Hacker News Reader

Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, people who criticize this article are probably benefiting from "capitalism" (the majority of people on here, I reckon, do), meanwhile those struggling from inequality, not being here, will fail to have their voice heard. And so the echo chamber ensues.

That being said, capitalism and having things like free healthcare and education are hardly mutually exclusive. So I think the article's conclusion, "In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy...", (more the poll) are a bit misleading.

Here's the actual poll, by the way:

http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publ...

Thanks to twblalock for including the recent poll:

http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-spring-2016-po....

View on HN

> meanwhile those struggling from inequality, not being here, will fail to have their voice heard. And so the echo chamber ensues.

Those struggling from from inequality are struggling from relative deprivation, not absolute deprivation, while the latter is the only thing that rationally matters. I don't give a damn that Bill Gates is a ridiculous amount richer than me, in fact I admire him and want to be rich too someday. I have enough to survive and buy books, why should I worry about my relative wealth? People on the poverty line in the US ($20k) actually make 2x as much as the global mean wage ($10k). I doubt the people that currently complain about inequality today would be willing to give up >50% of their wage to alleviate it on the global scale, rather they will make arguments about "standard of living" as if they have some fundamental right to live better than those in Africa, poor India, ect... meanwhile I would rather be lower middle class now in US than Rockefeller 100 years ago.

I'm taking a pretty hard stance on this because I feel pretty strongly about it.

Society has to decide what "right" people have to a certain minimum quality of life and access to services. It turns out the level can actually be quite high, one only need look to the highly successful Nordic states.

The argument in america seems to be that if you work hard, you can have a decent life and a house in the suburbs. There are already problems here, what of the people born with disabilities?

But assuming everyone is capable of work, there is still the assumption that adequately rewarding work exists for everybody. Perhaps this assumption can be summarised as the american dream that people need to wake from. Conservatives argue that bringing back well paying, low skilled jobs can restore this dream time. Perhaps if they also rolled back 50 years of legislation and restored the unions this would be true, but times have changed.

The reality is that access to rewarding work almost requires a privileged upbringing. It is completely unfair to assume that if poor people worked harder they would make it. I personally have a friend who grew up in a trailer park. After slogging it out through multiple entrepreneurial ventures, in his 30's he used his life savings to relocate his mother to find better medical care. Imagine at 30, a time when by your argument one should be buying and reading books, the burden of caring for you parents fell solely on your shoulders. Even in your 30's you are at a disadvantage due to your family's wealth.

I personally believe that I should not have such an automatic advantage (for what its worth I do). I would be much happier in a world where I was taxed 50% but lived in a world where I knew the person serving me at a restaurant wasn't potentially a desperate single mother trying to hold down a job to care for her child. A person who probably doesn't have time for books.

Before we get to charity, long story short I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole, and I believe people should be represented in that decision equally. Therefore I don't donate to charity.

> "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them."

Edward Albert Filene

You're still making the "standard of living" argument that is essentially hypocritical when you think about it globally. You are extremely privileged to be born in the USA, rich or poor.

Also, you would realistically need to be taxed more like 80-95% to get to the global mean.

So the ultra rich should grow wealthier faster than middle class Americans because there are poorer countries in the world? Absurd.

In any case their wealth shouldn't be redistributed to the American middle class, rather the global poor, as should the wealth of the American middle class and poor.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I think there needs to be a greater global redistribution effort, but we should start with a more politically tenable one based on nation states.

Also, I have a hunch (but no data) to suggest that a national one may be more economically viable since you redistribute money inside your own economy which boosts demand and increases your tax base.

That's already happening through globalization. The scope of this discussion is American inequality.

Why does any single person deserve the enormous amount of power that being so absurdly wealthy can bring?

So they can get us to Mars? So they can cure malaria? Obviously doesn't apply to all of the riches.

You say "deserve" as if there is some God or universal parent dictating people's fortune like they are handing out cookies for being a good boy. You might say someone you really like deserves much better fortune then they have realized, but that's something that's completely subjective to you - it's because you yourself like them. You might say that someone who is very fortunate deserves less because you don't like them, that is also very subjective. Since wealth makes you intrinsically less likable, it's pretty natural people would think that the wealthy deserve less. But does that have any objective significance? No.

wealth is earned, not distributed.

Or inherited if your classy

> shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.

No, you did not take it from them. They willingly gave it to you. You are free to give it to them, but you choose not to.

> I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole

Please do not equate any body of government to "society as a whole."

Even in a true democracy where everyone votes, the majority will never have an adequate enough perspective to ensure funds are correctly distributed.

I don't know your friend. How can I know what he needs? How do you expect the real specific cases to be solved without direct assistance from someone (an individual, a charity) who knows how to help?

Relative and absolute deprivation have absolutely little to do with how the poor feel in the US. Further, your argument basically boils down to "people used to be in concentration camps and you're not, you don't get to be upset."

Being content and happy in life has a LOT to do with expectations and we've done a great job of promoting huge expectations for Americans ala "The American Dream!" Poor people don't care that Bill Gates and Elon Musk have near unfathomable wealth. They care that a lifetime of hard work doesn't guarantee a decent home, access to affordable healthcare, or the security to live without constant threat of basic necessities being out of reach.

Further, the poor should demand more! All we hear from the upper class/business owners is more, more, more! Get leaner, cheaper, and make more money! The poor are only following the examples set by the "titans of industry." And if they didn't constantly ask for more, they would be in even worse shape than they are now.

And finally, if you ever want to convince others of your viewpoint, comparing America to third world countries is not the way to go. You've got to put on your oxygen mask before you help those around you. Otherwise you all end up screwed.

Except global mean wage hardly means anything. There is a difference between income and wealth. The amount of income fails to differentiate between purchasing power at different locations. $20000 dollars in America means poverty whereas in South Sudan it means vast wealth. I bet that those complaining are in the lower bracket of purchasing power parity in their respective country.

That's still a "standard of living" argument. You have no fundamental right to live better than those in the South Sudan.

I can tell you that if you asked the poorest in America if they believed private ownership of property should be illegal in the US they would disagree.

Socialism to most Americans is free healthcare and college. Capitalism is lobbying and the abuse of government sponsored monopolies.

Which is unfortunate, because government involvement in business is a socialist idea, not a capitalist one.

Who enforces capitalist property rights?

Historically property rights were defended by the owner.

Unless you mean before written history then no. Governments have been mediating property disputes at least as far as the written word and likely though the last 100,000+ years.

In feudalistic society there were hundreds of small "governments" in a society, all of which had to defend their own rights.

Do you believe that when we all lived in huts that the feudal lord would send out knights to defend you if your neighbor decided to take your property?

Under a medieval feudal system, most people did not own property the way we think of it today; the feudal lord did. If the lord wanted to take all your clothes and throw you off their land, they could, with impunity.

That said, yes, the feudal lord's band of merry thugs would keep the peace, because peasants can work harder if they're not squabbling with each other.

>Under a medieval feudal system

You don't have to go that far back in time:

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

It's not that clear cut. If a poor person gets robbed today the cops will do basically nothing. Feudal lords will defend vs Viking raids. So, they both sit betweeen 0 and 100% on this.

Upholding the rule of law (punishing fraud, theft, murder, and other infringements of the rights of others) is the job of the government in a free market system. Protecting consumers from themselves and picking businesses to subsidize/grant privileges to is not.

The gray area, which I consider to fall in the 'upholding the rule of law' category, are consumption-based regulations or incentives, where a practical piece of society (like burning fuel) infringes on the rights of many others to a small degree, and this is where a carbon tax could easily fit in a free market system. In fact, it could be argued that the system is freer than if there were no pollution taxes at all, because then people would be allowed to infringe on the property rights of others (via shared atmosphere, oceans, climate) unhindered.

You're making the exact same mistake they are.

alright. I'll bite. I have made almost no money in the past year, and my bank account is nearly zero. I had a relatively middle class upbringing (but for reasons I'd rather not go into) my family is currently bankrupt.

Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of money are stolen from poor people like me by the government through various processes, the biggest of which is inflation. This money is largely redistributed to cronies - the easiest of which to see are the big contractors. Less obvious are the banks and directly profit off of low-interest loans by flipping them to higher-interest borrowers, and even less obvious is wall street (whose coffers are filled by middle class people pushed into protecting their assets from inflation).

This is Capital-ism (in the marxian sense) -- the philosophy deciding that the pursuit of capital is a good unto itself. Unfortunately, the state has decided to attempt to 'harness' capitalism for its own idea of 'social good' which of course basically taints the non-zero-sum nature of free exchange with the zero-sum game of political hierarchy. The more this happens, the greater there will be inequality. It's a direct consequence of the first principles, and is unavoidable.

If you have a bank account of almost zero, inflation can't possibly be stealing money from you (unless you also have gobs of cash under a mattress somewhere).

Except that the prices of everything rise every year.

Blaming wage stickiness relative to prices is different than blaming inflation. And, outside unions and jobs with competitive labor markets, the best advocate for wage un-stickiness many workers have is government involvement via the minimum wage.

96% of hourly workers already earn more than minimum wage, so it shouldn't be the first place to look at improving wage stickiness. Start with the cost of employment, primarily health care, which has sucked up a lot of money that should have gone to wage increases.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2015/home.htm

Minimum wage sets a floor which affects wages close to it, too.

Let me try a different tack. Wages used to go up without relying on minimum wage. Wages have flattened, so there are a bunch of other issues that should be looked at before just forcing wages up, which can have all sorts of unintended consequences, especially if the real reasons wages are flat aren't addressed first.

You're right. Raising or lowering minimum wage purchasing power is worthy of caution, but having minimum wage track inflation is an economic no-op, not a shift in policy.

it's not an economic no-op, because then the fight begins over who gets to measure inflation. Moreover, if the tracking isn't continuous (which it can't possibly be), during the 'between periods' there's wage devaluation which disproportionately affect the poor.

The WHOLE POINT of inflation is that it screws over wageearners:

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi...

"even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis."

So the choices are wait for the economy to suddenly unfuck itself or give our lowest earners am immediate boost?

Turns out there are more than two choices, so no.

http://wiki.c2.com/?FalseDichotomy

Everything?

True, some prices have risen. But, if I may, here are some fun equations to ponder.

1996 (Florida)

Minimum wage $4.25 Gallon of milk $2.73 Gallon of gas $1.26 Dozen eggs $1.31

2017 Minimum wage $8.10 Gallon of milk $3.31 Gallon of gas $2.41(was almost $4.00, if I remember correctly a few years ago?) Dozen eggs $1.59

1996

Electronics (to do work, using one's natural talents, for example) Expensive.

2017 Electronics: Much cheaper. Adjusting for inflation: much, much cheaper.

Of course, with electronics, there are too many intricacies to list, but here's a specific one. I bought a 512MB compact flash card in 2001, which set me back $249. I think the last one I bought was 2 years ago, or so. It was $60 for 16 GB. I make my living taking pictures. What would 16 GB worth of pictures have cost me in 2001?

I'm happy with these numbers. Simply put, let's think very carefully before using absolutes.

Since you've cherry picked your data to support an observation of no inflation, do you also support not increasing the minimum wage?

There is acknowledgement of inflation in every one of my examples, save certain electronics. I have no idea how to answer this question as I didn't deny prices increased.

It's more likely to give you money unless you're a lender and not a debtor.

> Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of money are stolen from poor people like me by the government

How much can the government be stealing from you if you have no money? The government is in a position to help you, by providing you with social services, with financial benefits, by providing police to protect you, not to mention debt forgiveness (you mentioned your family is in bankruptcy). None of these things come from free market capitalism; they come from socialist policies intended to help those at a disadvantage. And there should be more of that -- health care, education, etc. Of course, corruption and inefficiency in government exists and is a problem, but the ones stealing money from you are those at the top who are constantly seeking to pay less in taxes, do less to protect to the environment, lobby or contribute (aka bribe) to profit at the expense of public good, outsource or automate away their labor, etc. You mentioned the negative impact of common practices of bankers and Wall Street -- those kinds of things are natural consequence of free market activity.

>How much can the government be stealing from you if you have no money?

John Oliver did a good breakdown of how municipalities do pretty nasty things when you can't pay your tickets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto

The family isn't literally in bankruptcy, and you have your history wrong. Bankruptcy reform is largely a consequence of mid 19th century classical liberal intellectual thought which shifted the onus of counterparty risk to the lender. One of the biggest proponents was Bentham, who could hardly be considered a socialist. Benjamin Tucker (whom it appears libertarians and socialists fight over intellectual ownership) was also a major proponent, but it's worth mentioning he was vehemently opposed to state involvement in socialism.

http://www.academia.edu/6681088/Washing_Away_the_Sins_of_Deb...

Inflation is useful and is not stealing if the rate of inflation is communicated and stable. If the government decided to suddenly devalue it's currency for the sole purpose of reducing it's debt burden then it could be construed as stealing. If the government communicated that it will devalue its currency at a fixed 2% every year it's not stealing because individuals are able to account for it.

Why is inflation useful as opposed to deflation? If money were to be gaining in value rather than losing value people would be incentivized to do a few things

1. Hold on to money because it would increase in value over time

2. Not make purchases because the object being purchased will require fewer units of money over time.

3. Not invest in starting new businesses because the investor would be losing out on the guaranteed income from holding onto the money along with the fact that whatever the business sells will be worth fewer units of money over time

4. Disincentivize individuals to take out loans to start businesses because the value of the loan will increase in price over time.

However when money loses value over time there are a few nice properties

1. The burden of debt decreases over time

2. People are incentivized to invest their money into business

You seem to believe that secondary markets (namely wall street) are bad things. The secondary market is a good thing because it gives individuals that initially put up capital for new businesses to be created a way to realize the return on their investment without having to wait for dividends. This is good because people that are successful in choosing which businesses should have capital (because their product is valuable) and which businesses don't deserve that capital will be able to take their money and invest it into other businesses which would presumably create products that add value to the world.

Of course there are bad things such as advisors charging excessive fees to ignorant people, corporate raiders, fraudsters, etc.

let's reframe your statements:

> 1. Hold on to money because it would increase in value over time

"disincentivize poor people from saving"

> 2. Not make purchases because the object being purchased will require fewer units of money over time.

"push poor people into consuming"

> 3. Not invest in starting new businesses because the investor would be losing out on the guaranteed income from holding onto the money along with the fact that whatever the business sells will be worth fewer units of money over time

"Benefit rich people who seek to invest in venture capital"

> 4. Disincentivize individuals to take out loans to start businesses because the value of the loan will increase in price over time.

"make it easier for people to sell themselves into debt slavery"

> 1. The burden of debt decreases over time

"make it cheaper for leveraged investments, de facto restricted to a small class of investors, to exist"

> 2. People are incentivized to invest their money into business

"push middle class people into subsidizing risky behavior by capitalists"

The reason why I am reframing your statements in this way is because a general policy of inflation affects everyone, and by and large the rich (good for them!) already have ways to escape, if not profit from, the generalized effects. The rest of us do not.

There are additional problems to the "perpetual growth mentality", that I don't want to bring up too heavily, like incentivising continued erosion of the environment, natural resource depletion and less conservation.

> You seem to believe that secondary markets (namely wall street) are bad things.

No. Secondary markets are great. What is not great is forcing people to participate, as in, socializing risk while while allowing the rich and politically connected to enjoy the fruits of the casino capitalism with golden parachutes and fail-upwards scenarios. The traditional left/liberal argument is that we need to add regulation to fix that and protect the investment of general public, which, being anti-state-socialist, I am vehemently against (besides which the long history of added regulations seems to only have the effect of ensnaring more of the middle class into the system of socializing risk and paying off the privileged). The only solution is to not have these insidious little pushes that force the general public into these dangerous activities.

Inflation is like proto-matter from star trek II. You think you know what you're doing, harnessing this praeternatural force that can bend and shape society to what you think are "good things", but the cost is you're really making things unstable because of the fallacy of the unseen.

>"disincentivize poor people from saving"

You can save by investing in the stock market or bonds which is what everyone should be doing

>"push poor people into consuming"

You can save (investing is saving)

>"Benefit rich people who seek to invest in venture capital"

The majority of people starting businesses aren't rich venture capitalists and more venture capitalists fail more often than succeed.

>"make it easier for people to sell themselves into debt slavery"

Getting into debt is definitely slavery, I'm sure the millions of people that have used debt to their benefit agree with you.

I'm done reading your comment, it's filled with unreasoned hyperbolic language that doesn't reflect the truth. Look inward and realize that at some point in your life you became radicalized to the point where you can't even think rationally

> the biggest of which is inflation

Inflation is a mechanism to prevent the rich from hoarding cash. The flipside is that people who aren't putting their money to use lose value.

Without inflation, the rich would hoard with impunity.

That doesn't make any sense. If the rich hoard money the velocity of money goes down, and that causes the value to go down too.

As "mechanism to prevent hoarding" by the rich it's pretty shitty. The rich know how to protect their net worth from devaluating currency (e.g. real estate), and can more easily partake in leveraged investment vehicles which would not be possible with higher interest rates and non-inflationary base currency. You don't see the guy on the tenderloin buying leveraged etfs. For that matter neither does the middle class, who mostly are locked into managed find situations which provide low yield (if you look through to trough, the real value of the stock market has been static for 25 years)

Taking money out of circulation (by saving it/not spending it) reduces supply, practically speaking, raising its value, causing deflation (price levels drop, cash becomes more valuable). This isn't controversial, it can be seen in recent history. Expansionary monetary policy (increasing the supply of money) = inflation, deflationary policy (reducing money supply) = deflation.

> That doesn't make any sense. If the rich hoard money the velocity of money goes down, and that causes the value to go down too.

'Velocity' of money is a shitty concept, but regardless what it means is that with higher velocity, goods and services are in higher demand relative to cash (more transactions over time). This increases price levels but reduces the value of cash.

So velocity going down decreases demand for and the value of goods and services (price levels), increasing the relative value of cash.

This is a sentiment I hear often; "I'm a hard worker, I used to have a job that paid my bills and left a bit over for vacations but now I'm out of work and broke and everyone wants a piece of me and I have nothing left to give."

And it is a puzzling thing. Where did those jobs go? How is personal income so stagnant? And one of the things I note that is different now than was different before, was that by accumulating capital, large companies remove from circulation large chunks of money. It gets trapped by companies demanding it be 'cash or cash equivalents' so you aren't seeing it invested in long term projects. What you see are lots and lots of T-bills and other dollar denominated investments which can be liquidated on short notice. In January of last year the New York Times reported at $1.9T![1] and that has only gotten worse over the last 12 months. Nearly a $1.4T of this held by 50 US companies[2]. It is hard to get a handle on a trillion dollars, but if you take $60,000 a year as a "nice" middle income job in most of the country, half that $1.4T or $700B dollars circulating around in the economy is nearly 12 MILLION jobs!

I assert that because those trillions are sitting there in T-bills they have taken all of the oxygen out of the middle class. Many people when they have a bit more money in their pocket month to month spend at least some of that on things they wouldn't have spent on otherwise. Whether its a new car, or eating out, or vacations, or new furniture, or repainting the house. All of that spending then is going to companies that are hiring people to paint or sell you stuff or serve you stuff or make stuff for you to buy. And those people who doing all this stuff are also spending money and buying stuff etc.

I believe it is entirely possible that this has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism and everything to do with economic capital becoming trapped and stripped of its agency by companies who hoard it for no reason.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporat...

[2] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/14/news/tax-us-companies-offsho...

> hoard for no reason

If so, we simply need to increase the rate of inflation and the cash will start flowing.

Your first paragraph manages to sort of dismiss both sides without really engaging with them. No one wants to be typecasted, even if they have legitimate biases. There's plenty more nuance to contribute to the discussion than simply characterizing most of the participants the same way Upton Sinclair would: by their salaries.

I think you do raise a legitimate point about echo chambers, but how does that observation on its own help us? It's pessimistic. In my opinion, you've not really contributed to a resolution here except to be cynical.

I support capitalism, and I admit it has done very well by me. I don't come from a privileged upbringing whatsoever, but it's now likely my children will. But your binary characterization of the inevitable functions as sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy here - will my opinions on capitalism be viewed as coming from someone who benefits from it because that's the way you framed it? By starting the conversation off in the way you did, I believe your framing antagonizes it prematurely. Why not decry an echo chamber when it actually emerges?

Hmm, you make some good points. I accept that I may have not contributed to the conversation as much as I would like (though "contribution" wasn't really my intention, but your point stands).

However, I will say that the latter part of your post is the kind of comment that I was expecting, for better or worse.

Yes but you see this is my point entirely. Instead of engaging with the discussion you have this aloof cynicism. I didn't even say anything particularly in support of capitalism, yet you dismissed by point as "what you expected." How do you persuade others to see an alternative perspective if you don't first validate their opinions?

For example, I'm willing to engage in dialectics about the advantages and disadvantages of a capitalist system (for example, see my other comment about this article), but you didn't really say anything other than "you make some good points, but this is what I expected."

Take a position. You don't diminish an echo chamber just by observing that it exists, you have to engage with it and attempt to improve the discussion. I called out my potential bias and took a stance. You've not really done either here, which ultimately diminishes the impact of calling out the difficulty in the first place. What was the point?

I see no point in an engagement where two people who are both benefiting from capitalism discuss its merits. My greater point could be that it is our benefiting from this capitalism that we have such privilege to be wasting time on such discussions to begin with. What would be gained from such a conversation, anyway? Even if one of us manages to convince us that capitalism isn't the way to go, or make us think less of it, it's not like we're going to significantly change our lifestyle as a result.

There's a great saying actually that's relevant, but for the life of me I can't remember.

It is specifically those who are benefiting from capitalism who need to be convinced that it is not great, since they are the ones who are propping it up.

I find myself between the two ecosystems quite often and I have to admit I find it hard to know how to represent both sides fairly in discussions. It is definitely not a bipartisan issue. There is no us vs them, it is simply one big group of people where those on the bottom of the system are struggling to affect the smaller changes needed to make life more sustainable for them.

They aren't big changes either, small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals. Those individuals just don't have the capacity after work, or the connections, to advocate effectively for themselves.

> Those individuals just don't have the capacity after work, or the connections, to advocate effectively for themselves.

It's not just that, but it's the fact that it takes a huge amount study to even understand how things like the national economy work. Business people and the upper class already have a huge leg up in this because it's their bread and butter. Poor people and shift workers really need to go out of their way to learn the ins and outs.

And what ruins the whole endeavor is the fact that it is much easier to cherry-pick statistics and spin any given policy decision to adhere to a certain message and populist ideology. Republicans have mastered the art of spinning every talking point to appeal to rural and working class voters while maintaining a firm agenda benefitting the special interests they claim to be against. Not that Democrats are objectively any better—the two party system ensures that anyone with deep enough pockets can just donate to both sides and not worry too much about anyone with real principles standing in their way. But considering that Trump has managed to paint himself as somehow being of and for The People despite the most elite and privileged trust-fund roots imaginable really goes to show what an uphill battle it will be to make real progress.

It is sometimes said that truth is powerful, but in an increasingly complex world with cheaper and cheaper information production and distribution, propaganda is gaining power much faster than the populace's capacity to understand it.

> small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals

I'm curious to hear what small changes you think will have a huge difference.

Well most recently where I live, they changed the "non-business hours" penalty rates for workers. Basically if you make most of your money by working a night or weekend job, you can have your pay cut by half of what it currently is.

A win for corporates, and even a win for small businesses who were struggling to afford it.

But ultimately taking the money from the lower end workers and passing it up the chain instead.

Who do you think made that policy change? Who do you think would have fought against it if they both knew about it and had the means to advocate against it?

Those who couldn't fight for themselves were trodden on in that particular small policy change.

I guess I don't see this as a "huge" difference in the grand scheme of things (one locality, largely only impacts non-tip minimum wage workers outside of business hours), though the impacted individuals will certainly disagree.

I guess it seems like there are small changes that have large impacts on specific people, but that's true of all change at the margins.

That was my argument though, small changes in policy help particular groups in huge ways, but those same groups have difficulty making changes or avoiding negative ones because of their position in the system.

To put it into perspective though, that particular law affects hospitality workers the most. More than 60% of women and minorities are employed by that industry here, and so the change directly affects already marginalized individuals.

Their pay is essentially bikeshed by people way above their pay grade and stature in society, who unsurprisingly decided it wasn't that important.

"...capitalism and having things like free healthcare and education are hardly mutually exclusive..." -- good point.

It's also important to note that the semantics on capitalism is almost always misleading in discussions:

https://chomsky.info/20130305/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9XFBN5X1JU

The survey you linked to is from 2011, and it was mentioned in the article as a precursor to the April 2016 Harvard survey that the article was written about.

I think this is the 2016 Harvard poll the article was referring to: http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-spring-2016-po...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com