The guy says, “Workers who aren’t paid a living wage aren’t earning one”
Tell that to all the people during COVID and beyond who watched as manpower/headcount was reduced at their job and they were expected to earn the exact same wage for more work.
The guy says, “…A more productive worker will take their place”
He means “A more desperate worker”
He says, “I can’t stay in business if I pay my employees more than I have to”
Meanwhile, he likely lives in a giant McMansion, takes numerous exotic vacations, has multiple expensive cars, and so on…
While they got their covid supplement checks…
And had their loans forgiven.
There are shortages everywhere. They can’t even bank on ‘desperate’ now. They just claim no one wants to work and claim they are the ones needing the bailout. Meanwhile it’s ‘everyone needs it more than I do’ frame of mind.
This is really good and all, but like why are they in the woods?
They’re collecting straw for their men
I think you might be confused where straw is grown. They’d be in a field if they were collecting straw as it’s a byproduct of grain production.
Looks more like a park to me.
average lemmy user discovers the outdoors for the first time
Yeah, I’ve seen a bunch of these guys comics, and they’re all like this. The art is almost superfluous. An afterthought.
It’s the kind of comic where it feels like the word bubbles were made first, then some random, generic art came second.
If we have a social safety net, Universal Basic Income, then we can finally eliminate the need for a minimum wage.
UBI is pointless so long as there are landlords who can jack up rent. It is essentially a landlord subsidy, and it does nothing to address actual contradictions within capitalism.
The landlord problem is indeed a problem, but UBI isn’t mean to address that specific flaw in society, it doesn’t mean we can’t do it until we fix everything, it just means that certain landlords will get to enjoy an additional subsidy for a little while.
I would argue that killing all the landlords requires nothing else, abd we just need to execute in the right order
Landlords needed to die anyway though. Basic pre-req for human dignity and flourishing.
Anyone who doesn’t have enough wealth to buy an entire house deserves to be homeless.
lol, y’all are too much.
Nah. Rent should be free
Nobody needs to grift out a cut.
My landlord is a billionaire in Vegas, he owns thousands of properties, and you cannot convince me he contributes to any of them, only that you have brain damage or no connection to reality.
Nah. Rent should be free
This deserves no reply beyond “lmao”
Sure, everything needs a parasitic grifter middle man exploiting everyone who needs it.
I forgot we live in the fucking USSR.
Funny that you’re using this as an insult when home ownership is one of the few things the USSR unmistakably did better than the west.
parasitic grifter middle man exploiting everyone who needs it.
Giving someone who can’t buy a house, the ability to purchase a place to live without doing so, is exploitation? It’s literally just adding an option that person wouldn’t have otherwise, lmao.
A functioning social network will cover the rents. Still, this makes controlling rents even more important as otherwise the social network will become non viable or even a way of redistributing public wealth to said landlords.
Fuck that, abolish rent.
It’s important to have smart goals.
Bottom feeder moment.
It’s worked pretty good in most experiments.
Do you expect landlords en masse to change their ways based on isolated experiments? Why would the ramifications of UBI be felt in isolated environments?
“Yes, should the economic system in place stay exactly the same - UBI is great! Now let’s go ahead and give everyone UBI and ensure that the economic system does not stay exactly the same.”
Edit: hopefully my point is clear. You cannot expect landlords to adapt to UBI in any other way.
I think its main function is to redistribute wealth from taxes on the rich and to decrease the wealth gap. So it would fundamentally alter the dynamics of the economy.
I know, that’s my point, which means that landlords will adapt in response to the surplus of cash. Unless something is done to prevent it, the landlords will absolutely adapt with the shifting economy. The bottom line is the same: you need someplace to live, they want your money.
What’s the impact on mobility though of lower socioeconomic people?
Suddenly you have hundreds of millions of people who don’t need to be in economic centres for work and can move wherever they want without affecting their income.
And this is a problem, because…???
It’s not a problem to me.
I’m making the point to the person I was replying to as I’m not sure they had considered that if people move locations that would affect rental prices meaning that landlords would be limited in how much they could charge for rent.
Oh. Got it!
In places where UBI has been tested, this effect has been extremely minor.
My hypothesis as to why: supply and demand for rental space are both somewhat elastic.
Has there been a case of UBI being tested at large scale yet, ie. everyone in a given city or province getting it? If you know that literally everyone who lives where you’re renting a property has suddenly been given $1,000-$2,000 more a month, it’s a lot easier to pull off raising rents across the board and knowing you won’t just have mass evictions compared to a test situation where you have a relatively small number of individuals throughout the community being given the same amount.
Yes, on a city/province level. Are you familiar with elasticity as it pertains to supply and demand curves?
Out of all those linked, only the programs in Namibia and Iran actually seem to apply to everyone in the designated area. Even then, I don’t think the folks in the Namibian village are really worried about paying rent for their shanty town shacks, from the way it’s portrayed in the cited article. I don’t know enough about Iran to comment there. That aside, the remaining examples are pretty limited in their scope and mostly target poor people.
Recivitas has been running a privately funded basic income for a small, impoverished rural community in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil for three years now. Recivitas was founded and is run by Bruna Augusto Pereira and Marcus Vinicius Brancaglione. The project pays 30 Brazilian Reias (about US$15) per month to people in the community of Quatinga Velho, Sao Paulo, Brazil. This amount of money sounds very small to people from industrialized countries, but it has a large impact in a rural area of Brazil.
Sounds impressive, but not so much when you actually look it up to see only 67 people were getting paid under the program. Even less impressive when you consider Quatinga as a district has a population of 3,762 people, and the whole district consists of the town of Quantiga and two smaller settlements.
Mincome likewise wasn’t universal, just targeting lower-income residents in the test sites.
The remaining cases more or less list out their restrictions on the page you linked to.
It’s a significant for would-be scummy landlords. If everyone in the UK were to start receiving an unconditional £1,000/month, or everyone in the state of New Jersey gets $1,600/month, landlords would know that everyone has the money to pay if they raise the rent to cover the majority of this payment. If it’s only poor people getting it, this becomes harder to be able to pull off and not just wind up with vacant units. Especially when you’re talking about miniscule payments like R$ 30. Even in the sticks in Brazil, that’s not putting a real dent in anyone’s rent. Granted, it’s not apples to oranges, but R$ 30 in São Paulo gets you a plain hamburger. Like, it doesn’t even get you halfway to buying a pizza.
Yes, I am familiar with price elasticity. Are you familiar with the last several decades of parasitic behavior from landlords and the real estate industry? Everyone needs a place to live, and unless there are regulations put in place to limit their anti-social behavior, these group would certainly do their best to bleed us dry of as much as they could if they knew everyone suddenly had increased income. We aren’t building housing at anywhere near the rate we need to, especially housing that would be affordable to the working class. They know they have us over a barrel for this in many ways, and will abuse us in every way they can without running afoul of legal repercussions.
zzz
yes.
also employees don’t need to have a shitty job to survive.
Now people have to decide between “doing a shitty job” and “starving”. With UBI people can choose between “doing a shitty job” and “chilling at home”. So if employers want their shitty job to be done, they will actually have to make it worth it (either by increasinge wages, or by making the job less shitty).
in other words: good jobs will get subsidized by UBI. Shitty jobs will compete with UBI
There may be some holes I’m not seeing in your logic, but at face value, there’s no fat in that argument and I would vote for that policy, or something close to it.
It’s also important to note that there are plenty of valuable jobs that simply aren’t getting done because there’s no economic incentive for it. I could definitely see someone on UBI making it their “job” to generally help out poor pensioners in their neighbourhood, just as one example.
Basically, everything falling under the banner of volunteer work could be done full time, if people are passionate enough about it.
Yes. Except UBI is a collective systematic improvement subsidizing everyone, including employers, while tipping is an individual act that keeps wages depressed and subsidizes employers only.
How? If the employee isn’t forced to work or starve or be on the streets, they can tell the shitty paying employers to get fucked. If you have no employees who want to work for your offered wage, you either raise your wage, go out of business, or have a closed shop with a No OnE wAnTs To WoRk sign on the door.
The difference with tips is, to be paid tips depends on having a job at a waiter, and that is what makes tips effectively a subsidy; the value accrues to and is ultimately under the control of the business owner, even if they are never the ones holding the money. The draw of a restaurant job is wages+tips, and therefore the labor is paid for with tips.
With a UBI, the whole idea is that the payment does not depend on or have anything to do with employment status. If your job pays terribly and you want to quit, having a UBI makes quitting more attractive and plausible, not less.
Or Walmart is subsidized by the current programs?
Of course they are.
Any employee that receives foodstamps or any other form of welfare is a subsidy that Walmart is, in a way, receiving.
Put another way, if Walmart were paying a fair wage, the employee wouldn’t need or even be eligible for welfare programs.
Even better – the employees end up spending most of their paycheck and benefit dollars…at Walmart.
Like tipping culture but the govt funds the tipa
Minimum wage is intended to guarantee workers have a livable income. If everyone already has a livable income, why would we need minimum wage?
But think of how many businesses profit off the poor!!
If you have basic universal income, all products and especially rent becomes more expensive overnight so still not much of a safely net. Increase UBI to keep trend with the prices and you have some serious inflation.
This is the same tired argument that’s been used by the wealth hoarding class since like the 1800s. The facts don’t support it.
8 hour work days will kill the economy - nope
5 day work week will kill the economy - nope
Minimum wage will kill the economy - nope
<Insert the same argument for UBI> - nope
No, it’s a valid concern that MUST be addressed by any UBI plan. If it is ONLY giving people money, there is quite literally NOTHING STOPPING THEM from making the extra income moot.
The fact you do not understand that is fucking pathetic. They’re not saying the plan is useless. They’re saying the plain, basic concept has some blind spots that would have to be addressed in any legislation. You CANNOT “simply give people money” to fix the economy. Period. Ever.
So you can insult and call me pathetic all you want. It doesn’t really help your argument.
How do you address the fact that every other time someone has claimed the same thing about any systemic economic change ruining the economy they have been proven wrong?
[Edit]Oh I didn’t read usernames before replying. I should know better than to expect anything other than insults and boring old tropes from you.
Fuck off.
Boo. I am in favour of UBI but I would like to disavow this line of reasoning. “You must be wrong because people like you have been wrong in the past” is just ad hominem with extra steps.
No one has been proven wrong about anarchy because it has quite literally never existed in recorded history. Holy fuck your confidance in ignorance truly is pathetic.
I only say the basics because you goons still don’t understand the basics.
Please try to make your point less acerbically so that we mods don’t have to deal with reports and your arguments don’t get removed 🙏
For real. You’re not gonna fix the economy with a single policy. UBI would probably do a lot of good, but not by itself.
Yea exactly, UBI doesn’t fix it.
Something that I find odd about this argument is that you’re supposing an increase in prices will subtract from income to counter out the UBI, but it can only divide if you think about it. So it still has a levelling effect.
What if both are true and we’re all just waiting to be replaced by more productive entities
maybe don’t make the rat race a death race too? start there?
working conditions would still be changed either way once people figure out that not burning out people is more productive for the jobs
I think the employer makes a valid point. If they pay the employee a living wage while their competition does not, then they cannot compete.
This is where minimum wage comes into play! Minimum wage needs to be whatever a living wage is so the employer does not have to worry about what their competition is paying. Their employees.
If they pay the employee a living wage while their competition does not, then they cannot compete.
What is the employer’s lifestyle? How many millions does he or she have? You’re setting up a false dichotomy of only two options - pay more and go out of business OR pay less and be competitive. How about a third option? The third option is that the guy doesn’t need two yachts, he doesn’t need vacation homes, he doesn’t need to be a billionaire while the rest of society suffers. So, take a pay cut and/or give your employers stock/profit sharing in the company.
Owners are quick to complain that labor is so expensive but will never work at their own business. “Oh but I own six restaurants, I couldn’t possibly work at each one, I have to spend my time “managing” all six!” Owning more than one business is the problem. If you want to own a business you need to work at that business. Physically.
I admit I don’t know how that looks for global megacorporations but I’m pretty sure the answer is we shouldn’t have allowed global megacorporations to exist.
If you’re waiting on billionaire with a yacht to do the right thing, you’re going to be waiting a long time.
My point is that sometimes we need to force the hand of the employer to do the right thing.
The third option is that the guy doesn’t need two yachts, he doesn’t need vacation homes, he doesn’t need to be a billionaire while the rest of society suffers.
If you think the percentage of employers that fit this description is a number with more than one digit, you are completely delusional.
I absolutely agree with your second point.
To your first point, I disagree. There’s a gas station chain that’s based out of Texas called Buc-ee’s. They post their wages where everyone can see them and they generally pay about double what the other gas stations in the area pay. Their gas is usually a bit less (I don’t think I’ve ever seen it higher) than nearby locations. Their bathrooms are fucking immaculate. The people I’ve known who work there are genuinely happy to work there.
They’re not perfect by any means, but they’re a good business. I’ve seen them packed full in the middle of the night on road trips so they’re getting customers. They’ve been doing this exact same thing for years. It’s perfectly possible to pay your people more and still compete.
Yeah, I was maybe being facetious when I said the first part.
I love Buc-ee’s too… I try to avoid it cause I end ups spending too much time and money in there.
As far as employers go, I understand they are pretty good.
But they are still using Styrofoam cups. And a lot of them. That’s absolutely absurd to me.
Or collective bargaining in the sector. Tesla is still running into strikes in Sweden because they don’t want to bargain.
Both
Yep, another issue with the argument of the old lady is that it isn’t necessarily possible to sustain a productive business of a certain type. Often times that isn’t a big deal, but it can be a huge problem if it (for instance) isn’t sustainable to run a grocery store in an area.
When it’s a case of a necessary service, often it’ll be already disadvantaged people who are most affected. In my example case for instance, it’ll be in sparsely populated rural areas, or ones with high crime rates, where the government fails to appropriately change legislation in order to coubteract these issues.
Supplying people with basic life necessities should not need to garner a profit.
This goes for food, water, shelter, but also electricity, healthcare, public transportation, and internet.
(Coincidentally, most of these are basic human rights.)
Society as a whole experiences net benefit (even am economic one) from those, so society as a whole should fund them.
Yes, this requires taxes.
I’m perfectly happy with UBI as a replacement for minimum wage. But minimum wage is what we have now.
When a company charges more for a service without doing anything extra, they say that the prices are determined by supply and demand, the free market. They say it’s smart business.
When a worker wants more pay for the same work they’re called greedy lazy.
Someone explain to me how these two scenarios are not exactly the same?
Someone explain to me how these two scenarios are not exactly the same?
Excuse me while I put on my Capitan Obvious glasses. As much as what I’m about to say disgustes me. The company has power and capital, the worker doesn’t have as much of either. In a neo-liberal capitalist society distribution depends on capital and/or power. The more capital you have, the more you deserve to have. Put another way, the winners deserve to win again, in capitalism. This doesn’t have to be the world we live in, but for most it is.
Both sides have valid points. If nobody is willing to pay a minimum wage for a job, then that wage isn’t right for that job. Take, for instance, the task of answering phone calls and jotting down information. Let’s say I get 5 to 10 calls daily, spanning from 9 am to 9 pm. I’m not prepared to fork over minimum wage multiplied by 12 for this work, and I doubt you are either. It just doesn’t seem fair compensation. However, if folks are offering to do the job for $20 a day and I can’t match that, then maybe my business isn’t sustainable and I should bow out. The point is, each job is unique and should be compensated accordingly. There’s no one-size-fits-all wage. The market and the law of supply and demand are the closest thing we have to a fair system. Let people determine what they’re willing to work for and what they’re willing to pay for that work. People aren’t dumb; they can decide if a dollar an hour or a hundred works for them.
Personally, I’m a proponent of Universal Basic Income. Instead of fussing over minimum wages and social benefits, let’s switch to UBI and support each other as a society. Sure, we should tax the wealthy, but relying on minimum wage as a fix? That’s a misguided notion. Minimum wage was a band-aid solution for inequality that’s stuck around longer than it should have. If you’re in favor of it, you’re essentially backing the status quo. We need fresh solutions for inequality, ones that break free from the usual narratives pushed by the media and society. It’s not easy, I get that. But let’s dare to think beyond the confines of convention and consider the future generations. Society seems stuck in a loop, and frankly, I’m fed up. Aren’t you?
I’m willing to consider the idea that minimum wage is a bandage and shouldn’t be relied on solely to fix society, but we would have to pass some serious workers’ rights laws before we touched that system.
The market might regulate wages, but the market under capitalism is also more than capable of conspiring to make sure that wages are lower across the board. The minimum wage is more a bandage over that than a solution to keep workers afloat.
market under capitalism is also more than capable of conspiring to make sure that wages are lower across the board
So, you’re saying the job market tends to favor employers over employees? I’m not entirely sold on that idea. The market works both ways! Workers do have options, like forming unions (as legal entities or just as formal agreements) or negotiating for better wages and conditions. If a job doesn’t pay enough or isn’t fair, you can always look elsewhere or demand more. Plus, if there are people willing to work for less, isn’t it their choice? I’m completely okay with the idea of educating them, trying to persuade them that working for scraps is not okay, but why stop them if they’re okay with it? Why exactly are we stopping employers who can only afford that much, and workers who are willing to work for it, from meeting each other?
It’s not as simple as “Why not just let employers pay what they want?”
First of all, union laws are exactly the kind of laws I’m talking about. Without explicit protection of those groups, employers will literally just fire everyone and hire new people. That’s exactly what worker protection laws are for.
Secondly, once you hit a critical mass in the job market, there will always be those who do the same job for less. This takes negotiating power directly out of the hands of workers without any recourse, and leads to driving wages lower while living costs rise.
Thirdly, we already do allow employers to pay what they want and negotiate how they want so long as they don’t pay what we define as poverty wages (a definition 20 years outdated by the way), and look what that gets us. Jeff bezos is the richest man in the world and turnover in Amazon warehouses is almost the entire staff in 3 months. Walmart manipulates the market to put mom and pop shops out of business by ushering their workers to take advantage of government subsidies to lower their overhead, then they gouge their prices. Mcdonald’s has doubled their menu prices since 2018 but only pays their workers $10/hour, which is not a liveable wage in 2024.
All of these are examples of the free market colluding under capitalism exactly how you describe that it should be and creating a wealth inequality that ultimately screws workers with no recourse.
When you say things like “why shouldn’t we let an unadulterated and unregulated free market just determine everything?” You are advocating for the biggest flaws in the current system without even realizing it.
Preach! I hate all this bullcrap about the ‘free market’ and the ‘invisible hand’.
Sure, letting employers and employees have freedom for what they want is nice, but not everyone knows how much they’re really worth. Thats exactly why some people keep getting jobs with lower pay and employers keep getting away with it!
Its like we’re letting ourselves get scammed and somehow thats supposed to be fine
Why do we keep focusing on stopping scammers instead of teaching people about scams? I think it’s important for everyone to know their true worth, but just banning scams doesn’t solve much. On the other hand, if people can recognize scams, they won’t fall for them.
It’s a lot harder to teach people en masse than stop “scammers”. Also, the “scammers” you’re describing are capitalists acting legally. You think that education alone will stop predatory market practices? That’s incredibly naive.
Why do we keep focusing on stopping scammers instead of teaching people about scams
There’s no reason we can’t do both.
All of these are examples of the free market colluding under capitalism exactly how you describe that it should be and creating a wealth inequality that ultimately screws workers with no recourse.
All of these are examples of attempts to control billionaires in their field through bureaucracy and law. I’m advocating for a change in strategy. You’re attempting to enforce more rules because it seems like a good idea, and it is… in the short term. But we’ve seen countless times that controlling, forcing, and policing never work! After all, corporations will prevail again if we don’t redirect our energy elsewhere. Instead of focusing on controlling the rich, we should educate the poor. We should offer them choices and options rather than attempting to seize control from the wealthy. All you (and almost everyone else) are doing is repeating, like a mantra, “tax the rich” and providing examples of corporations utilizing options WE provided. I believe that you genuinely want better for all people, but from my perspective, it’s you who advocates for strategies that haven’t worked and will not work, without realizing it. I don’t think so, but I genuinely hope that you (and everyone else here) are right and I’m wrong because it appears that your agenda is gaining popularity, while my opinion is very unpopular. Your “plan” simply has a greater likelihood of being implemented and finding supporters. Because if you’re all wrong… we’re doomed, guys.
All of these are examples of attempts to control billionaires in their field through bureaucracy and law.
Yes, this is the free market at work. These billionaires exist in spite of regulations not because of them.
Lifting regulations on corporations solely motivated by raising their profits is like pouring gasoline on a fire and hoping it goes out. It’s clear that there’s not a right answer, but enabling corporations to just do what they want because the current solution isn’t perfect is the exact wrong answer.
Instead of focusing on controlling the rich, we should educate the poor.
Stop arguing like these are mutually exclusive. Both can be done and both are part of the solution. But yes, we have a problem in the short term, and we require a short term solution before we can begin talking about overhauling the system.
Absolutely, I’m totally with you on this! And obviously, they’re not mutually exclusive. Right now, though, it seems like there’s zero effort being put into the latter option. I’m just feeling a bit frustrated, hence the stronger words and arguments than I probably should be using. My bad if it came off like I was saying these choices can’t coexist.
People aren’t dumb; they can decide if a dollar an hour or a hundred works for them.
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve decided a hundred dollars an hour works for me. Now what?
Now you can take that offer to the market and see if there’s anyone willing to work for you at $100 an hour. It’d be great if there’s someone interested! If not, you could think about raising the pay or improving working conditions. If that’s not possible, maybe your business isn’t sustainable, and you might need to consider other options. Whatever you decide, I believe you have choices and can determine what’s best for you on your own. You’re smart enough to make your own decisions without needing someone else to do it for you!
Hate comics with exaggerated faces like this. Just reminds me of that shithead Ben Garrison.
If they can’t find a way to pay a “living wage” they will just reduce their number of employees and make the remaining ones do more work. Or even worse, they’ll be replaced by some form of automation.
Replacing workers with automation is great, the problem is who benefits from the less work required by fewer people. Our current system, Capitalism, means that increased productivity comes at the workers expense and fewer workers see the benefit.
Ideally the workers that aren’t needed anymore due to automation make / work at a new company, causing the economy to grow.
That isn’t sustainable and also won’t apply to all workers.
Theoretically if this ideal state keeps going for long enough it’d reach a point where the economy becomes so strong that working hours can be reduced to miniscule amounts, with enough money left over to pay for people who can’t work (due to mentally or physically not being capable of anything that a machine can’t already do).
This can obviously not happen when increased productivity is only used to increase profits.
Why even increase profits when the company already was doing fine before? Oh right, because all other companies do that too and you have to stay competitive. And they have to stay competitive with companies from other countries too, so as long as there’s not peace between all countries there also can’t be economical peace, ending the hunt for higher profits and leading humanity to a bright future.
We all know that this will never happen.
Ah yes, they’ll go find work at all the other places … that are ALSO replacing workers with automation…
Are you seriously so small minded you cannot imagine how that will only leave the worst jobs for humans, and not give us all more free time or money without a serious restructure of the economy?
make/work at
By this I mean that they either make a new one or work at an existing one. When no existing one needs workers ideally new ones should be made.
And I didn’t use ideally for no reason. I am well aware that this currently does not work well, I was talking about the concept.
The counter to this is obvious. What’s stopping them doing that for workers on less than a living wage?
That happens anyways. You’re doing the equivalent of saying, “well people get murdered sometimes anyways, so why make it illegal?”
If you don’t even understand how regulations help people, maybe you should shut up and listen to more discussions before piping off about how people will be replaced by automation. They will anyways, fool!
That happens anyways.
Just because someone already sprained their ankle, doesn’t mean stabbing them doesn’t worsen their situation. But that’s literally your argument.
Automation is steadily becoming cheaper, and it will invariably replace human job X when it becomes less expensive than that human labor. Jacking up the cost of the human labor will obviously automation to cross that threshold MUCH FASTER.
You are the fool here.
The issue this is ignoring is how the government can make an industry so expensive that it cant compete with foreign countries and that industry leaves the developed country or just doesnt exist anymore. So it was never the employers fault it was just made too expensive.
No, it’s totally the employers fault. Invariably they made the choice to go overseas rather than accept lower profits.
Those things the government does to make it more expensive to operate in a country?
Those are things like “a livable wage”, “health care”, “workplace safety”, and “environmental protection”.If you can’t stay in business while doing those things, you don’t deserve to be a business.
When a business cites government overhead as a reason for going overseas, always look at what they’re saying they don’t want to pay for.
Except that there are already businesses overseas. If they go under those other businesses already overseas will replace them.
You … DO understand that trade is regulated… right?
And what exactly does that have to do with businesses that can’t operate well deserving to stay in business?
If capitalism breeds innovation, then innovate and find a way to pay your workers well in a safe and clean workplace.
It doesn’t. That’s not my point at all. My point is these regulations don’t apply to foreign companies, who can therefore compete better and potentially take over. The local businesses shrink or go bust and people end up unemployed.
Increasing taxes or mandating minimum wages don’t work unless you can do it globally. Doing these things locally won’t fix capitalism, we need to be rid of capitalism. I am not saying you shouldn’t try to do these things, but understand it isn’t a perfect solution and that there will be problems until there is no more capitalism worldwide.
What you are saying can be true for some businesses but not all businesses. On the industrial scale the government can make it impossble to compete with foreign companies that have the same requirments. Those requirements may be considered good, but they are typically just outsourcing the same problems. But then if you look at agriculture, the government directly puts people out of business due to their requirements for foreign workers. The domestic farmers just cant make any money when it is a labor intensive crop. So it will just make those domestic producers disappear.
Again, that “government overhead” is the “Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act” and the rules of the H-2A visa program which ensures that you do crazy things like “pay the workers fairly”, “don’t discriminate”, and “don’t retaliate against workers whom you abused”.
It sucks for them that they can’t turn a profit without criminally exploiting migrant farm workers, but I don’t really give a damn.
Instead of pushing for the ability to mistreat workers, push for import bans on agricultural products from nations that lack reasonable parity in worker protection.
I like chocolate less than I like an absence of slavery.I think the issue that your argument has that you are equating regulations that are overboard with reglations that actually protect people. For example the act you are referring to makes it so that the compensation farms have to pay to foreign workers is much higher than domestic workers. It has nothing to do with “criminally exploiting migrants”.
Are you referring to how you have to pay foreign workers the average of what domestic workers make? Also known as “you can’t use foreign labor to depress regional wages”? Otherwise you’re gonna have to provide a citation.
If you’re complaining that you can’t afford to hire foreign workers because they’re more expensive than domestic, you can just … Hire domestic?
If you’re still complaining, it makes it harder to argue that you aren’t aiming to hire foreign farm workers to undercut minimum wage laws.The min wage for foreign farm workers vary by state but are in the ballpark of $15/hr must include free housing and a bunch of other things. There is not enough domestic labor for farms, it is not depresssing any wages.
Well, I’d certainly hope it’s not depressing wages, since the point of the law was to keep it from doing that in the first place. Sounds like the law is working to keep the cost of foreign and domestic workers in line, so no problem there.
It really just sounds like you’re unhappy that farmers can’t import foreign laborers at poverty prices, and instead have to pay them fairly, or god forbid pay an attractive wage to domestic workers.
You’re really not making a good case for “paying migrant workers fairly, and giving them shelter after they travel from another country to work for you is unjust government regulation”.
This is seriously not sounding like brazen government overreach, just basic worker protections.
Why would they pay more when they can find a replacement for less?
This is why the system is broken
It’s always telling that you never see an actual dollar value attached to this nebulous “living wage”–the ideologues know that doing so would force them to make a concrete argument, which can then be scrutinized properly (and invariably fall apart once realism is applied).
The people who make these arguments don’t realize that “the more productive entrepreneur” is invariably only the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets. This ‘argument’ put into practice would slaughter 99.9% of small businesses, leaving only the megacorporations to be employing anyone. And what happens when all their positions are filled? Well, the rest have no jobs and no income at all, but hey, at least they don’t have a job that’s paying ‘less than living wage’.
It’s always telling that you never see an actual dollar value attached to this nebulous “living wage”
That’s because what’s a living wage depends on what things are needed, and what they need, making it inherently variable. A living wage should cover everything a family needs: food, shelter, transportation, childcare. If you live somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere, then a living wage needs to be cover car payments. If you life in a walk-able neighborhood, then you don’t need a car, hence the living wage there would not need to cover car payments. So here is the argument: A family should earn enough to cover food, shelter, transportation and childcare.
The people who make these arguments don’t realize that “the more productive entrepreneur” is invariably only the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets.
That’s not true. The corporation with the “deepest pockets” is the one who has the most money, they’re not necessarily the most efficient one, e.g. they could be wealthy because they are a huge conglomerate, but they need a huge bureaucratic apparatus to manage their operations.
This ‘argument’ put into practice would slaughter 99.9% of small businesses, leaving only the megacorporations to be employing anyone.
Not true, see above. Also, if wages are higher, more people can safe money, allowing more people to start a business. Hence we’d have more small businesses, rather than less.
And what happens when all their positions are filled?
We decrease the amount of labor time that is considered full employment, forcing them to hire more people to reach the same output.
Don’t argue with stupid. I mean, you can if you want, but… whatever anyway.
That’s because what’s a living wage depends on what things are needed, and what they need, making it inherently variable.
And conveniently, always able to be argued that it hasn’t been achieved yet. The equivalent of always answering “how much do you think you should be paid?” with “More.”, ceaselessly.
A living wage should cover everything a family needs
So everyone should be paid as much as it’d take to support a family, even if they’re single?
If you live somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere, then a living wage needs to be cover car payments.
Car payments? What car? What term? What interest rate? Car payments vary WILDLY, based on both individual decisions, and different creditworthiness. “Sorry boss, you gotta pay me more, because I got a 96-month auto loan on this BMW at 18%”.
This is a joke, right?
If you life in a walk-able neighborhood
So we’re implementing wage legislation on the “neighborhood” level? Sure, let’s add to the unrealism pile, lol.
food
What kind of food?
shelter
What kind? Apartment? House? How many bedrooms? Bathrooms? Square footage?
childcare
For how many children?
if wages are higher, more people can safe money
More people will have NO money, because they’ll have been fired by their employer who realized they cost more than they’re worth to the company.
You can’t save money without an income.
And even if you’re one of the lucky ones who still has a job, there are practically zero small business categories with profit margins large enough to support such a massive increase in labor costs.
We decrease the amount of labor time that is considered full employment
So, the existing workers’ income drops again? lol
forcing them to hire more people to reach the same output.
You can’t force them to hire anyone. They will hire more people only if doing so increases their profits. If it doesn’t, they won’t. Period.
The way you dehumanize people is pretty abhorrent.
…you don’t know what “dehumanize” means, do you?
Cite literally one example of me dehumanizing anyone.
Sure, that isn’t hard at all, unless you got your head stuck up your ass.
You question the need to have adequate nutrition, access to affordable (or preferably free, as it is here) childcare, affordable housing and transport and to top it off, you seem to have something against a wage you can actually live on, instead of barely getting by month-to-month.
So yes, you definitely dehumanize a vast majority of the human beings that try to survive on this planet, and you do it in a really ugly way, too.
Shame on you.
You question the need to have adequate nutrition
You are literally lying. I did not say or even begin to imply that. Are you really so shameless to be this blatantly dishonest, when there is a full record of everything I literally wrote right there as evidence of your lie?
[You question the need to have] access to affordable (or preferably free, as it is here) childcare
Again, a lie. I was making a point about how the fact that people have differing numbers of children makes the assertion that ‘a living wage must include the cost of childcare’ overly simplistic. I was trying to get them to actually think their position through and go into more detail about how they think such should actually be calculated. Do you do it based on the average number of children people have? Do you have an amount X that must be added to one’s wage per child they have? And so on.
affordable housing and transport
Again, similar to the above, all I did was ask for more detail because this is too simplistic. “Housing” is something with an EXTREMELY variable cost. And both “transport” and the need for it, also vary wildly from person to person.
I know that general ‘cost of living’ varies from place to place, so a single dollar amount is not appropriate for a ‘living wage’ proposal. But my point, clearly, is that even defining living wage by saying, for example, that part of it should include ‘the cost of childcare’ is STILL not specific enough, to be something you’re even at the level of being able to PROPOSE to anyone. If those ‘pieces’ that add up to the living wage are never defined, how do you expect them to be calculated?
There are hard questions here that ‘minimum wage should be living wage’ proponents NEED to answer, if they expect their cause to go anywhere. All I did was point that fact out. To call that “dehumanizing” is absolutely ridiculous. Insisting that you formulate your proposal to a degree that it’s ACTUALLY ACTIONABLE, is not even on the same planet as ‘questioning the need to have adequate nutrition’ or any of the other bizarre bollocks you accused me of.
So no, shame on you, for having such poor reading comprehension.
Nah, it’s you. Hiding your argument behind semantics and policy is even worse than coming out and saying you think all the poor people should die - at least then you’d be honest, instead of these theatrics.
I see what you’re doing. You can’t go and say “Poor people shouldn’t be able to feed themselves”, or “Children of poor parents shouldn’t get an education”, so you focus on implementation details which can be questioned without looking bad, and you ask the questions in a way as to suggest that the less fortunate are only in their situation because of reckless financial decisions.
What kind of food?
Right back at you. What kind of food should less fortunate people eat?
Your assumption that reasonably higher wages would lead to unemployment simply has no basis in reality. If we take the US as a baseline, then we see that countries with a higher minimum wage are not poverty ridden hellholes.
I see what you’re doing.
You really don’t. You see what you want to see, and what makes it easier for you to avoid the objectively obvious consequences of your policy suggestions.
Your assumption that reasonably higher wages would lead to unemployment simply has no basis in reality.
L M A O
I don’t know if I could strawman a shinier beacon of economic ignorance than you just volunteered.
Quote https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/minimum-wages-can-raise-unemployment.asp :
However, according to leading economists—including famed billionaire investor Warren Buffett—minimum wages can actually raise unemployment by giving employers less incentive to hire and more incentive to automate and outsource tasks that low-wage employees previously performed.
Higher mandated minimum wages also force businesses to raise prices to maintain desired profit margins. Higher prices can lead to less business, which means less revenue and, therefore, less money to hire and pay employees. When forced to pay workers more per hour, companies have to hire fewer workers or assign the same number of workers fewer hours to keep from going over their predetermined wage expense limits. Many companies do just that or, when possible, they ship jobs overseas, where the per-hour expense of an employee is significantly lower.
Automation is another alternative that many companies turn to to avoid higher wage expenses. This is particularly true in large cities like Los Angeles and Seattle. Rather than giving their order to a live employee at the counter, fast-food customers input what they want into a computer, which also accepts payment and even deposits the paper sack full of food when it comes out of the kitchen.
Oh look, leading economists saying the exact same things I am. But no, this all must be an ‘assumption with no basis in reality’.
If only you were as knowledgeable as you are condescending.
I wrote that a reasonable increase in minimum wage won’t lead to increased unemployment, as we can see in pretty much any country with strong unions.
Yeah, well, small businesses shouldn’t handle all the economy. We do need medium and large and gigantic economic agents too.
Yeah, well, small businesses shouldn’t handle all the economy.
They don’t, they employ ~48% of people. It would absolutely NOT be healthy for the economy to torpedo them, and it’s always really ironic to see the same crowd suggest policies that would do so, who also complain about things like a Walmart opening in an area and undercutting the local small businesses, causing them all to go under.
