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While it's depressing, what alternative is there? No expensive cars for anyone? Should entire industries of engineers and designers making these artful creations be put out of business because you and I (and most of the people working on them) won't be able to afford one ourselves?

Income disparity is natural. Regulation to prevent people from exploiting the system into higher income is good, but we'll never be able to make it so that the delivery driver and the corporate executive have the same standard of living, unless that standard is consuming gruel in a formless concrete cube somewhere.

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> we'll never be able to make it so that the delivery driver and the corporate executive have the same standard of living, unless that standard is consuming gruel in a formless concrete cube somewhere.

You moved the post from "delivery drivers" should get a fair salary to "everybody should have the same salary". The question is if delivery drivers should have a fair salary that allows them to have a decent life.

Do you agree that "delivery drivers" should get a fair salary?

> unless that standard is consuming gruel in a formless concrete cube somewhere.

Why would that be? That’s a fallacy. We have the ability to produce far more than everyone would need to live a pretty abundant life.

> That’s a fallacy.

I agree. Not my comment. I was just quoting.

Maybe, but surely by now you can see that sustainability is a factor here. Produce how much, for how long? Is simply enabling unending consumerism until we run out of resources to be the highest calling of our species?

Seems almost more depressing than the current dystopia to believe that we should keep it going for even longer just to ensure everyone gets an equal chance to consume their pile of fried meat.

> We have the ability to produce far more than everyone would need to live a pretty abundant life.

... so long as that abundant life is location independent.

> Do you agree that "delivery drivers" should get a fair salary?

What is "fair"?

One variety of "fair" is "getting a reasonable cut of the profit made from their actions", where "reasonable" is based on what the market will bear - i.e. if your labour is undercut by someone else, then it's a race to the bottom. This is what guilds and then trade unions originally evolved to deal with.

Another variety of "fair" that seems to be gaining mindshare is the idea that you deserve a "living wage" for literally any full-time job, which is a new idea unsubstantiated by economic reality. It belies the fact that there are jobs that do have some demand, but simply aren't worth enough to the people who'd pay for them that they can supply a "living wage". And what's living? Is mung beans, rice, and a shared room in a house "living" enough or does everyone need their full maximized-carbon-footprint atomized solo lifestyle in order to "live"?

The concept of "fair" is driving so much policy in the world right now, but there is no one definition. The concept that no one can settle on a definition for, is the concept that is, and will increasingly be, at the forefront of politics for the next century.

"And what's living?"

Implicit in most discussions, but frequently left unstated, is the idea that a wage-earner should be able to support several dependents. Obviously how many makes a huge difference in what kind of pay is needed.

Again, at what level of luxury? I know people making six figures that are utterly convinced they're not able to afford to have children. I know people making a third of that who have five kids and seem happy enough, though as harried and as cash-strapped as you'd expect.

Well, my point is that it's O(N), regardless of the constant factor.

Guilds didn’t evolve over protecting wages per se, but as a means to monopolize the supply of their labor by limiting those that could enter their trade. They were a monopoly of labor and similarly motivated by those that had monopolies of steel or the railroads. Guilds were about protecting their business by excluding or marginalizing competition and using their power to further protect their own bottom line from competition.

Seems like a reasonable thing for a skilled labourer to do, and really not dissimilar from what unions are still doing at large scales.

> Is mung beans, rice, and a shared room in a house "living" enough or does everyone need their full maximized-carbon-footprint atomized solo lifestyle in order to "live"?

That is the straw man fallacy. You moved the post from a discussion about fair salaries to one about everybody sharing the same house and eating only beans and rice.

The question is if delivery drivers should have a fair salary that allows them to have a decent life.

Do you agree that "delivery drivers" should get a fair salary that allows them to have a decent life?

> Another variety of "fair" that seems to be gaining mindshare is the idea that you deserve a "living wage" for literally any full-time job, which is a new idea unsubstantiated by economic reality.

I mean this one, that is why I said: " that allows them to have a decent life.".

> unsubstantiated by economic reality

The opposite is true. More equal societies have higher economic output. Reducing poverty reduces crime, reduces health care costs, etc. Even better makes people's lives better. So, it is a positive feedback loop.

> You moved the post from a discussion about fair salaries to one about everybody sharing the same house and eating only beans and rice.

Only because it was not defined what was meant by "fair". I'm not going to agree to some premise only to be hoist up by it later. Maybe I don't agree people deserve a "fair" salary by your standards, maybe I do by other standards.

> Do you agree that "delivery drivers" should get a fair salary that allows them to have a decent life?

What's a decent life? Is there something indecent about having beans, rice, and a roof? Isn't it better than what many people have had, historically? It's not what I want, I doubt it's what they want, but is it _unfair_? Why?

> More equal societies have higher economic output.

No. Societies which have higher economic output are more capable of artificially subsidizing "equality" by redistributing income. You cannot take poverty, spread it around, and make richness. You can take richness and spread it around and help abate poverty, but only to a certain extent.

I guess that we both agree that you need resources to create wealth. Without resources, wealth cannot be created. I guess, that we both agree that you need education, knowledge and science to use that resources in an efficient way. That technology+resources create wealth.

My argument, for which I provide some links, is that you need to redistribute that wealth so everybody profits form it for that wealth to be sustainable:

"Economic growth provides the basis for overcoming poverty and lifting living standards. But for growth to be sustained and inclusive, its benefits must reach all people."

* https://blogs.imf.org/2017/09/20/growth-that-reaches-everyon... * https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/inequality-hurts-economic-grow...

But, maybe we have different values and that is the root cause of our disagreement. I think that giving everybody enough to cover their needs is the goal of society. To remove poverty is a goal to achieve. Higher economic output is not a goal, but a means to achieve the goal of humans well being. Improving the economy is a means for humans to live better.

What's a fair salary?

Pretty much all answers I've heard to this question will have to define the salary in relation to myriad cost inputs (housing, healthcare, transportation, food).

The fact that the answer to this question is almost universally defined in terms of cost of life necessities means that the current salary could be fair if the cost inputs were cheaper. It also means that any salary that would be fair given current costs would suddenly become unfair again if the cost of those inputs grew proportionately (inflation).

This suggests to me that we're better off focusing not on policies that raise salary but instead putting our efforts towards lowering the costs of only those cost inputs we deem as necessary inputs for living circumstances that are considered fair.

Solving the cost of only basic necessities once permanently solves the fairness problem. Trying to solve the fairness problem by raising wages with no policies to protect against inflation of basic necessities means that you will only ever solve the fairness problem temporarily.

I'm not sure fair salary is enough, if their quality of life still sucks otherwise and they're still being ground up by the algorithm.

Perhaps they'll be able to save up enough money for something and quit sooner than they could now.

But perhaps the ideal should be a liveable wage and liveable job conditions.

It's true that income disparity is natural, and I would argue that it's good up to a point. We don't need everyone to earn the same and have the same standard of living. Work harder, make more! We just need to ratchet down the greed and manage the gap a hell of a lot better. I suspect an income ratio at or under 8:1 is sustainable, not 300:1 like we have now... especially since many of 300:1 mega-corps are subsidized through massive tax breaks.

This doesn't have to be Russian oligarchs in charge of your bread rations. We just need worker co-ops, aka democracy in the workplace. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation for a working example of an alternative.

Say you're an experienced developer. Maybe it would be OK if you only made twice as much as the lowest paid individual at your company? Maybe it would be OK if the CEO only made three times as much as you?

I am okay with that ratio decreasing, but I don't see any way that that has any hope of being accomplished via policy changes any time soon.

I don't think it has to come too heavily from the top... if it does, then it starts to smell like already failed socialist experiments. Here's a few ideas that couldn't hurt though:

1. No more excessive corporate tax breaks.

2. No more offshore tax havens.

3. Equal footing for co-ops (subsidies, startup loans, etc.)

4. Teach alternatives to capitalism in schools, or least to think about capitalism more critically (this one's a stretch, it's already like a religion).

Other than that, I think it needs to come from the bottom. If worker co-ops really are better places to work then the word will get out once there's more of them.

I agree with you, partly. I consider myself pretty far left politically, but I recognize the disparity of mental capacity among workers and the relative societal value of different types of work. However, I think what OP is getting at is more the value of having a decent standard of living for everyone in the pursuit of even higher levels of general prosperity. The setting of an office park puts a deficit of such in stark relief. Perhaps, in this area specifically, we can see the value of a system like that which Europe has, where public mobility and urban renewal are top priorities. I, for one, think that it may be beneficial to our society in the long run to value labor over capital.

We both value labor over capital and capital over labor depending on the market. The market is not either/or across the board.

Not all labor is equal. As a somewhat specialized software engineer, my labor is generally valued over capital.

What makes no sense is to expect all labor to be valued over capital since much of the labor is not the labor you need and you need to apply your capital to get the labor you do need.

I think in this thought experiment we are doing, it is reasonable to assume that all labor is labor you need, since someone has agreed to do that labor for economic gain. We're not talking about abstract labor, like someone spending time doing shitty art that no one wants to look at.

Sure you shouldn't expect everyone to have the same standard of living but you can bring a little closer with different taxation and benefits, minimum wage, better conditions, etc. Which leads to a society where we benefit from the creative spending power of a broader middle class (in that very Ford way) as well as the creativity of this person and their children who have more opportunity to be better educated and start businesses of their own

> While it's depressing, what alternative is there?

For starters, how about, instead of 60% of the working age population working 40 hours to make ends meet, (with the other 40% mooching off them, through welfare, family members supporting eachother, etc), how about 80% of the population working 30 hours a week?

It would create the same amount of wealth, but would distribute it a little differently.

This seems logical and tempting, but there obviously must be some reason societies haven't evolved to do this?

My suspicion is that those remaining 40% are significantly less employable, and you can't just swap them in like a fungible good. I suspect also that as technical skills become more valuable - and our education system remains stagnant - that 40% number will grow.

>with the other 40% mooching off them, through welfare, family members supporting eachother

i'd implore you to compare regular people welfare spending to corporate welfare spending if this is the view you hold

It's not a viewpoint I personally hold, but it is a viewpoint ~half the citizenry holds. (Including the folks who, without a shred of irony, personally benefit from this state of affairs.)

Birthrate US: 1.8, China: 1.62, Japan: 1.44, EU: 1.6

Just allow the situation to resolve itself?

How about that 80% working the full 40 hours? Have you looked around? There's no shortage of things that need to be done, fixed, maintained, repaired, overhauled. There's no dearth of resources to learn how to do this.

I'd sooner see investment in apprenticeship programs and other efforts to reduce the "mooching" as you called it, than somehow thinking that having me work ten hours less a week is going to provide anything for anyone. How does me doing less work enable that? There's not a fixed supply of "work that can be done", by any stretch.

Why not 80 hours a week, then? Or 120?

It's because I'm not trying to increase the amount of crap we produce. I simply postulate that we could get the same work done, by a better distribution of labour. Whether or not we need to produce more is another question entirely.

> than somehow thinking that having me work ten hours less a week is going to provide anything for anyone.

Take three people in your position, and you'll create a job for a fourth. And, after all, in our society, job creation is some holy grail that we need to bend over backwards on laws, regulations, and smart business sense for. Instead of compromising on those things, why not compromise on 'normal' working hours, instead?

There's no pool of 90+ million lazy people that could start working. I wasn't even aware this is a myth, but an old Politifact page addresses it, so it must be an old talking point.

It says the "working age population" which is everybody over 16, was 243 million in 2013, while the labor force was 156 million, leaving 87 million or about 36%.

Of those 87 million, - 9 million were probably in high school - 21 million were in college - 40 million were over 65 - 2+ million were incarcerated - ~20 million were disabled and cannot work (estimated 8% of the population)

That adds up to 92 million; obviously some of those older and younger people are in fact working.

See: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul...

and

https://disabilitycompendium.org/sites/default/files/user-up...

The labour force of non-disabled, non-student[1], non-over-65 is smaller than 156 million. You have to subtract those people (Of which there are a lot of) from that metric (Instead of just the unemployed metric), to get an apples-to-apples comparison of non-disabled, non-studying, non-senior workers/non-workers, which, alas, the article in question does not.

You'll also find a lot of the remaining employed people to be significantly under-employed, compared to people doing 40+ hours/week.

[1] 40% of undergraduate students, and 76% of graduate students have >30 hours of work/week. [2][3]

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/at-univ...

[3] So, instead of subtracting 20 million from the unemployed bucket, we need to subtract ~10 million from the employed bucket, and ~10 million from the unemployed bucket. Repeat this process for high school students, persons with disabilities (Some of whom do, in fact, work), and seniors, and you will get to something more resembling a 6:4 ratio.

I think you have completely misunderstood. I wasn't talking about "employed" and "unemployed" buckets according to some arbitrary definitions, but the people who are employed at all vs. a naive figure for the labor force. Neither of those numbers are adjustable at whim. The issue is, who are the people that comprise the difference and are they just lazy?

And the 20 million disabled people figure is not the total number of disabled people; it's the fraction that don't work multiplied by the fraction who are disabled multiplied by the workforce number. The second reference is where I got the fractions.

No,not really. My comment was solely to depict the way I see these delivery drivers.I have nothing against rich people having businesses or expensive cars.

Income disparity is natural I agree. Every time someone in history has tried to remove the gap it's ended in horror. But I don't believe those at the bottom shouldn't be able to get a better standard of living than they have now.

Throughout history, raising the standard for those at the bottom usually makes the richest richer, but I'd argue that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

More specifically, throughout history, opportunities that allow those at the bottom to raise their standard of living usually makes the richest richer.

People can only get richer if there is productivity. Simply transferring wealth is not a panacea if it doesn't measurably result in productivity.

And penalizing productivity through confiscatory taxation kills productivity and wealth creation. Why bother working 40 hours if the government steals 20 hours of your labor to give to someone else producing less? Might as well just work 10 hours and have less of your your labor stolen. What’s the incentive for working harder if harder work just means you get to pay more for someone else? Why risk capital starting a business if you are going to end up in the same place as the guy that risks nothing? Redistribution kills economies and it kills innovation.

> Every time someone in history has tried to remove the gap it's ended in horror.

Has it? It's easy to recall the times it has because they make it to the history books, but there's been peaceful periods of reduction in income inequality too. Simply in the US, in the period right after WW2 income inequality fell in what is known as "The Great Compression"[1].

This was also an era of incredible progress and development of the US— everything from big developments around social issues (civil rights movement), huge cultural evolution (counterculture), big development in science and technology (moon landings, nuclear power, etc).

When people don't have to worry about wether they can afford rent the next month, they can worry less about losing their job to immigrants, they can afford to quit a bad job to find a better one, open their own business, etc. In general not things you measure as economic standard of living, as the money you make and things you own, but that translate as less time spent stressed and more time spent being productive both economically and just culturally.

The thought that to make things better for the poor we need to make them better for the rich too is awful close to trickle-down economics, which have proven again and again to be very much an unsound theory.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

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