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For those who do not know this, in the USA, our choice is not just between government controls and corporate controls. There is a third element, one that is sup

For those who do not know this, in the USA, our choice is not just between government controls and corporate controls. There is a third element, one that is supposed to be primary. We are supposed to live in a place where we people enact laws. This is not the case. The simplest test is simply to ask "Cui Bono". Who benefits from the laws enacted? For example, do the laws enacted favor drug companies and help them charge $1000 per month, or do the laws help keep drug cost under control? Do the laws enacted ensure that workers earn a living wage, or do they ensure that corporations can charge whatever price they want and pay as little as possible? What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people This is not rocket science. And it is stupid. At some point fewer and fewer Americans will be able to afford the things corporations sell. If you are a predator and you kill off your prey, you will die. We, the people, need to start enacting laws that benefit the people. First and foremost is one that reverses Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This decision by the Supreme Court represents the height of incompetence or stupid. Why is this not happening? Are the opinions and situation of common Americans ongoing and visible? Or does the NYT cater to wealthy corporate advertisers? Does it feature articles like "What house can you buy Portland, Maine with $1.5 million" while the number of homeless in Portland, Maine is staggering. Is the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos (aka Amazon) really going to talk about corporate excesses? Since our media is now utterly dependent on corporate advertisers, which of those media are going to oppose corporate excesses? We need to fix this.

wsintra2022 2y ago
Very well articulated. Standing right next to you, fist raised, ready to share the word.
donatj 2y ago
What percent of those drugs exist explicitly because they can charge high prices for them? Are companies going to continue to invest countless millions developing drugs they have no chance to recoop? I'd argue everyone benefits from a world where cures exist but are expensive, when the alternative is everything that exists is affordable, but progress halts.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Then everyone should pay. For some reason, only we do. As far as the crazy-high prices.
  - andsoitis 2y ago
    > Then everyone should pay. For some reason, only we do. As far as the crazy-high prices. Who are the “we” and who are the “they” in your telling?
    - vundercind 2y ago
      The US. The rest of the world. Including many countries host to major drug companies. Somehow I don’t think they’ll let those companies’ R&D departments starve if the US stops paying $700 for things that cost other countries $120, or what have you.
  - ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
    I remember reading that part of the problem is that Medicare/Medicaid is not allowed to actually negotiate prices with drug companies but must pay the list price. That seems ridiculous and a legally sanctioned way to basically milk the government and co-insurance payers is money. It appears to have been addressed by the Biden administration though: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/10/22/biden-harris-administrations-inflation-reduction-act-saves-medicare-enrollees-nearly-1-billion-just-first-half-2024.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/10/22/biden-harris-admin...
- Buttons840 2y ago
  This view is a bit too simplistic when the "countless millions" is often paid by taxpayers. Taxpayers pay the company to develop a drug, and then the company gets to seek profit by maximally exploiting taxpayers who paid for the drug. We don't need to forcefully regulate drug companies, all we have to do, as taxpayers, is ask for something in return for our tax dollars. "We will pay to develop your drug, but then we get to regulate the price, and you'll still make a reasonable profit. That's the deal, take it or leave it." No force, no compulsion, just us taxpayers asking for something in return for our dollars and coming to an agreement before handing over our dollars.
majorchord 2y ago
>Why is this not happening? This is like asking why stupid people aren't smart.
bushbaba 2y ago
> What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people Source on that. Higher federal minimum wage causes low profit, manufacturing jobs to move off shore. The higher the federal wage the more automation becomes a higher ROI. The more those in poverty have to spend, the more competition for scarce resourcing (e.g. housing), and the more housing inflates in cost. Simply raising federal minimum wage doesn't necessarily benefit all.
- nwnwhwje 2y ago
  You could deal with that through subsidy. Make the minimum wage livable, then any industry you want to keep onshore for strategic reasons you help out. Free market lovers might hate this but effectively the government does this anyway by definition for everything provided for free.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Make the minimum wage livable, then any industry you want to keep onshore for strategic reasons you help out This is a model for shit labour productivity à la the Soviet Union or Argentina. Much better to have no minimum wage and a UBI, to avoid distorting your industry through your wage policy.
    - nwnwhwje 2y ago
      Why? Subsidy is saying: you know you can only compete with China if you pay $5 an hour, so pay $10 and we will pay the rest because having a steel manufacturing industry is important to the government. Maybe the sub is based on productivity rather than wage. $ per tonne.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Subsidy is saying: you know you can only compete with China if you pay $5 an hour, so pay $10 and we will pay the rest because having a steel manufacturing industry is important to the government I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying everyone who has tried something like this wound up with a sclerotic industry. At a certain point, you wind up with the subsidy grantor deciding who can and cannot participate in the industry. Those already in don't want competition. The rest follows quite simply. (Moreover, your export market gets constrained because foreign countries will overcorrect undoing your subsidy with tariffs.) We do this sort of thing in America. It's why we have booming shipbuilding and steelmaking industries.
cmonreally123 2y ago
"What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people" Can you give a source on this one, you state it like it's something obvious and studied but I don't follow? I'm curious how this policy doesn't result in increased off shoring in a world where USA doesn't control 100% of resources, and a theoretical world this would result in inflation normalizing against the increased monetary supply.
- skhunted 2y ago
  There are lots of examples of countries having much higher minimum wages without the consequences you mentioned.
- Me001 2y ago
  Reality? What sources are you citing? Are you paid to post this?
- nwnwhwje 2y ago
  How do you offshore a car wash, for example?
  - cmonreally123 2y ago
    I buy one of TSLAs robots and remote control it from a foreign country claiming it AI.
    - mlinhares 2y ago
      We're talking about stuff that exists here.
    - nwnwhwje 2y ago
      That ain't cheaper!
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Nobody pays $7.25/hr in 2024, as nobody will work for that. McDonald's here is paying $15/hr and in the past 10-15 years have completely rebuilt their stores and kitchens and preparation processes to reduce labor needs.
MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
> What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people Not a great example. The evidence of its effectiveness is mixed, and the burden of the wage increase hits small businesses early. The Walmarts of the world are better equipped to cope. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe not; I'm just saying it's not obvious.
- Me001 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - animal_spirits 2y ago
    There are many people who oppose minimum wage controls. Don't be vapid.
  - dannyobrien 2y ago
    So, just for the record, I'm not being paid to write this, but I read the literature on minimum wages, and while I think they are probably mostly ok, I'm not sure of their long-term efficacy and there are probably other interventions that may achieve the same effect more efficiently. I'm unlikely to change my mind by someone who simply accused their opponent of being a paid shill, but other than that I'm probably a fairly marginal "opponent" of minimum wages that you could win over with a few cited well-written sources. See if you can better model what would convince me!
  - ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
    Minimum wages are a poor bandaid and workers would generally be better off with unions having more power to collectively negotiate better pays.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Why is this not happening? We don't have consensus around the solution. Also, look at our current election. The problem isn't corporate money in politics. It's just money in politics. > Since our media is now utterly dependent on corporate advertisers, which of those media are going to oppose corporate excesses? The ones not dependent on advertising.
crawfordcomeaux 2y ago
We need to evaluate our governance system like we evaluate a system full of tech debt that's killing people: Stop it with minimal nonconsensual death & reactor fundamental design principles. It's the only ethical way out of such a system.
Animats 2y ago
> What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people. There are people trying to abolish the minimum wage in the US.[1] "Abolishing the federal minimum wage would help small businesses. Some economic theory suggests it would lower labor costs, expand the worker pool, raise profits, and reduce costs for consumers, as businesses tend to pass off the burden onto them. Also, ending it would delay the automation revolution. At a time in which ChatGPT – the AI chatbot that answers questions – is all the rage, more jobs get lost to machines every day (Burton & Wolla, 2021). The first ones to go are minimum-wage jobs. “Increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers,” according to Professors Lordan of the London School of Economics and Neumark of UC Irvine (Lordan & Neumark, 2015). Cost-effective measures such as AI and self-service counters become less appealing when one isn’t forced to pay workers more." Plus, it's weakly enforced. "Wage theft" is bigger than burglary, larceny, and robbery combined.[2] That doesn't include misclassification as an "independent contractor". [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/03/10/opinion-the-case-for-abolishing-the-federal-minimum-wage/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/03/10/opinion-the-case-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  Those people are right because the minimum wage is a very bad policy, especially for the low-skilled.
  - p1necone 2y ago
    Where are these "low-skilled" people you think should be paid less than $7.25 an hour going to live? Shanty towns? Tent cities?
    - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
      Yes. That is where they live now, and are told they aren't allowed to work, or else their substituent welfare money they are dis-afforded (against their collective interests long term). They can be something, and feel something, than the federal definition of "so low its illegal" It also is blatantly unfair. Why enforce a minimum wage for legal workers, when illegal workers will ignore it (gun argument!?) and the border is open (but not for guns???).
jmyeet 2y ago
I don't disagree with, say, reversing Citizens United but really what you list here is a bunch of symptoms. > Why is this not happening? Because Americans, as a whole, have zero class consciousness, thanks the hyper-individualism of liberalism and possibly the most successful propaganda campaign in history ie the Red Scare. We have people who unironically will champion for the likes of Jeff Bezos to pay less in taxes and will identify more with Bezos than their fellow worker. The wealthy and the corporations embarked on an intentional journey to destroy class consciousness and to buy the government. It's fascism, pure and simple. They even say it out loud [1]: > "This is a tough question, but this is maybe the question that confronts us right now. There's this guy Curtis Yarvin who's written about some of these things," Vance said, This isn't fringe. This is from Peter Thiel's alleged blood boy [2] and VP candidate, JD Vance. What did Yarvin say? > "If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia," Yarvin says in the clip. [1]: https://www.salon.com/2024/10/01/rachel-maddow-sounds-alarm-on-jd-vances-pro-dictatorship-influences/ https://www.salon.com/2024/10/01/rachel-maddow-sounds-alarm-... [2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to...
erulabs 2y ago
This idea that anyone who doesn’t agree with your economic policy is obviously a paid plant is painful. I just listened to an R and D both wildly misconstrue the abortion issue as if one side wanted to murder children and the other wanted to control women’s bodies. Spend a few minutes honestly imagining the opposition has good intentions. Seek out what they think they mean. The data on higher minimum wages is not clear and it is not obvious it would benefit all Americans (or even the poorest Americans). Even if I agree with you, your rhetoric costs you an ally. > This is not rocket science No, its economic policy and its arguably much much more complex than rocket science. We’ve been thinking about rockets for about 100 years, political economy for about 2500.
- bugglebeetle 2y ago
  > I just listened to an R and D both wildly misconstrue the abortion issue as if one side wanted to murder children and the other wanted to control women’s bodies. Only one side of this is, in fact, being misconstrued, as is evident by the recent deaths of women in states with abortion bans: https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-amber-thurman-death https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-ambe... False balance is its own form of fallacious thinking.
  - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
    Q.E.D. Abortion is the ultimate debate; with no clear answer from any biological, moral, legal, ethical, philosophical, or even religious clause, and science leaning the "wrong" direction depending on social "norms". Social norms are friction against the ability to be honest with peers - that are nearly all going to be incentived to lie about their actual opinion, and project the opposite (but vote the way they are told anyway)
  - Hnrobert42 2y ago
    The consequences are not necessarily the motivations.
  - throwaway59148 2y ago
    I don't want to get too far afield here, but just in the interest of the parent point about assuming good faith, please take a look at this article if you have time: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/dr-warren-hern-abortion-post-roe/674000/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/dr-warr... "Up until around 32 weeks," and not all with medical diagnoses. And this is under current law. Can you say that everyone should be completely comfortable with this?
lurking_swe 2y ago
Agree on all points, but there’s on crucial thing you’re missing. The government was always created BY rich people FOR rich people. All the founding fathers were rich or well connected to rich people. Some owned slaves. Most countries are like this anyway, only a few very notable exceptions. Singapore comes to mind, their government focuses extremely on improving life for the common person.
- nyanpasu64 2y ago
  Well they're certainly not improving life for people who will lose their housing predicated on heterosexual marriage if they transition, or attempting to murder anti-corruption activists.
derektank 2y ago
>What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people Really? I imagine that a very large percentage of the voting public, almost certainly a majority, benefits more from cheap services than they do from the minimum wage. The median weekly wage in the US is ~$1150, which is 4 times as much as someone would make from working 40 hours at the federal minimum wage. There is some upward pressure on wages overall when the minimum wage is raised but my understanding is it's negligible beyond a narrow threshold. So most Americans wouldn't see any personal benefit from doubling the federal minimum wage (making it higher than at any point in US history, adjusted for inflation). On the other side of the equation, nearly everyone purchases labor intensive services from people working near minimum wage, at least occasionally. None of that is to say the minimum wage is a bad policy, but in the same way most people probably wouldn't want to pay a sales tax that raised the earned income tax credit, many people would be upset about the higher prices that followed a minimum wage increase. That's basically what happened during the pandemic; a very tight labor supply resulted in wages going up dramatically at the bottom end of the income ladder and the resulting inflation was very unpopular.
- ramesh31 2y ago
  Yes, indeed, slavery (which is effectively what minimum wage work is) makes things cheaper. Not sure that's sustainable though.
ramesh31 2y ago
>At some point fewer and fewer Americans will be able to afford the things corporations sell. If you are a predator and you kill off your prey, you will die. I some times wish that were actually the case. Revolutions don't happen until people can't afford bread. So they're drip feeding us just enough to keep things on that edge. In a lot of ways life is cheaper and easier now for consumers overall. Everyone can afford a big screen TV, smartphone, etc. Consumer goods are kept at that level. But assets have simultaeneously reached levels that are completely unattainable for 90% of people. They want to keep us in this "constant now" where there are no thoughts of retirement or wealth or ownership of anything. Just a nonstop struggle to keep the lights on in a way that's just bareable enough to not rock the boat.
tiahura 2y ago
Or, how about a fourth way? Maybe government is not supposed to replace mom and dad? Where in the us constitution does it say the role of government is to be a charity, or leverage in some Marxist struggle?
latency-guy2 2y ago
Tell me explicitly what the difference between 1 person and 100 people are. What happens to their rights when you go from 1 to 1,000,000, what you can strip from them when you go from 1 to 335,893,238. Enumerate specifically at which number rights begin to be eliminated, and why. Be careful, you might not like what the people actually think of you when you strip their rights from them. But since you are so adamant about the "stupidity" of Citizen's United, you ought to have an actual stance here. There is a number here, tell me, and everyone else here, what that number is, we don't even need to touch the rights if you are too skittish to answer. "We, the people" is a phrase that means something very specific, take a bit of caution that you are not using it nefariously.
theGnuMe 2y ago
The corps want you to reproduce and die young.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
It's not incompetence or stupidity in the Supreme Court, it's oligarchy and it has been for a while. See the Powell Memo written by a future Supreme Court Judge in the 1970s for details. Research has shown that democratic support is not what gets laws passed in the US, but corporate support.
tessierashpool9 2y ago
generally i share your sentiment but your arguments are rather weak - let me play the devil's advocate here: - drug prices: research is expensive and assuring safety by extensive testing is even more expensive. - minimum wage: if wages are higher then many jobs won't be economically sustainable any longer and then the former employee is becoming unemployed plus still sustained service are more expensive now. - house prices: first of all it's not being homeless vs owning a home. secondly lower house prices, less incentive to build, fewer houses, more expensive apartments, more homeless people. the problem is we try to solve problems with money. not going to work any longer. worked for a while while the fabric of society was still sufficiently in tact. isn't any more. we have to ask spiritual questions. yes, i know it's a trigger word. but that's how it is. you wanna know what society is now about - spend a day on instagram. a majority of the youth seems to be obsessed with clips about guys punching each other in the face or stomach while keeping a straight face. it's no longer - mommy i want to be an astronaut when i'm old - it's mommy i want to fight, bully and be able to keep a straight face when someone kicks me in the guts while someone else films it and i hope some equally shallow dame sees it and we found a family based on values i learned from some sun glasses wearing guy on tiktok who talks like a retarded drill sergeant. there is no hope ...
deleted 2y ago
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wsintra2022 2y ago

Very well articulated. Standing right next to you, fist raised, ready to share the word.

donatj 2y ago

What percent of those drugs exist explicitly because they can charge high prices for them? Are companies going to continue to invest countless millions developing drugs they have no chance to recoop? I'd argue everyone benefits from a world where cures exist but are expensive, when the alternative is everything that exists is affordable, but progress halts.

vundercind 2y ago
Then everyone should pay. For some reason, only we do. As far as the crazy-high prices.
- andsoitis 2y ago
  > Then everyone should pay. For some reason, only we do. As far as the crazy-high prices. Who are the “we” and who are the “they” in your telling?
  - vundercind 2y ago
    The US. The rest of the world. Including many countries host to major drug companies. Somehow I don’t think they’ll let those companies’ R&D departments starve if the US stops paying $700 for things that cost other countries $120, or what have you.
- ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
  I remember reading that part of the problem is that Medicare/Medicaid is not allowed to actually negotiate prices with drug companies but must pay the list price. That seems ridiculous and a legally sanctioned way to basically milk the government and co-insurance payers is money. It appears to have been addressed by the Biden administration though: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/10/22/biden-harris-administrations-inflation-reduction-act-saves-medicare-enrollees-nearly-1-billion-just-first-half-2024.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/10/22/biden-harris-admin...
Buttons840 2y ago
This view is a bit too simplistic when the "countless millions" is often paid by taxpayers. Taxpayers pay the company to develop a drug, and then the company gets to seek profit by maximally exploiting taxpayers who paid for the drug. We don't need to forcefully regulate drug companies, all we have to do, as taxpayers, is ask for something in return for our tax dollars. "We will pay to develop your drug, but then we get to regulate the price, and you'll still make a reasonable profit. That's the deal, take it or leave it." No force, no compulsion, just us taxpayers asking for something in return for our dollars and coming to an agreement before handing over our dollars.

majorchord 2y ago

>Why is this not happening? This is like asking why stupid people aren't smart.

bushbaba 2y ago

> What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people Source on that. Higher federal minimum wage causes low profit, manufacturing jobs to move off shore. The higher the federal wage the more automation becomes a higher ROI. The more those in poverty have to spend, the more competition for scarce resourcing (e.g. housing), and the more housing inflates in cost. Simply raising federal minimum wage doesn't necessarily benefit all.

nwnwhwje 2y ago
You could deal with that through subsidy. Make the minimum wage livable, then any industry you want to keep onshore for strategic reasons you help out. Free market lovers might hate this but effectively the government does this anyway by definition for everything provided for free.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Make the minimum wage livable, then any industry you want to keep onshore for strategic reasons you help out This is a model for shit labour productivity à la the Soviet Union or Argentina. Much better to have no minimum wage and a UBI, to avoid distorting your industry through your wage policy.
  - nwnwhwje 2y ago
    Why? Subsidy is saying: you know you can only compete with China if you pay $5 an hour, so pay $10 and we will pay the rest because having a steel manufacturing industry is important to the government. Maybe the sub is based on productivity rather than wage. $ per tonne.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Subsidy is saying: you know you can only compete with China if you pay $5 an hour, so pay $10 and we will pay the rest because having a steel manufacturing industry is important to the government I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying everyone who has tried something like this wound up with a sclerotic industry. At a certain point, you wind up with the subsidy grantor deciding who can and cannot participate in the industry. Those already in don't want competition. The rest follows quite simply. (Moreover, your export market gets constrained because foreign countries will overcorrect undoing your subsidy with tariffs.) We do this sort of thing in America. It's why we have booming shipbuilding and steelmaking industries.

cmonreally123 2y ago

"What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people" Can you give a source on this one, you state it like it's something obvious and studied but I don't follow? I'm curious how this policy doesn't result in increased off shoring in a world where USA doesn't control 100% of resources, and a theoretical world this would result in inflation normalizing against the increased monetary supply.

skhunted 2y ago
There are lots of examples of countries having much higher minimum wages without the consequences you mentioned.
Me001 2y ago
Reality? What sources are you citing? Are you paid to post this?
nwnwhwje 2y ago
How do you offshore a car wash, for example?
- cmonreally123 2y ago
  I buy one of TSLAs robots and remote control it from a foreign country claiming it AI.
  - mlinhares 2y ago
    We're talking about stuff that exists here.
  - nwnwhwje 2y ago
    That ain't cheaper!
SoftTalker 2y ago
Nobody pays $7.25/hr in 2024, as nobody will work for that. McDonald's here is paying $15/hr and in the past 10-15 years have completely rebuilt their stores and kitchens and preparation processes to reduce labor needs.

MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago

> What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people Not a great example. The evidence of its effectiveness is mixed, and the burden of the wage increase hits small businesses early. The Walmarts of the world are better equipped to cope. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe not; I'm just saying it's not obvious.

Me001 2y ago
[flagged]
- animal_spirits 2y ago
  There are many people who oppose minimum wage controls. Don't be vapid.
- dannyobrien 2y ago
  So, just for the record, I'm not being paid to write this, but I read the literature on minimum wages, and while I think they are probably mostly ok, I'm not sure of their long-term efficacy and there are probably other interventions that may achieve the same effect more efficiently. I'm unlikely to change my mind by someone who simply accused their opponent of being a paid shill, but other than that I'm probably a fairly marginal "opponent" of minimum wages that you could win over with a few cited well-written sources. See if you can better model what would convince me!
- ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
  Minimum wages are a poor bandaid and workers would generally be better off with unions having more power to collectively negotiate better pays.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Why is this not happening? We don't have consensus around the solution. Also, look at our current election. The problem isn't corporate money in politics. It's just money in politics. > Since our media is now utterly dependent on corporate advertisers, which of those media are going to oppose corporate excesses? The ones not dependent on advertising.

crawfordcomeaux 2y ago

We need to evaluate our governance system like we evaluate a system full of tech debt that's killing people: Stop it with minimal nonconsensual death & reactor fundamental design principles. It's the only ethical way out of such a system.

Animats 2y ago

> What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people. There are people trying to abolish the minimum wage in the US.[1] "Abolishing the federal minimum wage would help small businesses. Some economic theory suggests it would lower labor costs, expand the worker pool, raise profits, and reduce costs for consumers, as businesses tend to pass off the burden onto them. Also, ending it would delay the automation revolution. At a time in which ChatGPT – the AI chatbot that answers questions – is all the rage, more jobs get lost to machines every day (Burton & Wolla, 2021). The first ones to go are minimum-wage jobs. “Increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers,” according to Professors Lordan of the London School of Economics and Neumark of UC Irvine (Lordan & Neumark, 2015). Cost-effective measures such as AI and self-service counters become less appealing when one isn’t forced to pay workers more." Plus, it's weakly enforced. "Wage theft" is bigger than burglary, larceny, and robbery combined.[2] That doesn't include misclassification as an "independent contractor". [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/03/10/opinion-the-case-for-abolishing-the-federal-minimum-wage/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/03/10/opinion-the-case-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft

baggy_trough 2y ago
Those people are right because the minimum wage is a very bad policy, especially for the low-skilled.
- p1necone 2y ago
  Where are these "low-skilled" people you think should be paid less than $7.25 an hour going to live? Shanty towns? Tent cities?
  - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
    Yes. That is where they live now, and are told they aren't allowed to work, or else their substituent welfare money they are dis-afforded (against their collective interests long term). They can be something, and feel something, than the federal definition of "so low its illegal" It also is blatantly unfair. Why enforce a minimum wage for legal workers, when illegal workers will ignore it (gun argument!?) and the border is open (but not for guns???).

jmyeet 2y ago

I don't disagree with, say, reversing Citizens United but really what you list here is a bunch of symptoms. > Why is this not happening? Because Americans, as a whole, have zero class consciousness, thanks the hyper-individualism of liberalism and possibly the most successful propaganda campaign in history ie the Red Scare. We have people who unironically will champion for the likes of Jeff Bezos to pay less in taxes and will identify more with Bezos than their fellow worker. The wealthy and the corporations embarked on an intentional journey to destroy class consciousness and to buy the government. It's fascism, pure and simple. They even say it out loud [1]: > "This is a tough question, but this is maybe the question that confronts us right now. There's this guy Curtis Yarvin who's written about some of these things," Vance said, This isn't fringe. This is from Peter Thiel's alleged blood boy [2] and VP candidate, JD Vance. What did Yarvin say? > "If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia," Yarvin says in the clip. [1]: https://www.salon.com/2024/10/01/rachel-maddow-sounds-alarm-on-jd-vances-pro-dictatorship-influences/ https://www.salon.com/2024/10/01/rachel-maddow-sounds-alarm-... [2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to...

erulabs 2y ago

This idea that anyone who doesn’t agree with your economic policy is obviously a paid plant is painful. I just listened to an R and D both wildly misconstrue the abortion issue as if one side wanted to murder children and the other wanted to control women’s bodies. Spend a few minutes honestly imagining the opposition has good intentions. Seek out what they think they mean. The data on higher minimum wages is not clear and it is not obvious it would benefit all Americans (or even the poorest Americans). Even if I agree with you, your rhetoric costs you an ally. > This is not rocket science No, its economic policy and its arguably much much more complex than rocket science. We’ve been thinking about rockets for about 100 years, political economy for about 2500.

bugglebeetle 2y ago
> I just listened to an R and D both wildly misconstrue the abortion issue as if one side wanted to murder children and the other wanted to control women’s bodies. Only one side of this is, in fact, being misconstrued, as is evident by the recent deaths of women in states with abortion bans: https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-amber-thurman-death https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-ambe... False balance is its own form of fallacious thinking.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  Q.E.D. Abortion is the ultimate debate; with no clear answer from any biological, moral, legal, ethical, philosophical, or even religious clause, and science leaning the "wrong" direction depending on social "norms". Social norms are friction against the ability to be honest with peers - that are nearly all going to be incentived to lie about their actual opinion, and project the opposite (but vote the way they are told anyway)
- Hnrobert42 2y ago
  The consequences are not necessarily the motivations.
- throwaway59148 2y ago
  I don't want to get too far afield here, but just in the interest of the parent point about assuming good faith, please take a look at this article if you have time: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/dr-warren-hern-abortion-post-roe/674000/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/dr-warr... "Up until around 32 weeks," and not all with medical diagnoses. And this is under current law. Can you say that everyone should be completely comfortable with this?

lurking_swe 2y ago

Agree on all points, but there’s on crucial thing you’re missing. The government was always created BY rich people FOR rich people. All the founding fathers were rich or well connected to rich people. Some owned slaves. Most countries are like this anyway, only a few very notable exceptions. Singapore comes to mind, their government focuses extremely on improving life for the common person.

nyanpasu64 2y ago
Well they're certainly not improving life for people who will lose their housing predicated on heterosexual marriage if they transition, or attempting to murder anti-corruption activists.

derektank 2y ago

>What is the federal minimum wage? Who benefits from it being $7.25 an hour? Not the common people Really? I imagine that a very large percentage of the voting public, almost certainly a majority, benefits more from cheap services than they do from the minimum wage. The median weekly wage in the US is ~$1150, which is 4 times as much as someone would make from working 40 hours at the federal minimum wage. There is some upward pressure on wages overall when the minimum wage is raised but my understanding is it's negligible beyond a narrow threshold. So most Americans wouldn't see any personal benefit from doubling the federal minimum wage (making it higher than at any point in US history, adjusted for inflation). On the other side of the equation, nearly everyone purchases labor intensive services from people working near minimum wage, at least occasionally. None of that is to say the minimum wage is a bad policy, but in the same way most people probably wouldn't want to pay a sales tax that raised the earned income tax credit, many people would be upset about the higher prices that followed a minimum wage increase. That's basically what happened during the pandemic; a very tight labor supply resulted in wages going up dramatically at the bottom end of the income ladder and the resulting inflation was very unpopular.

ramesh31 2y ago
Yes, indeed, slavery (which is effectively what minimum wage work is) makes things cheaper. Not sure that's sustainable though.

ramesh31 2y ago

>At some point fewer and fewer Americans will be able to afford the things corporations sell. If you are a predator and you kill off your prey, you will die. I some times wish that were actually the case. Revolutions don't happen until people can't afford bread. So they're drip feeding us just enough to keep things on that edge. In a lot of ways life is cheaper and easier now for consumers overall. Everyone can afford a big screen TV, smartphone, etc. Consumer goods are kept at that level. But assets have simultaeneously reached levels that are completely unattainable for 90% of people. They want to keep us in this "constant now" where there are no thoughts of retirement or wealth or ownership of anything. Just a nonstop struggle to keep the lights on in a way that's just bareable enough to not rock the boat.

tiahura 2y ago

Or, how about a fourth way? Maybe government is not supposed to replace mom and dad? Where in the us constitution does it say the role of government is to be a charity, or leverage in some Marxist struggle?

latency-guy2 2y ago

Tell me explicitly what the difference between 1 person and 100 people are. What happens to their rights when you go from 1 to 1,000,000, what you can strip from them when you go from 1 to 335,893,238. Enumerate specifically at which number rights begin to be eliminated, and why. Be careful, you might not like what the people actually think of you when you strip their rights from them. But since you are so adamant about the "stupidity" of Citizen's United, you ought to have an actual stance here. There is a number here, tell me, and everyone else here, what that number is, we don't even need to touch the rights if you are too skittish to answer. "We, the people" is a phrase that means something very specific, take a bit of caution that you are not using it nefariously.

theGnuMe 2y ago

The corps want you to reproduce and die young.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

It's not incompetence or stupidity in the Supreme Court, it's oligarchy and it has been for a while. See the Powell Memo written by a future Supreme Court Judge in the 1970s for details. Research has shown that democratic support is not what gets laws passed in the US, but corporate support.

tessierashpool9 2y ago

generally i share your sentiment but your arguments are rather weak - let me play the devil's advocate here: - drug prices: research is expensive and assuring safety by extensive testing is even more expensive. - minimum wage: if wages are higher then many jobs won't be economically sustainable any longer and then the former employee is becoming unemployed plus still sustained service are more expensive now. - house prices: first of all it's not being homeless vs owning a home. secondly lower house prices, less incentive to build, fewer houses, more expensive apartments, more homeless people. the problem is we try to solve problems with money. not going to work any longer. worked for a while while the fabric of society was still sufficiently in tact. isn't any more. we have to ask spiritual questions. yes, i know it's a trigger word. but that's how it is. you wanna know what society is now about - spend a day on instagram. a majority of the youth seems to be obsessed with clips about guys punching each other in the face or stomach while keeping a straight face. it's no longer - mommy i want to be an astronaut when i'm old - it's mommy i want to fight, bully and be able to keep a straight face when someone kicks me in the guts while someone else films it and i hope some equally shallow dame sees it and we found a family based on values i learned from some sun glasses wearing guy on tiktok who talks like a retarded drill sergeant. there is no hope ...

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