Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Minimum Wage Clock

moonbase.lgbt

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 278 posts

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#71

Post by NegativeLatency »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #51
renjimen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I'm still unsettled on the balance between unequal pay, and treating the government as the only redistribution solution (ie taxation). I do prefer market solutions that Charity/Philanthropy offer vs governmental spending. And sometimes I think about how many of the richest have a 100% tax bracket as they've pledged their fortunes to charity after death. Probably seems contradictory to my parent comment, but as I said…

There are issues with any approach but it seems like the purpose of a democratic government should be to help the common person out in situations like this, because it's the only real mechanism we have to fight back against the concentrated power that wealth brings.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#72

Post by npoc »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #32
npoc wrote: post #20

The 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.

> I wonder where are these people. Do you know any? Would you be "happy" to work for less than minimum wage?

I'd be very happy to work for less than the minimum wage if that's all my work was worth and the alternative was no job..

> Sure, gommunism is when minimum wage. Most of Europe is in fact gommunist today, while its bourgeoisie gets richer and richer by the year.

The root cause of this wealth disparity is the fiat money printing. The value of the units of currency are halving every decade without people realising, so most people have been getting an annual real wage cut for the last 53 years only offset by consumables becoming less valuable through efficiencies of production. The prices of hard assets like real estate show the true extent of the currency debasement.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#73

Post by dylan604 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #28
umpalumpaaa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt this still age discrimination?

Not if it's a law, I wouldn't say. By law 16 year olds can't drive on public roads, but that's not counted as age discrimination.

Why stop there? Why not harp on the 21+ laws, or the 18 to vote or the or the or the? Then you can take the same logic and apply it to why do we have laws that restrict anything? Very soon, it's anarchy

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#74

Post by NegativeLatency »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #26
slibhb wrote: post #23

People 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)

Even if any singular ultra wealthy person is doing nice things, you'll still have bad actors like the Koch brothers who are actively trying (and succeeding) to subvert our government systems to their own benefit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Ko...

Which is why we need governmental solutions, laws, taxes, etc and can't rely on just good will.

I havent read the book you recomended, but I will check it out. I'd also recomend the book "On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake" as it's a great description of how global elites have largely captured government for their own ends since the gilded age.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#75

Post by TriangleEdge »

Given there's a number of countries competing with their economies, they are subject to the evolution and survival of the fittest. If there was a better way to do things, if would occur naturally. Clearly, given capitalism gave birth to the largest economy of the world, it won't go away anytime soon.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#76

Post by AlotOfReading »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #51
renjimen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I'm still unsettled on the balance between unequal pay, and treating the government as the only redistribution solution (ie taxation). I do prefer market solutions that Charity/Philanthropy offer vs governmental spending. And sometimes I think about how many of the richest have a 100% tax bracket as they've pledged their fortunes to charity after death. Probably seems contradictory to my parent comment, but as I said…

US taxes already allow you to deduct ~60% of your income with charitable deductions. Taxes only apply to what's left over afterwards.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#77

Post by beaeglebeached »

warner25 wrote: post #63
underbluewaters wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very not true since many (most) things we spend money on are in limited supply. I can make what I think is good money, but if remote FAANG workers decide to settle nearby then I suddenly can't afford a house. Same for automobiles after COVID, meat at the market, etc.

Yes, I've lived in Hawaii and coastal California where the availability of housing does seem to be heavily impacted by very wealthy people being able to buy up second and third (multi-million dollar) homes. A lot of regular wage earners (including professionals with six-figure incomes) are priced out of the market and these homes sit empty for most of the year; the owners are so wealthy that they don't even bother to…

Hawaii has an abundance of underutilized land through a combination of bad zoning/regulation (anti-market violence) and civil rights violations ( Hawaiian 'homelands' which reserves much public state owned lands to only people 'of the blood of the [right] races').

The housing issues are at best partially caused by the rich; plenty of places to put a cheap tar paper shack but for whatever non-market reason you cannot.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#78

Post by NegativeLatency »

margalabargala wrote: post #40
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's rich people, and then there's the ultra rich people. It just doesn't seem possible to become a billionaire through ethical means.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#79

Post by MattRix »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #13

If 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 kind of approach never works except for in the most egregious of situations. Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#80

Post by jacobolus »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #51
renjimen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I'm still unsettled on the balance between unequal pay, and treating the government as the only redistribution solution (ie taxation). I do prefer market solutions that Charity/Philanthropy offer vs governmental spending. And sometimes I think about how many of the richest have a 100% tax bracket as they've pledged their fortunes to charity after death. Probably seems contradictory to my parent comment, but as I said…

> market solutions that Charity/Philanthropy offer

In practice, laws ostensibly intended to support philanthropy are used as tax dodges, money laundering schemes, workarounds of campaign finance laws, etc., with all manner of perverse incentives and conflicts of interest involved. The big money is generally less in "market solutions" and more in "hacking the tax code for the benefit of the wealthy".

In my opinion financial gifts to organizations should not offer tax write-offs for donors (especially of estate/inheritance taxes), or at any rate the maximum write-off should be capped based on plausible middle-class contributions; and universities, churches, and charities should generally pay the taxes businesses pay. If people want to spend their money on charitable activities, that's great, but the government should not be in the business of differentially subsidizing them based on the whims of the wealthy. If we want to have direct government subsidies of charities or educational institutions, it should be based on some transparent and democratically accountable grant system.

If we want to help ordinary people, the most effective method is universal direct cash transfers from the government (without means testing, weird income cliffs, or bureaucratic hoops), better labor protections, and restructuring the tax code to be more progressive (e.g. toward land-value tax and away from sales tax, treating capital gains as income, adding higher-rate income tax brackets at the top end, and raising caps on payroll taxes).

Post reply on HN