Minimum Wage Clock

I wonder a lot about what motivates people at that level, and about how these negotiations go. As someone who has always been a W-2 employee, and who has never had much individual negotiating power, it feels impossible to wrap my head around this.

On one hand, if I could get compensation in the hundreds of millions per year, it's tempting to think that I'd "work" for six months and then retire with wealth beyond my wildest dreams. On the other hand, nobody appears to do that. So maybe it's lifestyle inflation, or maybe it's just intoxicating to have that kind of power and status and everything that comes with it besides the money. The existence of government executives and military flag officers, who aren't even paid that much money and could retire whenever they want with generous pensions, seems to indicate that money isn't the primary motivation.

In terms of negotiations, it's hard to imagine that the boards of Alphabet or Microsoft couldn't find someone equally qualified to take the CEO job for less than these amounts.

Nations lacking a minimum wage like Singapore and Norway aren't exactly rife with slavery.

> the minimum amount required to live peacefully and with dignity.

The issue is that there is no such uniform amount.

If your spouse makes 85% as much as the two of you need to live with dignity, you don't need to make as much as they do and may prefer not to because the lower-paying job is less difficult or more satisfying. For someone else it could be 95%, or 99%, or 250% and the second job is pure supplemental income, so what's the minimum meant to be here?

The minimum wage doesn't account for costs. A job across the street from you means you don't need a car, don't have to pay for fuel or maintenance or transit tickets and don't have to spend hours in traffic (which you could have spent working and getting paid). For a long commute this difference in value can be more than the entire minimum wage.

It's possible for jobs to provide training, which is attractive for entry-level workers or anyone trying to change occupations or learn new skills, because school otherwise costs money. But if you're spending extra hours "at work" getting trained while the value of the training comes out of your paycheck, there isn't any sensible "minimum wage" for this. You could be receiving $50,000/year worth of training while "getting paid" only $5000/year and you're the one coming out ahead because you don't otherwise qualify for a job that pays $55,000/year. You might still be ahead if you were paying them $5000/year.

So how are you supposed to set a minimum wage if the "minimum amount required to live peacefully and with dignity" is different for everyone, and setting it below that threshold deprives people of valuable alternatives?

Some people think billionaires should be more heavily taxed, which they call a redistribution of wealth. I think that is a bizarre take because the original distribution is conceptually absurd to begin with.

Think about it. You create a thing, a useful thing. We value that at 100K and given your outsized role in bringing it into existence, you have an equity of 40%. In absolute terms, you'd have 40K at this point, which seems perfectly fine.

Next, you (help to) scale this company up to a valuation of $100B. Your stake is now $40B.

The percentage is the problem here. It's a wild concept to be a procentual owner of a thing of an indefinite size which can only typically be scaled up by the labor of thousands of others.

It's a concept we made up. It does not exist in material reality. You did not produce the value from $40K to $40B, yet you're rewarded it anyway.

You did produce some value, quite a lot even, which would justify a (very) high salary. Equity sure is a great way to get rich quickly and I know a lot of you are in the game, but it's a strange concept regardless.

Why not? As a consumer I can choose dinner from either beef from burned amazon rainforest, or a ratatouille made from seasonal local ingredients, or anything in between. I can choose to buy a 2-tonne gas SUV or something smaller.

I can choose to participate in “fast fashion”, or choose to buy some of my clothing second-hand.

I can choose a vacation by flying to Greece, or hiking the local area, or anywhere in between.

I can often choose to wait another year to upgrade my phone/computer/device.

Corporations don’t just do stuff, they respond to our actions.

Voting in booths generally works better to affect change in systems like these with externalities, but voting with action and wallets also works.

I do consider that I have a responsibility to act ethically versus other people, and that includes making choices as a consumer.