261–270 of 279 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Let’s break up monopolies and encourage competition.
Is there an ETA for the break up? The trend is the other direction. We could always wait for the end of scarcity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are labor cartels bad but capital cartels fine? Why must an employee bargain individually but a megacorp be allowed to bargain against them collectively?
Who here said any form of cartel is fine? If we need to regulate financial markets to prevent collusion, we should do that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t say the former is what we have, but with unions or tight labor market regulation, the later tends to be closer to what you get. This is a big claim without any evidence. Given the minimum wages in other western countries are proportionally much higher with no negative consequences AFAIK, do you have any evidence that the richest average income country could not have a higher minimum wage?
>no negative consequences Meanwhile politicians tell us that double digit unemployment is the new normal. There are people that are not skilled enough to warrant certain minimum wage. There are jobs that are not feasible at certain wage levels. When you put a floor on what people can agree between themselves that their work is worth, you price people and jobs out of the market. It is self evident when you look at it.…
That's not true at all for example Switzerlands minimum wage is not dictated at the federal level but its equivalent to 25 bucks an hour in Geneva. [1].
> There are jobs that are not feasible at certain wage levels. > It is self evident when you look at it.
That's not self evident at all. People still work at unskilled jobs countries like Switzerland or Australia. How do you think the cleaning and fast food industries work?
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-geneva-introduce...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>no negative consequences Meanwhile politicians tell us that double digit unemployment is the new normal. There are people that are not skilled enough to warrant certain minimum wage. There are jobs that are not feasible at certain wage levels. When you put a floor on what people can agree between themselves that their work is worth, you price people and jobs out of the market. It is self evident when you look at it.…
Agreed that it is self evident when examined in the right light. Minimum wage doesn't increase the wages of the lowest tier of productivity.. It outlaws it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're getting very close to the much deeper question: what are these ("rags-to-riches") stories for? And even more generally, what are stories for? Suppose you drop any and all negative criticism of the story. What's left? What's that for? What should anyone make of this story? What lessons can they learn? What true lessons can they learn? What invented lessons can they learn (because sometimes we tell stories to co…
I don't see why you read a comment saying that it's perfectly fine to look at negatives especially as the relate to the specific story and then want to imply someone is saying we drop all negative criticism. - At the end of the day this feels like such a HN thread. A story can't just be a moment feel good? It has to be reinforcing systematic injustice or a looking glass for how terrible so many have it? It can't just…
However ... having established that as the goal for this particular story, we can ask how well it does that, compared to other stories that might also have this as their only goal. We probably should ask this, because there almost innumerable stories whose primary purpose is to create a smile, and we may as well not waste our time on the less good ones given that we have (individually and as a culture) only a finite time to tell and/or listen to stories.
The ranking is necessarily personal (subjective), and incomplete (given the scope of possible stories). Even so, if I was looking for a story to just smile at, I'd rank this one fairly low (mostly because it butts right against the more difficult questions you've asked us to put aside (for a while, at least)).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t say the former is what we have, but with unions or tight labor market regulation, the later tends to be closer to what you get. This is a big claim without any evidence. Given the minimum wages in other western countries are proportionally much higher with no negative consequences AFAIK, do you have any evidence that the richest average income country could not have a higher minimum wage?
> With data from 25 OECD countries over 15 years from 2000 to 2014, we find that a higher minimum wage decreases labor demand but does not affect labor supply. Our empirical results also suggest that relatively modest increases in minimum wages have limited impacts on employment. On average, 10 percent increase in the minimum wage decreases employment by 0.7 percent, thereby increasing unemployment rate by 0.64 perce…
So a raise of 25% would equate to 1.28% unemployment. A fully socialized welfare system (Centrelink in Australia) costs 14% of GDP with 6.8% unemployment. So a reversal of 25% would reduce that to 5.52%, and 11.36% of GDP (assuming overheads etc are linear, optimistic).
TLDR; if this article is correct, raising minimum wage 25% requires governments invest 2.6PP of GDP.
At least that's a decent point to have a rational discussion about where governments spend money and what your priorities are - thanks for sharing.
This is a really nice story, but you know who the other hero is? The CEO who gave him the time and the opportunity. He could've easily told him to fuck off, as many would do. Who was he, what's his name? More often than not, we get nowhere without people in better positions helping us, it would be great if more people would keep an open mind like that. That CEO deserves recognition. And if you manage to climb higher…
I would call it "common decency". An uncommon trait for corporate executives.
But there's no reason to elevate the occasional few who are capable of it to "hero" status.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The original post is flagged, so I can't read it. From the surrounding discussion I surmised that the original post made some sort of negative-sounding sweeping generalization about Indians, or at least phrased it in a bad way. I'm not here to talk about the original post though. I'm specifically objecting to the "X isn't a race hur dur" meme because it derails discussion of the issue at hand without being constructi…
The original post asked (paraphrased) “why do Indians like this sort of feel good story so much?” I bought up the pedantic point because in my mind it was further illustration that the poster who used the term “casual racism” was jumping to conclusions. Not only could the original post have been easily interpreted as in good faith, but the criticism of it was both poorly formed and lacking justification. I feel like…
If they were alleging bias or bigotry based on nationality, it's not the dictionary definition of racism but it's something equally bad. You and I both know what they were actually alleging, right? So nitpicking the specific term they used is counterproductive to the discussion - especially when there isn't an easy, single word to describe bigotry based on nationality or national origin.
I'm objecting to the logic that goes "racism = bad, X group isn't a race but a nationality/ethnicity/religion/, therefore this != racism, therefore this != bad". I know you mean well and I hope you understand where I'm coming from.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep - many, if not most, factories staff these positions themselves. It fits in with their existing maintenance, assembly, cleaning, warehouse type roles. It's mainly white collar places that don't know how, or don't want to, hire anyone who does blue collar work.
Part of the reason white collar firms outsource is that benefits usually need to be uniform across all employees. If you are a white collar firm with generous benefit packages, it becomes comparatively expensive to hire blue collar workers yourself compared to outsourcing. Decent health insurance (~$20K/year) is more than the federal minimum wage ($14.5K/year). I'm not suggesting this is moral, but it is reality. At…