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Minimum Wage Clock

moonbase.lgbt

121–130 of 278 posts

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#121
post #35

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'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.

> I'm ok with people working hard and getting paid for it

Is that an accurate description of CEOs worth billions of dollars though? How hard are they supposedly working? I'm probably lazier than most of them as an IC with disabilities and non-work interests... but it's not humanly possible that they get ~40,000 times as much done in a day as I do.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#122
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.

Having some amount of more money than you doesn't make your life worse, but eventually it does. I don't mind people having millions upon millions of dollars and having lots of houses and cars and things. However, once you have enough money to start affecting politics than it can very easily make your life worse.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#123
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…

>This leads to the higher quality workers reducing their output, as they are only getting the paid the same as someone producing work of, for example, half the value of their own.

[Citation needed]

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#124

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…

> 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.

That may be true, but I personally also think curbing the wealth of the extremely wealthy is a worthwhile goal in its own right. It's dangerous to give individuals so much power, which is one of the most common lessons in the last 10,000 years of media and also blatantly obvious from the ways many billionaires (and non-billionaires, frankly) use that money to manipulate, harm, disenfranchise, and silence the public.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#125
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not a cap, it's a minimum. misphrased, fixed. >This is so people can employ kids who have very little economic value and train them to have lots of it. But 18 year olds are not kids anymore and are capable of providing just as much economic value as a 25 year old. Especially if the employer is a coffee shop or restaurant. Minimum wage should be the same for all ages. It should be at the discretion of the employ…

I would argue a 25 year old is still a kid too. I know every 20 something would vehemently disagree which is kind of proof in and of itself. I don't mean it in a disrespectful manner.

Your reply made me smile because it's dead on. I'm 22. Though, I don't agree. There's things to learn at all ages.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#126

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…

Isn't putting this onto the consumer a little bit of a cop out? This enormous global system of powerful corporations and nation states crafted this system because it was in their best interest. Feels sort of tone deaf to say "well, you got what you deserved, you created this sytem by buying this specific computer and cheaper food!" Night/farmer's markets are quite popular here in NZ but we haven't toppled global inqu…

Of course it's a copout. This entire discussion is intellectually dishonest and deeply unserious.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#127
post #98

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…

https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-we-sh...

I low key hate that comic. It makes a false equivalency.

Recognizing a car could be safer isn't contradicted by owning one. If anything, ownership should give you more insight into the material problems of the item in question.

Likewise, society is just everything. So suggesting improvements isn't contradictory.

However, there is some hypocrisy in lambasting the maker of the very luxury goods you purchase for exploiting people. You are kind of justifying the companies' exploitation by purchasing from them. And you can advocate for change from these makers without supporting them with your money.

And some people do come with the attitude of "I don't want to change a single thing about my behaviors or sacrifice a single thing, but I expect the world to get better somehow."

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#128
post #79

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.

>Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work.

I think even diehard libertarians would admit that "regulations work" in the sense that using the government's monopoly on violence to force companies to do something will cause them to do said thing. The debate is whether the upsides outweigh the downsides (eg. due to regulatory capture).

For a point of comparison, software security is largely unregulated. There's no law that says Google needs to deliver security patches for 5 years, or they need to implement security measures like verified boot, yet they do so anyways, presumably to compete with Apple which is doing something similar.

Re: Minimum Wage Clock

#129

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…

Taking your apple example, apple products are not tim cook products, and it seems confused to suggest that people should punish every apple employee because of the actions of a single one.

Shouldn't corrective action be directed at individual offending persons, not applied as collective punishment?

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