage boards and sectoral bargaining systems are probably better since they're more flexible.
      - JoshTriplett 2y ago
        Minimum wages are not "good on their own"; they're a solution to a specific problem: making sure people can survive with at most a relatively reasonable amount of work, though they're currently failing at that goal. If we stop having that problem we stop needing a solution to it. Making it so people don't need to work to survive is strictly better. And if people have a guaranteed level of support, then yes, there is a downside to saying "you're not allowed to exchange sub-self-supporting amounts of work for money". You don't need to ban wasting people's time; if people don't have to work to live, the uninteresting or unpleasant jobs will be having to raise pay to get people to work them, or figuring out how to automate them when previously it was cheaper to pay minimum wage. Meanwhile, there are plenty of things people might want to do that aren't valued enough by society to pay even subsistence wages for. In a minimum wage world, those things either don't happen or they happen as side hobbies for people with other means of support. If you have UBI, you create the perverse situation of "I might do that for free because I don't have to work to live, but I can't take any money for it unless I can get someone to give me a lot of money for it".
- ruined 2y ago
  so work part time
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  And that's fine; the problem is that a lot of people don't have a choice, because there's not enough jobs at their level of education, their willingness to work, etc. I'm thinking of a reddit post copied off facebook describing college or uni graduates in biology who could only get a job at Starbucks because there wasn't enough demand for their specialism.
- ClumsyPilot 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 So you want a dying wage. How can a dying wage exist? Two ways: 1 - someone else is subsidising the business, I.e. parents are paying the rent/mortgage, and food of the teenager 2 - the person is literally slowly dying, living in a caravan or a tent as ‘working homeless’ unable to afford healthcare or racking up debt, and it’s only a matter of time until they literally kick the buckets and cease to function. Or they will become birdedfor the taxpayer, with food stamps and other kinds of aid. A business needs to pay for its inputs, labour is one of them. The cost of labour is whatever is costs to take care of basic needs of a human, the exact number is debatable but it does exist. If we are going to provide subsidies, why don’t we subsidise healthy food, or planting trees or solar panels for example, for both businesses and individuals? Why should my tax money subsidise cheap labour, often for corporation that avoid paying tax themselves?
  - astrange 2y ago
    > why don’t we subsidise healthy food, or planting trees or solar panels for example, for both businesses and individuals? https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/summary-inflation-reduction-act-provisions-related-renewable-energy https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/summary-inflation-re...
bryanlarsen 2y ago
So the solution is to throw many of the people who currently make $10/hour out of a job and onto welfare? That's what you're proposing. If we raised the minimum wage to $20/hour, some businesses would raise their wages, and some will fire those workers. And once on welfare it is extremely hard to get off welfare because of claw-backs and because once you have a gap in your resume it's really hard to get a full time $20/hour job. There might be employers willing to take a chance on you for a lower salary part-time. The solution isn't to raise minimum wage, it's to eliminate minimum wage and put in an equitable UBI/welfare system. It'll raise wages naturally, because if they have a decent safety net, most people will feel comfortable quitting / not accepting an unjustly low salary. OTOH, if companies make massive profits through paying low salaries then we should tax those profits to pay for the UBI/welfare.
- atoav 2y ago
  No that is not what I am proposing. I have lived through the introduction of minimum wage in 2015 in Germany. Maybe you lived through more such transitions, but I did not observe what you (maliciously?) claimed to be for. Sure the US is always different (and solution working elsewhere can't possibly be applied to it), but granted: a UBI might be a better choice ultimately. But the question is if that is really within the set of realistic choices. A UBI is a hard sell even in comparably "socialist" countries in Europe. In the US it would be dead on arrival. Consider that maybe this is the idea. You know, a bit like what the Hyperloop did for intercontinental trains, proposed by a guy who wanted to sell more cars.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  > So the solution is to throw many of the people who currently make $10/hour out of a job and onto welfare? That's what you're proposing. It's not an either / or. If the US were to invest more in education and developing the economy everywhere, there would be more jobs beyond low paid "unskilled" labour. That is, at the moment there's too much demand in low paid jobs, too little in e.g. college or uni level positions, and too much supply of people desperate enough for a job to take something below the standards of living. Compare with my country, which during the pandemic saw a large amount of people in the service industry change jobs, because during the pandemic a lot of restaurants and the like were closed. When those opened up again, they found themselves with a shortage of staff, leading to the ones that still worked in the industry to be in a strong negotiating position and have their wages increased significantly. Take away the supply - by increasing supply of higher-paid and diverse jobs everywhere - and low wage jobs become higher paid jobs automatically. In theory.

by atoav 2y ago

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.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  We could establish UBI, and then we wouldn't need a minimum wage. We could decide as a society that we want everyone to have a baseline level of support, rather than doing it indirectly (and less effectively) by forcing the nonexistence of low-paying jobs.
  - atoav 2y ago
    Sure, that would also be a way to address the problem. Quite frankly I haven't read up on the UBI enough to give a qualified answer about it, but given the observation that many places appear to try it out we will probably have very conclusive data soon.
    - bumby 2y ago
      OpenResearch's recent UBI example didn't appear to be a resounding success. While people receiving the higher income appeared to have more interest in starting a business or continuing education, it didn't actually significantly translate to those getting accomplished.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Minimum wages are good on their own and do not appear to have downsides in practice. You don't need to "not need" them. Basically think of it as banning wasting people's time by offering them really bad jobs. (This is the "search theory" explanation, but there's also the "monopsony theory" explanation, which is that they can increase employment!) Of course, wage boards and sectoral bargaining systems are probably better since they're more flexible.
    - JoshTriplett 2y ago
      Minimum wages are not "good on their own"; they're a solution to a specific problem: making sure people can survive with at most a relatively reasonable amount of work, though they're currently failing at that goal. If we stop having that problem we stop needing a solution to it. Making it so people don't need to work to survive is strictly better. And if people have a guaranteed level of support, then yes, there is a downside to saying "you're not allowed to exchange sub-self-supporting amounts of work for money". You don't need to ban wasting people's time; if people don't have to work to live, the uninteresting or unpleasant jobs will be having to raise pay to get people to work them, or figuring out how to automate them when previously it was cheaper to pay minimum wage. Meanwhile, there are plenty of things people might want to do that aren't valued enough by society to pay even subsistence wages for. In a minimum wage world, those things either don't happen or they happen as side hobbies for people with other means of support. If you have UBI, you create the perverse situation of "I might do that for free because I don't have to work to live, but I can't take any money for it unless I can get someone to give me a lot of money for it".
ruined 2y ago
so work part time
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
And that's fine; the problem is that a lot of people don't have a choice, because there's not enough jobs at their level of education, their willingness to work, etc. I'm thinking of a reddit post copied off facebook describing college or uni graduates in biology who could only get a job at Starbucks because there wasn't enough demand for their specialism.
ClumsyPilot 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 So you want a dying wage. How can a dying wage exist? Two ways: 1 - someone else is subsidising the business, I.e. parents are paying the rent/mortgage, and food of the teenager 2 - the person is literally slowly dying, living in a caravan or a tent as ‘working homeless’ unable to afford healthcare or racking up debt, and it’s only a matter of time until they literally kick the buckets and cease to function. Or they will become birdedfor the taxpayer, with food stamps and other kinds of aid. A business needs to pay for its inputs, labour is one of them. The cost of labour is whatever is costs to take care of basic needs of a human, the exact number is debatable but it does exist. If we are going to provide subsidies, why don’t we subsidise healthy food, or planting trees or solar panels for example, for both businesses and individuals? Why should my tax money subsidise cheap labour, often for corporation that avoid paying tax themselves?
- astrange 2y ago
  > why don’t we subsidise healthy food, or planting trees or solar panels for example, for both businesses and individuals? https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/summary-inflation-reduction-act-provisions-related-renewable-energy https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/summary-inflation-re...

bryanlarsen 2y ago

So the solution is to throw many of the people who currently make $10/hour out of a job and onto welfare? That's what you're proposing. If we raised the minimum wage to $20/hour, some businesses would raise their wages, and some will fire those workers. And once on welfare it is extremely hard to get off welfare because of claw-backs and because once you have a gap in your resume it's really hard to get a full time $20/hour job. There might be employers willing to take a chance on you for a lower salary part-time. The solution isn't to raise minimum wage, it's to eliminate minimum wage and put in an equitable UBI/welfare system. It'll raise wages naturally, because if they have a decent safety net, most people will feel comfortable quitting / not accepting an unjustly low salary. OTOH, if companies make massive profits through paying low salaries then we should tax those profits to pay for the UBI/welfare.

atoav 2y ago
No that is not what I am proposing. I have lived through the introduction of minimum wage in 2015 in Germany. Maybe you lived through more such transitions, but I did not observe what you (maliciously?) claimed to be for. Sure the US is always different (and solution working elsewhere can't possibly be applied to it), but granted: a UBI might be a better choice ultimately. But the question is if that is really within the set of realistic choices. A UBI is a hard sell even in comparably "socialist" countries in Europe. In the US it would be dead on arrival. Consider that maybe this is the idea. You know, a bit like what the Hyperloop did for intercontinental trains, proposed by a guy who wanted to sell more cars.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
> So the solution is to throw many of the people who currently make $10/hour out of a job and onto welfare? That's what you're proposing. It's not an either / or. If the US were to invest more in education and developing the economy everywhere, there would be more jobs beyond low paid "unskilled" labour. That is, at the moment there's too much demand in low paid jobs, too little in e.g. college or uni level positions, and too much supply of people desperate enough for a job to take something below the standards of living. Compare with my country, which during the pandemic saw a large amount of people in the service industry change jobs, because during the pandemic a lot of restaurants and the like were closed. When those opened up again, they found themselves with a shortage of staff, leading to the ones that still worked in the industry to be in a strong negotiating position and have their wages increased significantly. Take away the supply - by increasing supply of higher-paid and diverse jobs everywhere - and low wage jobs become higher paid jobs automatically. In theory.