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Having a Servant Is Not a Right

nytimes.com

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Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#201

Post by genwin »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #199
genwin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income taxes, enforced. India has plenty of money and resources, and would have more of both after adopting a minimum wage because labor would be better utilized. It might be hard but don't tell me it can't happen or that people will starve to death.

>and would have more of both after adopting a minimum wage because labor would be better utilized How does that work? If someone has an especially productive task, that means that they can afford to pay more than current wages, there is nothing stopping them offering higher wages right now.

One of many ways to see it: Ultra low wage workers work long hours and spend all their money to barely survive, thus confront great difficulty in improving their skills. In the US a minimum wage worker can have the funds and time to become a software developer.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#202

Post by gtirloni »

anishkothari wrote: post #101
yummyfajitas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India doesn't have much income inequality. Their Gini is 33, same ballpark as France, Bangladesh and the UK. (For comparison, Denmark is at 25 and the US is at 45.)

> India doesn't have much income inequality This[1] page shows India's Gini coefficient at 36.8 in 2004. India suffers from very high income inequality [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

And? Unless that means it's all unicorns and rainbows out there I can't see your point.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#203

Post by tokipin »

kamakazizuru wrote: post #110
tokipin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't understand. for years my mom worked at her job (12hrs night shift, hard labor, without most of her fingers on one hand which she lost in an accident), cooked and cleaned, and took care of her young children

while I respect what your mom did. I think the point the OP is trying to make is that - there were people willing to work for the amount of money that his mother could afford to pay for them to do it. Its really not any different from when you hire people on Mechanical Turk to solve tasks that you're time isnt worth spending on.

i understand the surface argument. but it read as if they thought a servant was some kind of necessity, when it's clearly a luxury. this is probably a misunderstanding on my part, but that's the vibe i got

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#204

Post by yetanotherphd »

genwin wrote: post #201
yetanotherphd wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and would have more of both after adopting a minimum wage because labor would be better utilized How does that work? If someone has an especially productive task, that means that they can afford to pay more than current wages, there is nothing stopping them offering higher wages right now.

One of many ways to see it: Ultra low wage workers work long hours and spend all their money to barely survive, thus confront great difficulty in improving their skills. In the US a minimum wage worker can have the funds and time to become a software developer.

That certainly sounds plausible, but that doesn't sound like what a person would call "labor better utilized". But I do see the point: when people have low incomes, they are unable to invest in their own human capital. If possible it would make more sense to target poor people through welfare than through the minimum wage, but I'm don't know the practicalities of implementing either policy in India.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#205

Post by tokipin »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #79

I wonder if the same people who say "If you can't afford to pay a servant a living wage, you shouldn't have one" also like to claim the raising the minimum wage doesn't increase unemployment?

i'm pretty sure there have been studies on this. i think one study found that raising the minimum wage either didn't make a difference in unemployment, or that it lowered unemployment slightly (i believe this study was based on a border region between two states, one of which raised the minimum wage)

but either way, i don't think you should assume it's a simple matter

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#206

Post by discardorama »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #116
anishkothari wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> India doesn't have much income inequality This[1] page shows India's Gini coefficient at 36.8 in 2004. India suffers from very high income inequality [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

33 by the World Bank, 36.8 by the CIA. Using the CIA's numbers rather than the world Bank, India is comparable to New Zealand or Japan. It's still well below the US (45) or the world as a whole (39). India's problem is poverty, not inequality. Much as first world hipsters try to conflate the two, they are not the same thing.

Bear in mind that "income" is a loose concept in India. A lot of the economy is 'under the table'. So while someone may report an "income" of $1000/month, their actual take may be 10x or more. Most Indians outside the salaried sector don't pay income taxes. And there are tax loopholes (agricultural income comes to mind) which allow people to shield massive amounts of income.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#207

Post by genwin »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #204
genwin wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of many ways to see it: Ultra low wage workers work long hours and spend all their money to barely survive, thus confront great difficulty in improving their skills. In the US a minimum wage worker can have the funds and time to become a software developer.

That certainly sounds plausible, but that doesn't sound like what a person would call "labor better utilized". But I do see the point: when people have low incomes, they are unable to invest in their own human capital. If possible it would make more sense to target poor people through welfare than through the minimum wage, but I'm don't know the practicalities of implementing either policy in India.

Workers using more of their potential is labor better utilized to improve the economy. When minimum wage workers become software developers a software company arises, and then a restaurant to serve them, and so on. A basic income (welfare for anyone) would work even better to improve the average standard of living, but not necessarily the economy.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#208

Post by gizmo686 »

bjourne wrote: post #44
bane wrote: post #7

> Last week, I watched with bewilderment as India’s most vociferous talk show host, Arnab Goswami, repeatedly asked his guests if they expected an Indian diplomat who is paid $4,180 a month to pay her domestic servant $4,500 a month. Meanwhile an American guest, Lisa Curtis, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, tried to make a point: “If somebody cannot afford to have domestic help, then they don’t have domest…

> I'm curious though, where does the concept of "servant" actually end? Is my mechanic a servant? Or is he not because I go to his place for him to do the work instead of having him come to mine? A mechanic is a specialist. You likely can't repair your car so you have to purchase that service. Servants are just a plain time-to-money arbitrage. A maid isn't significantly better at vacuuming than you are, so you are ju…

I don't think it is necessarily exploitative, even in the sense you describe. Imagine a world where both person A and person B work 4 hours a day, and clean their own houses 4 hours a day. Person A, due to the nature of his work/skills, produces more per unit time at his job then person B. Both of them could make more money if person A spends 8 hours at his job, person B spends 8 hours cleaning both houses, and they split person B's earnings evenly.

Another way of looking at this situation is the marginal value of time. There are 24 hours in a day. Assume you sleep for 8 of them, you have 12 waking hours. At this point, you might be willing to spend a hour cleaning your house. Now, imagine that you spend another 8 hours at work (but have the same amount of total income). In this situation you only have 4 hours of free time. In this case, you would likely be willing to spend more money to keep that free time, because you have less of it. This is also why we often pay more for overtime.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#209

Post by yetanotherphd »

tokipin wrote: post #205
yetanotherphd wrote: post #79

I wonder if the same people who say "If you can't afford to pay a servant a living wage, you shouldn't have one" also like to claim the raising the minimum wage doesn't increase unemployment?

i'm pretty sure there have been studies on this. i think one study found that raising the minimum wage either didn't make a difference in unemployment, or that it lowered unemployment slightly (i believe this study was based on a border region between two states, one of which raised the minimum wage) but either way, i don't think you should assume it's a simple matter

but the point is that if you are saying "don't hire a person to do something that you can't afford to pay a living wage for" then you are encouraging them to hire less people, which directly creates unemployment (even if there are other mechanisms that counteract this).

I'm aware of the study, but I think that economic theory is more informative than a single study that can't necessarily be generalized.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#210

Post by kamakazizuru »

afterburner wrote: post #177
kamakazizuru wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just like the US - or pretty much any latin american country - and a lot of parts of africa and europe and the rest of Asia. Your point is? Humans have a class problem.

Oh, then they're all the same then, right? India has more of a class problem than the US. Obviously, or this situation wouldn't have happened. If inequality in India suddenly dropped to the same level as the US, I would be very happy for India. And I would still want the US to be less unequal.

except for the flawed assumption that this happened due to some class problem - I agree with your argument.
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