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Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

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Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#171
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Gaps are not even remotely what we should be focussed on and are purely based on jealous or indirect aggression. Concentrate on living standards and opportunity that will help far more people than trying pull down a vanishingly small number of people.

It's not just that Joe is rich while Bob is poor. Joe is rich because Bob is poor. And vice versa. It can't be any other way. Grasp that and you've got the whole thing. Sure, focus on living standards and opportunity, but those are just two more metrics that illustrate the same inequality.

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Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#172
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I was working low wage jobs 6 days a week. That made me realize I couldn't support a family living like that. I went and got an engineering degree. I'm not sure I would have done that now.

If the pay was the same, would you seriously rather work at McDonald’s than at an engineering job? That seems unimaginable to me.

Maybe not McDonald's but something outside with very little responsibility and a bit of exercise would be nice.

Don't get me wrong I love to code and would probably find my self doing that again but every crunch time of an unrealistic deadline that had nothing to do with the effort required to complete the project has me fantasizing about spending six months in the summer picking fruit.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#173
post #148

Also in the same series: "Average lifespan would be 800 years if it had grown like the population of China"

This was a wage to wage comparison, yours is a lifespan to population comparison. So completely different.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#174

In the extreme case, what if the minimum wage was $500000000 dollars. That would not work, and it would create a society where everything is done under the table. Now, keep halving that value and ask at what point do people no longer feel required to do things under the table in order to make a basic living (sans criminals). It's not obvious what the right number is. On the other extreme, if the minimum wage was $0,…

The best would be guaranteed basic income and ending minimum wage. Best of both worlds...

People can "choose" to work or be creative and maybe start a rock band, or a business.

This makes a lot more jobs available, more supply of jobs = more competition = higher wages organically.

GBI guarantees nobody's homeless, everybody has a roof.

Essentially poverty is gone, and some equilibrium between libertarianism, socialism, capitalism exists... sure there are players who this won't benefit as much... (Amazon, Walmart, etc...) but the rest of us...it just makes sense.

Taxation will need to be re-thought, maybe land-value tax? Georgism has some interesting concepts as an economic model...

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#175
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's "no technology", because ancient rome was full of giant wealth gaps. Maybe if you mean hunter-gatherer societies, but i don't really know enough about them to comment.

> What's "no technology", A poor, non-existing fanciful hypothetical argument that cannot stand on it's own, but is made to illustrate an ill-convinced point: because since the advent of anatomical Humans (~200k-300k) we see evidence of Man was using clubs or spears fashioned from wood, or arrowheads with the art in caves to go with it. All of which fall under technology of some sort. In short, its a poorly reasoned…

This is correct. More generally, there is absolutely no evidence that wealthier people do, on average, "leverage" technologies better. Ancient Rome is one example because while advanced technology existed, the wealthiest people were land owners taking in the profits of slave labor, not the architects and inventors who built temples and refined concrete.

Of course, the same is true for modern society. Even so-called "tech entrepreneurs" like Elon Musk do much better at seeking profits than "leveraging technologies" -- as paying people to develop technologies isn't the same thing as leveraging them for increasing the productivity of oneself, at all.

However, of course, the argument is hardly surprising. After all, much of the ideology of modern capitalism rests on the ideal of the Iron Man, the genius inventor who, by his smartness (and benevolent white masculinity) embodies the excuse for the exploitation of the Earth's natural resources, for the creeping destruction of our democracy and the huge disparities in wealth and power that go along with it. You just have to believe this is real, otherwise all you ever learned from Coca Cola advertising would be wrong, at that is too painful to admit.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#176
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people.

> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people. I'd argue the advent of centralized currencies did more harm than any and all standing armies combined. When you think about what a parasitical entity does in biology, you realize that simply killing a host is not evolutionary advantageous--their are 3 types of parasitism, not to be confuse…

> Simply by demanding that peasants/serfs pay taxes and conduct all commerce in the coin

Just tell the peasants you're the hand of the god, and the god wants you to give their cows and grain to you. I think that worked pretty well for a looong time.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#177
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but during a crisis what's the alternative? The alternative now is to disconnect the systems from the possibility of contagion, but the nature of crisis is essentially an acknowledgment of a failure to achieve in those efforts. So what then, really?

Less government intervention: Let them fail. System can only fix itself, if we let the flaws fall.

That's assuming the system can fix itself, which generally isn't true :). If a boiler in your bathroom maneuvers itself into a runaway positive feedback loop, it won't fix itself. It will explode, sending superheated water and shards of steel and plastic across your house. The smoldering remains of the PID controller that drove the failure won't recollect themselves and reweld the shredded tank.

A system that fails can be fixed by the system in which the failing one is contained. That same outer system can also work to prevent the inner system from failing in the first place.

(And sure, in the analogy, the "outer system" is the homeowner that can buy a new boiler. But wouldn't it be better to make sure the original boiler can't move out of its control envelope? Then the homeowner wouldn't have a bathroom to renovate and a pet to bury, after it caught a flying pressure valve in the eye.)

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#178
post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

This sort of thinking is corrosive to society at large. It’s not a zero-sum game. But, if you must, take heart in the fact that the teenager will never make more than $minimum in that job, where presumably your income will continue to rise commensurate with experience.

His income will continue to rise but so will cries for progressive taxation on income or assets. It's a never ending story of jealousy and wealth inequality.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's "no technology", A poor, non-existing fanciful hypothetical argument that cannot stand on it's own, but is made to illustrate an ill-convinced point: because since the advent of anatomical Humans (~200k-300k) we see evidence of Man was using clubs or spears fashioned from wood, or arrowheads with the art in caves to go with it. All of which fall under technology of some sort. In short, its a poorly reasoned…

This is correct. More generally, there is absolutely no evidence that wealthier people do, on average, "leverage" technologies better. Ancient Rome is one example because while advanced technology existed, the wealthiest people were land owners taking in the profits of slave labor, not the architects and inventors who built temples and refined concrete. Of course, the same is true for modern society. Even so-called "…

> The wealthiest [Romans] were land owners taking in the profits of slave labor

Not exactly.

Crassus amassed his fortune first through conquest, and then through real estate speculation. Caesar and Pompey's fortunes were a mixture of family wealth and the spoils of war.

There was certainly a class of wealthy Romans that derived their wealth -- and Rome's food supply! -- from land worked by slaves (mostly captured in war and brought in from all over Europe). But the wealthiest were, by far, the political-military ruling class, who accrued their wealth through bribes and conquest.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people. I'd argue the advent of centralized currencies did more harm than any and all standing armies combined. When you think about what a parasitical entity does in biology, you realize that simply killing a host is not evolutionary advantageous--their are 3 types of parasitism, not to be confuse…

What do you consider centralized currency? I mean, Rome had coin, I'm not sure about egypt and ancient sumeria, but I know they had gold and plenty of slaves. People have been warring and exploiting others since civilization... I can't say 10k years back before the move towards grouping in clans and cities... But technological currency also could "right the wrongs"... Imagine if each person could only have 1 bank acc…

What's to prevent the people that deploy and maintain that software from modifying it slightly to exclude themselves from the cap, and diverting those sitting coins to their own accounts?
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