8 ms·

If this type of work is important, then why does it not provide minimum wage? For what reason should Mechanical Turk be an exception?

enraged_camel 13y ago
Legally speaking, the workers are paid as contractors rather than employees. They set their own hours and are not under any obligation to accept work they don't want to do. As such, they don't have to pay payroll taxes and are not subject to laws such as minimum wage.
- pyoung 13y ago
  I am pretty sure contractors have to pay payroll taxes. It is one of the reasons that companies are increasingly classifying employees as contractors, the burden of the payroll tax falls on the contractor entirely (normally it is split 50/50 between employee/employer).
  - philwelch 13y ago
    That doesn't make much sense--payroll tax is roughly 15% either way, so with employees you just pay them 7.5% less than a contractor for the same benefit. The real reason for contracting is that the paperwork is much simpler. You don't need an HR department. And the guy gets automatically laid off after a few months without the incident reflecting on either you or him, so there's less risk. There's another side to it where you can hire a "contractor" on an n-month term, but instead of paying the contractor directly you go through a middleman who hires the contractor as an employee and provides (shitty) benefits and takes care of taxes.
    - g4m8i7 13y ago
      Or you pay them the same, and skip out on benefits as well as payroll taxes and your ROI is much higher.
  - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
    you can not "split" taxes between employer and employee. The employer cares only about how much the total cost of employing someone is. The makeup of the cost is irrelevant.
    - pyoung 13y ago
      The point is that employers are classifying employees as contractors because they can get away with offering the same 'salary', but avoid paying payroll taxes and benefits. We can get pedantic about 'who is really paying what', but in the end, companies are using this tactic to screw over their employees. There are many cases where taking work as a contractor makes sense (mainly, short-term/part-time work), but people need to be aware of the costs, and take them into consideration when comparing job offers.
- grecy 13y ago
  > not under any obligation to accept work they don't want to do The fact they are choosing to do it shows they have no viable alternative, which means things must be pretty bad where they are living
  - diminoten 13y ago
    Only a small percentage of workers are using MTurk as a primary source of income, so I wouldn't agree with the assertion that "things must be pretty bad".
    - grecy 13y ago
      You think that people working for less than minimum wage is not a problem?
      - diminoten 13y ago
        Yes.
        grecy 13y ago
        Once again, I'm very happy I don't live in your country.
      - enraged_camel 13y ago
        The bigger point you need to understand is that if minimum wage was enforced at MTurk, it would significantly raise the prices, and many requesters would simply stop using the service. This would result in less work for everyone.
        grecy 13y ago
        By that logic, no jobs should have a minimum wage, lest it drive up the price of having employees and then there would be less work for everyone.
larsonf 13y ago
I think this misses the point of minimum wage. The whole point of minimum wage is that the work is not very important and very commodity-like. Minimum wage protects the importance of people, not any particular type of work.
rogerbinns 13y ago
Minimum wage is a distortion of pricing for human work - somewhat analogous to rent price control. Although you could argue it helps some people, it hurts others such as people who aren't currently working. They may be prepared to work for $6/hr but are prevented from doing so. Similarly an employer may have work that brings in value of $6/hr but are prevented from hiring people to do so. Or maybe they have work that brings in $10/hr and can't hire two people for it. This is a completely separate discussion than what people need to get by, or what they should be provided. It is far more straightforward to just provide/pay them directly from the government, than pretend that isn't happening and there is no cost by distorting markets and making customers pay anyway, as well as reducing competition.
- 7952 13y ago
  It is quite hard to think of any jobs in western economies that are only intended to bring in $6/hr revenue. Automation increasingly means that people are used as quality checkers primarily who also do some kind of manual work. You could use a robot but you would still need a pair of eyes to check things. Certain tasks can't be automated but that tends to be in higher value products. You could argue that minimum wage forces companies to be more efficient and focus on high profit activities.
  - rogerbinns 13y ago
    There is an employment market - we don't need to think of the jobs. There will be good old fashioned supply and demand as people and companies find what meets their needs. Seeing exactly what companies do in reaction to not being able to hire based on supply and demand is quite difficult to measure. For example it can hit the poorer people because companies can't economically provide products for them, hence causing the poorer people to have to spend more on alternatives. Sometimes surveys find that minimum wage increases made no difference, but that then turns out to be survivorship bias - you can't survey companies that went out of business or left to go elsewhere. The real problem is that market distortions are used to sweep under the rug a social policy, and to pretend that it doesn't cost people anything when it certainly does, and the poor/unemployed the most. If in favour of the social policy then just do it directly.
janesvilleseo 13y ago
While I have not used it, I have thought about using it for things that require speed in mass. That is tasks that can be broken into small little chunks. Which if done by a few would take days/weeks/months. But having a virtual workforce of thousands it can get done in minutes/hours/days. That is why this is slightly different. It is the micro payment for micro work.
twistedpair 13y ago
Minimum wage where? Don't assume that minimum wage in San Jose has anything to do with a living wage in Bangladesh. That's the whole point of this labor arbitrage.
skaevola 13y ago
How would you regulate it? The jobs aren't specified by the time it takes to do them, they're specified by the task that needs to be accomplished. This is unlike a typical minimum wage job, like in retail, where a cashier just needs to be present.

enraged_camel 13y ago

Legally speaking, the workers are paid as contractors rather than employees. They set their own hours and are not under any obligation to accept work they don't want to do. As such, they don't have to pay payroll taxes and are not subject to laws such as minimum wage.

pyoung 13y ago
I am pretty sure contractors have to pay payroll taxes. It is one of the reasons that companies are increasingly classifying employees as contractors, the burden of the payroll tax falls on the contractor entirely (normally it is split 50/50 between employee/employer).
- philwelch 13y ago
  That doesn't make much sense--payroll tax is roughly 15% either way, so with employees you just pay them 7.5% less than a contractor for the same benefit. The real reason for contracting is that the paperwork is much simpler. You don't need an HR department. And the guy gets automatically laid off after a few months without the incident reflecting on either you or him, so there's less risk. There's another side to it where you can hire a "contractor" on an n-month term, but instead of paying the contractor directly you go through a middleman who hires the contractor as an employee and provides (shitty) benefits and takes care of taxes.
  - g4m8i7 13y ago
    Or you pay them the same, and skip out on benefits as well as payroll taxes and your ROI is much higher.
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  you can not "split" taxes between employer and employee. The employer cares only about how much the total cost of employing someone is. The makeup of the cost is irrelevant.
  - pyoung 13y ago
    The point is that employers are classifying employees as contractors because they can get away with offering the same 'salary', but avoid paying payroll taxes and benefits. We can get pedantic about 'who is really paying what', but in the end, companies are using this tactic to screw over their employees. There are many cases where taking work as a contractor makes sense (mainly, short-term/part-time work), but people need to be aware of the costs, and take them into consideration when comparing job offers.
grecy 13y ago
> not under any obligation to accept work they don't want to do The fact they are choosing to do it shows they have no viable alternative, which means things must be pretty bad where they are living
- diminoten 13y ago
  Only a small percentage of workers are using MTurk as a primary source of income, so I wouldn't agree with the assertion that "things must be pretty bad".
  - grecy 13y ago
    You think that people working for less than minimum wage is not a problem?
    - diminoten 13y ago
      Yes.
      - grecy 13y ago
        Once again, I'm very happy I don't live in your country.
    - enraged_camel 13y ago
      The bigger point you need to understand is that if minimum wage was enforced at MTurk, it would significantly raise the prices, and many requesters would simply stop using the service. This would result in less work for everyone.
      - grecy 13y ago
        By that logic, no jobs should have a minimum wage, lest it drive up the price of having employees and then there would be less work for everyone.

larsonf 13y ago

I think this misses the point of minimum wage. The whole point of minimum wage is that the work is not very important and very commodity-like. Minimum wage protects the importance of people, not any particular type of work.

rogerbinns 13y ago

Minimum wage is a distortion of pricing for human work - somewhat analogous to rent price control. Although you could argue it helps some people, it hurts others such as people who aren't currently working. They may be prepared to work for $6/hr but are prevented from doing so. Similarly an employer may have work that brings in value of $6/hr but are prevented from hiring people to do so. Or maybe they have work that brings in $10/hr and can't hire two people for it. This is a completely separate discussion than what people need to get by, or what they should be provided. It is far more straightforward to just provide/pay them directly from the government, than pretend that isn't happening and there is no cost by distorting markets and making customers pay anyway, as well as reducing competition.

7952 13y ago
It is quite hard to think of any jobs in western economies that are only intended to bring in $6/hr revenue. Automation increasingly means that people are used as quality checkers primarily who also do some kind of manual work. You could use a robot but you would still need a pair of eyes to check things. Certain tasks can't be automated but that tends to be in higher value products. You could argue that minimum wage forces companies to be more efficient and focus on high profit activities.
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  There is an employment market - we don't need to think of the jobs. There will be good old fashioned supply and demand as people and companies find what meets their needs. Seeing exactly what companies do in reaction to not being able to hire based on supply and demand is quite difficult to measure. For example it can hit the poorer people because companies can't economically provide products for them, hence causing the poorer people to have to spend more on alternatives. Sometimes surveys find that minimum wage increases made no difference, but that then turns out to be survivorship bias - you can't survey companies that went out of business or left to go elsewhere. The real problem is that market distortions are used to sweep under the rug a social policy, and to pretend that it doesn't cost people anything when it certainly does, and the poor/unemployed the most. If in favour of the social policy then just do it directly.

janesvilleseo 13y ago

While I have not used it, I have thought about using it for things that require speed in mass. That is tasks that can be broken into small little chunks. Which if done by a few would take days/weeks/months. But having a virtual workforce of thousands it can get done in minutes/hours/days. That is why this is slightly different. It is the micro payment for micro work.

twistedpair 13y ago

Minimum wage where? Don't assume that minimum wage in San Jose has anything to do with a living wage in Bangladesh. That's the whole point of this labor arbitrage.

skaevola 13y ago

How would you regulate it? The jobs aren't specified by the time it takes to do them, they're specified by the task that needs to be accomplished. This is unlike a typical minimum wage job, like in retail, where a cashier just needs to be present.