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On August 07 2019 11:13 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 09:53 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 07:58 KwarK wrote:On August 07 2019 07:23 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 03:18 RvB wrote:On August 06 2019 23:52 JimmiC wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. We have a 15 dollar minimum wage and it went up fairly recently. It did not hurt major corporations at all. It did raise the price of fast food, it did cause a few small businesses that were holding to to shut their doors. But really it was a small cost of living increase and life went on. The local chambers of commerce really railed against it but none of the doom and gloom came to pass. It also raised a lot of union wages that were tied to Minimum wage. It will probably take a bit of time to figure out how much the raise helped considering the cost of living increases, but I think overall it worked out and in the election that happened since it was not a big issue to repeal it. It seems like one of those things that is really "scary" but all the businesses just adjust their prices to reflect their new labor reality and the beat goes on. All their competitors feel the same "pain", if you were a business based on exports and had a bunch of minimum workers I could see it having a bigger impact, but locally it was a blip. The minimum wage is an interesting one. A regular supply and demand curve would suggest that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to less jobs. The evidence does not really show this to be the case in the labour market though. This is likely due to monopsony. A market structure with monopsony is a market with many suppliers but only one or few buyers. Imagine there's a market with many bakeries producing bread but there's only one supermarket which buys them. THe supermarket can then use it's market power to reduce the price of the bread it buys. In the labour market the worker would be the bakery (workers supply labour) and the employer would be the supermarket. Anyway in a monopsonistic labour market it's possible that employers keep the price of labour (wages) artificially low and a minimum wage helps to alleviate this. Still evidence is pretty mixed in regards to the ultimate employment effects of the minimum wage. There's also evidence to suggest that while it won't cause employers to fire employees it may make them invest into capital instead and hire less employees in the future. On August 06 2019 19:58 Gahlo wrote:On August 06 2019 17:29 Slydie wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. If unemployment is the problem, a low wages can be an effective way of creating more jobs. The problem as I see it is that strong unions are needed as a counterpower to the cooperations to get a larger piece of the cake. Also, if the unions push too hard, jobs will be moved abroad and businesses will close, so unions have incentives to cooperate to find good compromises as well. Those jobs tend to be empty numbers if a person has to have 2 jobs to get by instead of 1. I don't agree. Yes it's pretty aweful when you have to work two jobs to make a living but being unemployed is even worse. It's much easier to get a better paying job when you're already employed than when you're unemployed. I'm just saying that a person working 2 part-time jobs at $7.25 will be making less than if they had 1 part time job at $15. Yeah, "a job is lost", but nothing was actually lost by the employee and a position is opened for people that don't have a job. Your argument successfully shows that 30 > 14.5. To see the flaw in it consider whether 50/hr would be better than 15/hr. Using your argument 100 > 30 and therefore a minimum wage of 50/hr would allow one person to stop working two jobs at 15/hr and let two people work the same jobs for 50/hr. This is because your argument assumes that the supply of minimum wage jobs does not vary with the minimum wage rate. This assumption is false. Perhaps there is an argument that jobs that create insufficient value to pay a living wage shouldn’t exist but that’s not an argument you made. Your argument is just that higher numbers tend to exceed lower numbers, an argument that logically results in the highest possible number being used. My argument was that 1 part job at $15 is better than 2 jobs at $7.25. There is no intrinsic merit to the market as a whole that the person working has 2 jobs instead of 1 and would be better off with that person working 1 job and somebody who is potentially unemployed picking up the second. People keep crying about lost jobs, but unless the minimum wage going up more than cuts minimum wage jobs in half it becomes a net benefit. If employers literally can't, as opposed to the current standard of "Well, I don't have to", provide a living wage then they shouldn't be in business. I think calling it a net benefit is dubious. If you double minimum wage, and in the process lose 45% of minimum wage jobs, you have some subset of that population that are not only unemployed, but also -unemployable-, because the bar for employment has been raised, and they are not smart / hardworking / educated enough to find gainful employment. Those people still need to eat. Not to mention the extra pressure you put on these now higher paid positions, and how many people respond to the difficulty of finding work with seeking other means of income. There's a balance to be struck between people being able to make a livable wage working X amounts of hours a month for Y minimum wage, and if you lean it too heavily on either end it won't turn out great.
If you lose 45% of minimum wage jobs then those businesses didn't deserve to be in business. They are -unviable- businesses, that only got a chance to skate by due to shitty laws, because their owners can't run a business without preying upon their workers. The only balance that's being struck with minimum wage jobs is the balance in the business owner's(and applicable share holders) bank accounts.
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United States43373 Posts
On August 07 2019 12:36 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 11:13 Fleetfeet wrote:On August 07 2019 09:53 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 07:58 KwarK wrote:On August 07 2019 07:23 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 03:18 RvB wrote:On August 06 2019 23:52 JimmiC wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. We have a 15 dollar minimum wage and it went up fairly recently. It did not hurt major corporations at all. It did raise the price of fast food, it did cause a few small businesses that were holding to to shut their doors. But really it was a small cost of living increase and life went on. The local chambers of commerce really railed against it but none of the doom and gloom came to pass. It also raised a lot of union wages that were tied to Minimum wage. It will probably take a bit of time to figure out how much the raise helped considering the cost of living increases, but I think overall it worked out and in the election that happened since it was not a big issue to repeal it. It seems like one of those things that is really "scary" but all the businesses just adjust their prices to reflect their new labor reality and the beat goes on. All their competitors feel the same "pain", if you were a business based on exports and had a bunch of minimum workers I could see it having a bigger impact, but locally it was a blip. The minimum wage is an interesting one. A regular supply and demand curve would suggest that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to less jobs. The evidence does not really show this to be the case in the labour market though. This is likely due to monopsony. A market structure with monopsony is a market with many suppliers but only one or few buyers. Imagine there's a market with many bakeries producing bread but there's only one supermarket which buys them. THe supermarket can then use it's market power to reduce the price of the bread it buys. In the labour market the worker would be the bakery (workers supply labour) and the employer would be the supermarket. Anyway in a monopsonistic labour market it's possible that employers keep the price of labour (wages) artificially low and a minimum wage helps to alleviate this. Still evidence is pretty mixed in regards to the ultimate employment effects of the minimum wage. There's also evidence to suggest that while it won't cause employers to fire employees it may make them invest into capital instead and hire less employees in the future. On August 06 2019 19:58 Gahlo wrote:On August 06 2019 17:29 Slydie wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. If unemployment is the problem, a low wages can be an effective way of creating more jobs. The problem as I see it is that strong unions are needed as a counterpower to the cooperations to get a larger piece of the cake. Also, if the unions push too hard, jobs will be moved abroad and businesses will close, so unions have incentives to cooperate to find good compromises as well. Those jobs tend to be empty numbers if a person has to have 2 jobs to get by instead of 1. I don't agree. Yes it's pretty aweful when you have to work two jobs to make a living but being unemployed is even worse. It's much easier to get a better paying job when you're already employed than when you're unemployed. I'm just saying that a person working 2 part-time jobs at $7.25 will be making less than if they had 1 part time job at $15. Yeah, "a job is lost", but nothing was actually lost by the employee and a position is opened for people that don't have a job. Your argument successfully shows that 30 > 14.5. To see the flaw in it consider whether 50/hr would be better than 15/hr. Using your argument 100 > 30 and therefore a minimum wage of 50/hr would allow one person to stop working two jobs at 15/hr and let two people work the same jobs for 50/hr. This is because your argument assumes that the supply of minimum wage jobs does not vary with the minimum wage rate. This assumption is false. Perhaps there is an argument that jobs that create insufficient value to pay a living wage shouldn’t exist but that’s not an argument you made. Your argument is just that higher numbers tend to exceed lower numbers, an argument that logically results in the highest possible number being used. My argument was that 1 part job at $15 is better than 2 jobs at $7.25. There is no intrinsic merit to the market as a whole that the person working has 2 jobs instead of 1 and would be better off with that person working 1 job and somebody who is potentially unemployed picking up the second. People keep crying about lost jobs, but unless the minimum wage going up more than cuts minimum wage jobs in half it becomes a net benefit. If employers literally can't, as opposed to the current standard of "Well, I don't have to", provide a living wage then they shouldn't be in business. I think calling it a net benefit is dubious. If you double minimum wage, and in the process lose 45% of minimum wage jobs, you have some subset of that population that are not only unemployed, but also -unemployable-, because the bar for employment has been raised, and they are not smart / hardworking / educated enough to find gainful employment. Those people still need to eat. Not to mention the extra pressure you put on these now higher paid positions, and how many people respond to the difficulty of finding work with seeking other means of income. There's a balance to be struck between people being able to make a livable wage working X amounts of hours a month for Y minimum wage, and if you lean it too heavily on either end it won't turn out great. If you lose 45% of minimum wage jobs then those businesses didn't deserve to be in business. They are -unviable- businesses, that only got a chance to skate by due to shitty laws, because their owners can't run a business without preying upon their workers. The only balance that's being struck with minimum wage jobs is the balance in the business owner's(and applicable share holders) bank accounts.
Let’s say the value generated by the labour for that role really is $8/hr. Having someone do it is still better than having nobody do it and having someone create no value. If you make that job illegal then there’s one more unemployed person and one less job being done.
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On August 07 2019 12:36 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 11:13 Fleetfeet wrote:On August 07 2019 09:53 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 07:58 KwarK wrote:On August 07 2019 07:23 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 03:18 RvB wrote:On August 06 2019 23:52 JimmiC wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. We have a 15 dollar minimum wage and it went up fairly recently. It did not hurt major corporations at all. It did raise the price of fast food, it did cause a few small businesses that were holding to to shut their doors. But really it was a small cost of living increase and life went on. The local chambers of commerce really railed against it but none of the doom and gloom came to pass. It also raised a lot of union wages that were tied to Minimum wage. It will probably take a bit of time to figure out how much the raise helped considering the cost of living increases, but I think overall it worked out and in the election that happened since it was not a big issue to repeal it. It seems like one of those things that is really "scary" but all the businesses just adjust their prices to reflect their new labor reality and the beat goes on. All their competitors feel the same "pain", if you were a business based on exports and had a bunch of minimum workers I could see it having a bigger impact, but locally it was a blip. The minimum wage is an interesting one. A regular supply and demand curve would suggest that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to less jobs. The evidence does not really show this to be the case in the labour market though. This is likely due to monopsony. A market structure with monopsony is a market with many suppliers but only one or few buyers. Imagine there's a market with many bakeries producing bread but there's only one supermarket which buys them. THe supermarket can then use it's market power to reduce the price of the bread it buys. In the labour market the worker would be the bakery (workers supply labour) and the employer would be the supermarket. Anyway in a monopsonistic labour market it's possible that employers keep the price of labour (wages) artificially low and a minimum wage helps to alleviate this. Still evidence is pretty mixed in regards to the ultimate employment effects of the minimum wage. There's also evidence to suggest that while it won't cause employers to fire employees it may make them invest into capital instead and hire less employees in the future. On August 06 2019 19:58 Gahlo wrote:On August 06 2019 17:29 Slydie wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. If unemployment is the problem, a low wages can be an effective way of creating more jobs. The problem as I see it is that strong unions are needed as a counterpower to the cooperations to get a larger piece of the cake. Also, if the unions push too hard, jobs will be moved abroad and businesses will close, so unions have incentives to cooperate to find good compromises as well. Those jobs tend to be empty numbers if a person has to have 2 jobs to get by instead of 1. I don't agree. Yes it's pretty aweful when you have to work two jobs to make a living but being unemployed is even worse. It's much easier to get a better paying job when you're already employed than when you're unemployed. I'm just saying that a person working 2 part-time jobs at $7.25 will be making less than if they had 1 part time job at $15. Yeah, "a job is lost", but nothing was actually lost by the employee and a position is opened for people that don't have a job. Your argument successfully shows that 30 > 14.5. To see the flaw in it consider whether 50/hr would be better than 15/hr. Using your argument 100 > 30 and therefore a minimum wage of 50/hr would allow one person to stop working two jobs at 15/hr and let two people work the same jobs for 50/hr. This is because your argument assumes that the supply of minimum wage jobs does not vary with the minimum wage rate. This assumption is false. Perhaps there is an argument that jobs that create insufficient value to pay a living wage shouldn’t exist but that’s not an argument you made. Your argument is just that higher numbers tend to exceed lower numbers, an argument that logically results in the highest possible number being used. My argument was that 1 part job at $15 is better than 2 jobs at $7.25. There is no intrinsic merit to the market as a whole that the person working has 2 jobs instead of 1 and would be better off with that person working 1 job and somebody who is potentially unemployed picking up the second. People keep crying about lost jobs, but unless the minimum wage going up more than cuts minimum wage jobs in half it becomes a net benefit. If employers literally can't, as opposed to the current standard of "Well, I don't have to", provide a living wage then they shouldn't be in business. I think calling it a net benefit is dubious. If you double minimum wage, and in the process lose 45% of minimum wage jobs, you have some subset of that population that are not only unemployed, but also -unemployable-, because the bar for employment has been raised, and they are not smart / hardworking / educated enough to find gainful employment. Those people still need to eat. Not to mention the extra pressure you put on these now higher paid positions, and how many people respond to the difficulty of finding work with seeking other means of income. There's a balance to be struck between people being able to make a livable wage working X amounts of hours a month for Y minimum wage, and if you lean it too heavily on either end it won't turn out great. If you lose 45% of minimum wage jobs then those businesses didn't deserve to be in business. They are -unviable- businesses, that only got a chance to skate by due to shitty laws, because their owners can't run a business without preying upon their workers. The only balance that's being struck with minimum wage jobs is the balance in the business owner's(and applicable share holders) bank accounts.
Okay, but this sounds like a push away from capitalism as the general structure of society rather than an adjustment that would help fix capitalism. Which, hey, I'm on board with.
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On August 07 2019 13:17 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 12:36 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 11:13 Fleetfeet wrote:On August 07 2019 09:53 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 07:58 KwarK wrote:On August 07 2019 07:23 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 03:18 RvB wrote:On August 06 2019 23:52 JimmiC wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. We have a 15 dollar minimum wage and it went up fairly recently. It did not hurt major corporations at all. It did raise the price of fast food, it did cause a few small businesses that were holding to to shut their doors. But really it was a small cost of living increase and life went on. The local chambers of commerce really railed against it but none of the doom and gloom came to pass. It also raised a lot of union wages that were tied to Minimum wage. It will probably take a bit of time to figure out how much the raise helped considering the cost of living increases, but I think overall it worked out and in the election that happened since it was not a big issue to repeal it. It seems like one of those things that is really "scary" but all the businesses just adjust their prices to reflect their new labor reality and the beat goes on. All their competitors feel the same "pain", if you were a business based on exports and had a bunch of minimum workers I could see it having a bigger impact, but locally it was a blip. The minimum wage is an interesting one. A regular supply and demand curve would suggest that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to less jobs. The evidence does not really show this to be the case in the labour market though. This is likely due to monopsony. A market structure with monopsony is a market with many suppliers but only one or few buyers. Imagine there's a market with many bakeries producing bread but there's only one supermarket which buys them. THe supermarket can then use it's market power to reduce the price of the bread it buys. In the labour market the worker would be the bakery (workers supply labour) and the employer would be the supermarket. Anyway in a monopsonistic labour market it's possible that employers keep the price of labour (wages) artificially low and a minimum wage helps to alleviate this. Still evidence is pretty mixed in regards to the ultimate employment effects of the minimum wage. There's also evidence to suggest that while it won't cause employers to fire employees it may make them invest into capital instead and hire less employees in the future. On August 06 2019 19:58 Gahlo wrote:On August 06 2019 17:29 Slydie wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. If unemployment is the problem, a low wages can be an effective way of creating more jobs. The problem as I see it is that strong unions are needed as a counterpower to the cooperations to get a larger piece of the cake. Also, if the unions push too hard, jobs will be moved abroad and businesses will close, so unions have incentives to cooperate to find good compromises as well. Those jobs tend to be empty numbers if a person has to have 2 jobs to get by instead of 1. I don't agree. Yes it's pretty aweful when you have to work two jobs to make a living but being unemployed is even worse. It's much easier to get a better paying job when you're already employed than when you're unemployed. I'm just saying that a person working 2 part-time jobs at $7.25 will be making less than if they had 1 part time job at $15. Yeah, "a job is lost", but nothing was actually lost by the employee and a position is opened for people that don't have a job. Your argument successfully shows that 30 > 14.5. To see the flaw in it consider whether 50/hr would be better than 15/hr. Using your argument 100 > 30 and therefore a minimum wage of 50/hr would allow one person to stop working two jobs at 15/hr and let two people work the same jobs for 50/hr. This is because your argument assumes that the supply of minimum wage jobs does not vary with the minimum wage rate. This assumption is false. Perhaps there is an argument that jobs that create insufficient value to pay a living wage shouldn’t exist but that’s not an argument you made. Your argument is just that higher numbers tend to exceed lower numbers, an argument that logically results in the highest possible number being used. My argument was that 1 part job at $15 is better than 2 jobs at $7.25. There is no intrinsic merit to the market as a whole that the person working has 2 jobs instead of 1 and would be better off with that person working 1 job and somebody who is potentially unemployed picking up the second. People keep crying about lost jobs, but unless the minimum wage going up more than cuts minimum wage jobs in half it becomes a net benefit. If employers literally can't, as opposed to the current standard of "Well, I don't have to", provide a living wage then they shouldn't be in business. I think calling it a net benefit is dubious. If you double minimum wage, and in the process lose 45% of minimum wage jobs, you have some subset of that population that are not only unemployed, but also -unemployable-, because the bar for employment has been raised, and they are not smart / hardworking / educated enough to find gainful employment. Those people still need to eat. Not to mention the extra pressure you put on these now higher paid positions, and how many people respond to the difficulty of finding work with seeking other means of income. There's a balance to be struck between people being able to make a livable wage working X amounts of hours a month for Y minimum wage, and if you lean it too heavily on either end it won't turn out great. If you lose 45% of minimum wage jobs then those businesses didn't deserve to be in business. They are -unviable- businesses, that only got a chance to skate by due to shitty laws, because their owners can't run a business without preying upon their workers. The only balance that's being struck with minimum wage jobs is the balance in the business owner's(and applicable share holders) bank accounts. Let’s say the value generated by the labour for that role really is $8/hr. Having someone do it is still better than having nobody do it and having someone create no value. If you make that job illegal then there’s one more unemployed person and one less job being done.
What if the value generated by the labour is $0.50/hr?
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If you play enough starcraft, you will eventually go from bronze league to silver league and to gold (or maybe even all the way to masters).
Even if someone is so unskilled that he only generates $0.50/hr, the job offers him the opportunity to work, gain experience and improve. In future he will be able to generate $10/hr, $20/hr, and so on.
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The problem here is that once you make it possible for people to employ others for 50ct, they have little incentive to increase that, even if the person generates 10$ of value. They can just pocket the 9.50$ instead. And especially at the lower end of the income spectrum, there is little the worker can do about this.
The US needs these discussions about minimum wage, because you don't have any unions protecting your workers.
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If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it.
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On August 07 2019 20:20 Pangpootata wrote:
If you play enough starcraft, you will eventually go from bronze league to silver league and to gold (or maybe even all the way to masters).
Even if someone is so unskilled that he only generates $0.50/hr, the job offers him the opportunity to work, gain experience and improve. In future he will be able to generate $10/hr, $20/hr, and so on.
In big parts of America, this is an amazingly untrue statement. People can work their whole lives in one job never getting the opportunity to "rank up". The common statement I keep hearing about "people shouldn't need minimum wage because those jobs are only for students and part timers anyways" is rubbish. People work in those jobs their entire lives, and they need a survivable salary as well.
On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it.
Yes, if I'm really good at filling in goods at walmart, and they won't pay me properly for it, I can just open up my own walmart and..wait. This breaks down rather quickly doesn't it? Not everyone can just "go work on their own".
Companies can offer you less than your worth and expect you to take it, because often the only other viable solution is to starve.
Working class people are prey to be eaten and thrown away by large organisations, and they need unions and the government to step in and help. Otherwise they'll get absolutely trampled over.
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On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it.
How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company...
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On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company...
It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable.
E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that.
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Not to speak that if you produce 10$/hour, you are not being paid 10$/hour. That's not how it works, we do not live in a socialist uthopia where people get the full fruits of their labour and there is no surplus funneled to somebody elses pocket.
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United States43373 Posts
On August 07 2019 20:04 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 13:17 KwarK wrote:On August 07 2019 12:36 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 11:13 Fleetfeet wrote:On August 07 2019 09:53 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 07:58 KwarK wrote:On August 07 2019 07:23 Gahlo wrote:On August 07 2019 03:18 RvB wrote:On August 06 2019 23:52 JimmiC wrote:On August 06 2019 13:37 NewSunshine wrote:
I find opposition to minimum wage increase to be interesting. It requires you to both 1) believe large corporations when they say they just can't pay people any more or they'll have to cut staff, and 2) forget what the minimum wage is supposed to achieve. Minimum wage is supposed to be set such that any job offers a livable wage, even if it's not glamorous. In that context, the number our minimum wage is at right now seems much more arbitrary, when someone working for minimum wage still requires government benefits to make ends meet. Big corporations are forcing you to subsidize these workers, by refusing to pay them properly while they post record profits quarter after quarter, and hand themselves enormous bonuses while they're at it. I should think we're all for raising the minimum wage, once the problem is framed properly. We have a 15 dollar minimum wage and it went up fairly recently. It did not hurt major corporations at all. It did raise the price of fast food, it did cause a few small businesses that were holding to to shut their doors. But really it was a small cost of living increase and life went on. The local chambers of commerce really railed against it but none of the doom and gloom came to pass. It also raised a lot of union wages that were tied to Minimum wage. It will probably take a bit of time to figure out how much the raise helped considering the cost of living increases, but I think overall it worked out and in the election that happened since it was not a big issue to repeal it. It seems like one of those things that is really "scary" but all the businesses just adjust their prices to reflect their new labor reality and the beat goes on. All their competitors feel the same "pain", if you were a business based on exports and had a bunch of minimum workers I could see it having a bigger impact, but locally it was a blip. The minimum wage is an interesting one. A regular supply and demand curve would suggest that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to less jobs. The evidence does not really show this to be the case in the labour market though. This is likely due to monopsony. A market structure with monopsony is a market with many suppliers but only one or few buyers. Imagine there's a market with many bakeries producing bread but there's only one supermarket which buys them. THe supermarket can then use it's market power to reduce the price of the bread it buys. In the labour market the worker would be the bakery (workers supply labour) and the employer would be the supermarket. Anyway in a monopsonistic labour market it's possible that employers keep the price of labour (wages) artificially low and a minimum wage helps to alleviate this. Still evidence is pretty mixed in regards to the ultimate employment effects of the minimum wage. There's also evidence to suggest that while it won't cause employers to fire employees it may make them invest into capital instead and hire less employees in the future. On August 06 2019 19:58 Gahlo wrote:On August 06 2019 17:29 Slydie wrote:
[quote]
If unemployment is the problem, a low wages can be an effective way of creating more jobs. The problem as I see it is that strong unions are needed as a counterpower to the cooperations to get a larger piece of the cake. Also, if the unions push too hard, jobs will be moved abroad and businesses will close, so unions have incentives to cooperate to find good compromises as well. Those jobs tend to be empty numbers if a person has to have 2 jobs to get by instead of 1. I don't agree. Yes it's pretty aweful when you have to work two jobs to make a living but being unemployed is even worse. It's much easier to get a better paying job when you're already employed than when you're unemployed. I'm just saying that a person working 2 part-time jobs at $7.25 will be making less than if they had 1 part time job at $15. Yeah, "a job is lost", but nothing was actually lost by the employee and a position is opened for people that don't have a job. Your argument successfully shows that 30 > 14.5. To see the flaw in it consider whether 50/hr would be better than 15/hr. Using your argument 100 > 30 and therefore a minimum wage of 50/hr would allow one person to stop working two jobs at 15/hr and let two people work the same jobs for 50/hr. This is because your argument assumes that the supply of minimum wage jobs does not vary with the minimum wage rate. This assumption is false. Perhaps there is an argument that jobs that create insufficient value to pay a living wage shouldn’t exist but that’s not an argument you made. Your argument is just that higher numbers tend to exceed lower numbers, an argument that logically results in the highest possible number being used. My argument was that 1 part job at $15 is better than 2 jobs at $7.25. There is no intrinsic merit to the market as a whole that the person working has 2 jobs instead of 1 and would be better off with that person working 1 job and somebody who is potentially unemployed picking up the second. People keep crying about lost jobs, but unless the minimum wage going up more than cuts minimum wage jobs in half it becomes a net benefit. If employers literally can't, as opposed to the current standard of "Well, I don't have to", provide a living wage then they shouldn't be in business. I think calling it a net benefit is dubious. If you double minimum wage, and in the process lose 45% of minimum wage jobs, you have some subset of that population that are not only unemployed, but also -unemployable-, because the bar for employment has been raised, and they are not smart / hardworking / educated enough to find gainful employment. Those people still need to eat. Not to mention the extra pressure you put on these now higher paid positions, and how many people respond to the difficulty of finding work with seeking other means of income. There's a balance to be struck between people being able to make a livable wage working X amounts of hours a month for Y minimum wage, and if you lean it too heavily on either end it won't turn out great. If you lose 45% of minimum wage jobs then those businesses didn't deserve to be in business. They are -unviable- businesses, that only got a chance to skate by due to shitty laws, because their owners can't run a business without preying upon their workers. The only balance that's being struck with minimum wage jobs is the balance in the business owner's(and applicable share holders) bank accounts. Let’s say the value generated by the labour for that role really is $8/hr. Having someone do it is still better than having nobody do it and having someone create no value. If you make that job illegal then there’s one more unemployed person and one less job being done. What if the value generated by the labour is $0.50/hr?
Then that’s still more productive, both for them and for society as a whole, than that job not being done at all and reg person doing literally nothing. The problem is that people don’t generally do nothing with their time. Unemployed people still generate economic value as caregivers etc. and employment often has a negative impact on individuals, both financially and non financially, that could easily exceed the 50c/hr.
Additionally the lower the floor the greater the opportunity for underpayment. Within a free market the value generated by labour represents a ceiling price but does not influence pay beyond that. Pay is set by workers bidding against each other to find the lowest rate that any individual will accept, which is why jobs typically done by teenagers can pay less as parents typically subsidize living expenses, lowering the floor of acceptable pay. Raising the minimum wage raises the floor which gives a greater share of value generated for individuals whose old pay was below the floor but destroys all jobs with value below that floor.
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On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that.
Uber drivers are being paid progressively less and less over the years (average takehome is $9/hr), no benefits, and the majority of gig workers fare just as poorly.
That being said, I can understand how businesses can be seen as benefactors, in the sense that if someone with $500 of capital and a self-value producing potential with that capital of $5/hour works for a business that allows access to $1mil in capital, which increases his value producing potential to $20/hr, that business is technically helping that worker as long as it pays the worker over $5/hr.
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On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that.
Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution.
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On August 07 2019 22:38 nojok wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that. Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution.
That’s fair, but how are you getting paid? Is the money coming from the government, an agency that you work for, or do you have personal arrangements with families? Do you buy the medications/nursing materials yourself, or does something else provide that capital for you? All those things play a role in how much you get paid. While I personally view caring for elderly family members as extremely important and would pay premium for exemplary service, not everyone feels that way and so the market for higher paid skilled nursing just isn’t there (I think? Not sure though).
Upon further reflection, it seems the issue is that as technology gets better and better, the component of value generation derived from human labor decreases and the component of value generation derived from capital increases, making capital investments more valuable/expensive and labor investments less, which leads to ever decreasing wages.
What if the government subsidized all capital investments for start-up businesses?
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United States43373 Posts
On August 07 2019 22:38 nojok wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that. Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution.
Caring for the elderly produces value.
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On August 07 2019 22:38 nojok wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that. Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution.
I don't know where you got that idea from, but I never said anything to the effect that service jobs have no monetary value.
Money is just a go-between conversion for value of labor.
Before money existed, we had to barter. For example, you take care of my grandma and I give you some carrots I grew. But it is very difficult to match willing buyers and sellers in a barter system. Hence currency was created to serve as a token representing the value of labor, and the price of labor is determined by the participants in the transaction.
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On August 07 2019 22:53 Ryzel wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 22:38 nojok wrote:On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that. Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution. That’s fair, but how are you getting paid? Is the money coming from the government, an agency that you work for, or do you have personal arrangements with families? Do you buy the medications/nursing materials yourself, or does something else provide that capital for you? All those things play a role in how much you get paid. While I personally view caring for elderly family members as extremely important and would pay premium for exemplary service, not everyone feels that way and so the market for higher paid skilled nursing just isn’t there (I think? Not sure though). Upon further reflection, it seems the issue is that as technology gets better and better, the component of value generation derived from human labor decreases and the component of value generation derived from capital increases, making capital investments more valuable/expensive and labor investments less, which leads to ever decreasing wages. What if the government subsidized all capital investments for start-up businesses?
Government's money mostly, be it directly or indirectly through the pensions of the clients. Everyone is ok to pay tax for this kind of stuff in France, even our right (or at least the politics pretend to, they're trying hard to dismantle healthcare and our pension system).
On August 07 2019 23:00 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 22:38 nojok wrote:On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that. Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution. Caring for the elderly produces value.
Hence I wrote "monetary value". Another exemple : migrants working in the fields, the monetary value of their work is very very low, there is a reason why almost no one wants to do those jobs and it's mostly migrants doing it. They're producing our food! Or garbage collector, extremely important too, the list is long. There is a huge discrepancy between the monetary value of a work and its true value for the society. I'm not asking for a communist system, I truly believe in capitalism but definitely not in the way it is now, specially when we have to take into account global warming.
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On August 07 2019 23:39 nojok wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 22:53 Ryzel wrote:On August 07 2019 22:38 nojok wrote:On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that. Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution. That’s fair, but how are you getting paid? Is the money coming from the government, an agency that you work for, or do you have personal arrangements with families? Do you buy the medications/nursing materials yourself, or does something else provide that capital for you? All those things play a role in how much you get paid. While I personally view caring for elderly family members as extremely important and would pay premium for exemplary service, not everyone feels that way and so the market for higher paid skilled nursing just isn’t there (I think? Not sure though). Upon further reflection, it seems the issue is that as technology gets better and better, the component of value generation derived from human labor decreases and the component of value generation derived from capital increases, making capital investments more valuable/expensive and labor investments less, which leads to ever decreasing wages. What if the government subsidized all capital investments for start-up businesses? Government's money mostly, be it directly or indirectly through the pensions of the clients. Everyone is ok to pay tax for this kind of stuff in France, even our right (or at least the politics pretend to, they're trying hard to dismantle healthcare and our pension system). Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 23:00 KwarK wrote:On August 07 2019 22:38 nojok wrote:On August 07 2019 21:05 Pangpootata wrote:On August 07 2019 21:00 Acrofales wrote:On August 07 2019 20:53 Pangpootata wrote:
If you are good enough to generate $10/hr and someone offers you only $0.50/hr, then you can go work on your own.
Perhaps working as part of a larger organization allows you to be more productive, e.g. making $12/hr in a company vs making $8/hr on your own.
But your effective personal minimum wage is the amount you make on your own and no organization can offer you less than that and expect you to take it. How does this "working on your own" work? Most jobs require significant capital investment as well as employees to be productive. If I am a trained "expensive machine operator" and generate $10/hour of value, that doesn't mean I have money to buy the "expensive machine" and do it on my own. Nor does it mean anybody is going to invest in me to buy an expensive machine, or even that I have all the other peripheral skills required to ensure the results of my operating the expensive machine actually generate the value that it does within the originally mentioned company... It is true that people with very specialized jobs can't survive on their own. But there are many things that almost anyone can do and the introduction of the modern gig economy makes working for oneself even more viable. E.g. How much will you earn from being an uber driver? It's hard to consider taking a job that pays way less than that. Dude, your view of work is fucked up. I produce absolutely no monetary value in my work, taking care of the elderlies, you'll probably have to redo what I did in less than 6 hours anyways, be it giving meds, washing them or whatever. Should I not be paid? Though I'm pretty sure my job is more important than yours and that I'm paid less. Also, who cares if some people receive more money than the value of their work? It's ok for the owners but not for some workers? Since automation has been rampant, productivity has skyrocketed while salaries crumbled, I let you guess where is the money. Look at the society as a whole, the goods are there for everyone, it's only a choice to share them more or less equally. At the moment it's even more unequal than it was when inequalities started the French Révolution. Caring for the elderly produces value. Hence I wrote "monetary value". Another exemple : migrants working in the fields, the monetary value of their work is very very low, there is a reason why almost no one wants to do those jobs and it's mostly migrants doing it. They're producing our food! Or garbage collector, extremely important too, the list is long. There is a huge discrepancy between the monetary value of a work and its true value for the society. I'm not asking for a communist system, I truly believe in capitalism but definitely not in the way it is now, specially when we have to take into account global warming.
The problem is defining "true value" for society. Value is a subjective concept and different people assign different values to different things.
In a free market the value is determined by the participants in a transaction. If I want you to do something for me, both of us negotiate the value of that action and other people don't interfere.
The alternative is to have some governing body decide the value of things, which is a violation of constitutional rights due to denying the freedom of negotiating private contracts between consenting adults.
An exception is the determination of the detrimental value of negative externalities such as pollution, where society imposes a penalty for a transaction which benefits all parties involved but harms society at large. But it is also difficult to quantify the harm to complex ecosystems which have many degrees of freedom, where for instance global warming models having poor predictive value.
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EPT
