Next time I'm going to apply for one of those CEO jobs rather than minimum wage.
Minimum Wage Clock
31–40 of 278 posts
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#32The minimum wage should be scrapped. It either a) prevents people who are happy to work for less obtain a job which is uneconomical at the minimum wage, or b) it creates an effect similar to communism, where everyone doing a job at or below a certain value gets paid the same, no matter what the value of their work is. This leads to the higher quality workers reducing their output, as they are only getting the paid th…
> people who are happy to work for less
I wonder where are these people. Do you know any? Would you be "happy" to work for less than minimum wage?
> it creates an effect similar to communism
Sure, gommunism is when minimum wage. Most of Europe is in fact gommunist today, while its bourgeoisie gets richer and richer by the year.
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#33The minimum wage should be scrapped. It either a) prevents people who are happy to work for less obtain a job which is uneconomical at the minimum wage, or b) it creates an effect similar to communism, where everyone doing a job at or below a certain value gets paid the same, no matter what the value of their work is. This leads to the higher quality workers reducing their output, as they are only getting the paid th…
I probably shouldn't respond to comments that are rather unserious, but I suppose you got me.
I'd say that the US national minimum wage has already effectively been scrapped through neglect (I assume mostly willful neglect), so congrats?
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#34[deleted]
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#35People like to talk about inequality but absolute poverty seems like a more important target. Satya Nadella having more money than me doesn't make my life worse; I'm more concerned about the availability of jobs, food, housing, etc. That said, CEO salary does strike me as strange. Who needs 8 million per year + stock? I'd think more CEOs would voluntarily take a pay cut.
The Spirit Level [1] makes a good argument for why more equal societies benefit everyone within them. At the very least, I think it's fair to say that "Satya Nadella having more money than me doesn't make my life worse" is not definitively true. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level_(book)
I'm ok with people working hard and getting paid for it. I'm not ok with those people using their money against me in any way, which is what still happens and nobody talks about.
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#36If we find this appalling, let's stop consuming the products of those who we feel are "overpaid" and visit the website, businessplace, or other endeavors of those we feel are "underpaid". Tim Cook gets paid a lot (and so do many AAPL employees), but I can't help but admit that my last 3 laptops I bought with my own cash were MBP, and not a system76 or framework. And I'm more likely to visit costco than a farmer's mar…
This is hard due to all the monopolies that exist in the modern world, and it's only possible for B2C businesses. The entire value chain is dominated by B2B where consumers have little say. I love System76 but their components are still from mega corps with stupid CEO salaries.
The only effective ways to deal with this are progressive taxation and labor regulations. Bring back the 90+% top tax bracket that Thatcher and Reagan disposed of. Tie minimum wage to regional cost of living indices.
Of course, this article only discusses wages. The truly wealthy don't make much from income. It's incredible that capital gains tax is less than income tax.
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#37The minimum wage should be scrapped. It either a) prevents people who are happy to work for less obtain a job which is uneconomical at the minimum wage, or b) it creates an effect similar to communism, where everyone doing a job at or below a certain value gets paid the same, no matter what the value of their work is. This leads to the higher quality workers reducing their output, as they are only getting the paid th…
c) the minimum amount required to live peacefully and with dignity.
While it's repeated ad nauseam, this was the intended purpose of the minimum wage, as quoted by FDR who signed the minimum wage into law:
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#38The minimum wage should be scrapped. It either a) prevents people who are happy to work for less obtain a job which is uneconomical at the minimum wage, or b) it creates an effect similar to communism, where everyone doing a job at or below a certain value gets paid the same, no matter what the value of their work is. This leads to the higher quality workers reducing their output, as they are only getting the paid th…
c) the minimum amount required to live peacefully and with dignity.
If you want that and you aren't producing enough value to warrant it, why should someone else pay for it? Find some more valuable work to do, work harder
In the UK you'll get benefits to top up your wage anyway.
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#39I think it's strange that only a few of the richest countries are represented here. It would be good to include wages for something like 1) a software engineer in a less major Mexican city, 2) we can also compare with a restaurant worker in California which starting in April will be $20/hr, 3) minimum wage worker in poor country, 4) immigrant/unofficial worker in poor country not being given minimum wage, etc.
Re: Minimum Wage Clock
#40People like to talk about inequality but absolute poverty seems like a more important target. Satya Nadella having more money than me doesn't make my life worse; I'm more concerned about the availability of jobs, food, housing, etc. That said, CEO salary does strike me as strange. Who needs 8 million per year + stock? I'd think more CEOs would voluntarily take a pay cut.
The Spirit Level [1] makes a good argument for why more equal societies benefit everyone within them. At the very least, I think it's fair to say that "Satya Nadella having more money than me doesn't make my life worse" is not definitively true. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level_(book)
I think you and the person you replied to are talking about two different things here.
OP is saying "in terms of goals, the end goal should be reduction of poverty, not reduction of rich people".
You're saying "in reality, data says that reduction of rich people tends to correlate with reduction of poverty", thus opening up reduction of rich people as one potential path towards the reduction of poverty.
I don't think it's been definitively demonstrated that the existence of rich people necessitates the existence of poverty. I would agree that, in reality, the creation of rich people tends to also lead to the creation of poverty.