Hacker News Reader

Comment by pequalsnp | Hacker News Reader

The problem that arises is that if you artificially inflate someone's wages to an arbitrary number like 21/hr, they might not provide enough value to economically justify the wage level they're set at.

It's not, and shouldn't be, an emotional argument. It's an economical one.

View on HN

Frankly, I don't care about any economic argument that says people shouldn't have the ability to put food on their table, a roof over their head, and have decent healthcare. Any company that cannot be profitable and pay their employees enough to cover basic needs shouldn't exist as a company.

They can go find a different job that pays more. Uber driving is not skilled labor. How it’s justified as a 21/hr job I don’t understand.

Why should skilled laborors be able to raise a family and not unskilled? Like what makes educated people more valuable as human beings?

Almost anybody is able to become a skilled laborer :) all it takes is time and effort.

And a skilled laboror doesn't deserve more than 60-100k/year or more than? Why should everybody's pay be the same or decreasing and not CEOs and VCs?

You should be paid what the market says you’re worth, which is exactly what you can negotiate to be paid.

Which is exactly what we're talking about. Instead of getting paid what we're worth, we have mega corporations like Uber breaking laws, ignoring regulations, and then lobbying for regulations when it suits them. It's rather disgusting.

What laws and regulations is Uber breaking?

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

Well then the states better get on fining Uber!

They are. It's a problem of the rich not caring and just paying the fines.

We can't all be skilled labourers. Who will perform all the unskilled labour that's needed for society not to grind to a halt?

> Like what makes educated people more valuable as human beings?

On average, educated people contribute more value to the functioning of society. I can drive myself around. I can't perform my own heart surgery.

The argument that all humans are inherently equally valuable is specious reasoning. I can come up with all sorts of trolly car conundrums that if you were forced to choose, you'd make a value judgement about which person to save because they have more value.

We have enough money to make sure everyone can have a home, medicine, and food and water, even if you just drive a cab all your life.

Yes, but not any home wherever they want to live by themselves and not any medicine or medical treatment available.

Some things are scarce resources and should be priced accordingly.

Maybe instead of arguing about who deserves to get hit by the trolley, we should be changing the system that is tying people to the tracks.

I genuinely don't know how to explain that the fact it requires an income of more than 21/hr to meet basic needs is all the justification that should be required.

Maybe if we stopped thinking of employees/contractors as "labor" and thought of them as people it would be easier to empathize with their needs. Do you think that your friends, family, and loved ones deserve a wage that meets their basic needs? Why shouldn't all humans deserve the same?

It only requires that amount if you’re intent on living in the most expensive cities in the entire country.

Yes. All of the Uber drivers and other unskilled labor should move to Montana. That would be super helpful for those needing rides in SF.

Uber was never a career, it was a side gig.

How would you distinguish what job can be a career and what must be a "side gig?"

Sorry, are you not aware with the term "gig economy"?

Uber isn't a "gig" job for a lot of people. That's just marketing.

Or if you'd like to see a doctor sometimes.

That's not how capitalism works and that's not why companies exist. Companies pay you what you worth to them. A company is not a human, it doesn't care whether you have a family and are struggling or not.

The primary purpose of a business is to maximize profits for its stakeholders.

Then the answer is simple, if we want humanism in the way we deal with employees, than businesses that seek to maximize profits for their stakeholders should be outlawed.

> Any company that cannot be profitable and pay their employees enough to cover basic needs shouldn't exist as a company.

There are many ways to cover your basic needs that don't require you to live on your own in a one-bedroom apartment and three square meals a day. In fact, most of humanity survived by pooling resources. The ability to live entirely on your own being common is a very recent phenomena as is three square meals a day.

All your stating is that people shouldn't have options where they can pool resources. As someone supporting two older adults in my household, you're saying that if they can't get hold a livable wage jobs (unlikely given that one has Parkinson's) but still still could earn money and contribute to the household. You've not made my circumstances harder by legislating away opportunities for them to contribute.

Why should a company be responsible for healthcare? It’s not the case anywhere else in the world?

Because that's the system under which we live.

Healthcare should be provided to all by the government for free, but until then we must live under the system.

So instead of complaining about a company should provide health benefits, complain about the government.

Advocating an increased minimum wage is complaining about the government.

Do you think that everyone deserves “a livable wage” - even my 17 year old son staying at home flipping pizza?

Yes. We're an immensely wealthy country

Who should pay for it? The pizza shop owner with a net income of under $50K a year after working 70+ hours a week? Increase taxes on the household making an average of $70K a year so the government can subsidize his pay while he stays in a household making over twice the average household income?

Does the pizza owner also deserve an adequate return on investment to make his risk worthwhile or should he also work for minimum wage at a larger corporation?

Why should we tax the poor? No, we should tax the rich, ramp that tax rate up to 90 percent for the highest brackets, and stop putting half our taxes to military. We'd suddenly have so much money we wouldn't know what all to spend it on.

When you “tax the rich at 90%” it disincentivizes people from working - would you risk starting a business or working extra hours for only 10 cents to the dollar?

Also, how do you classify “the rich”? People in the 90th percentile of household income? That would be approximately $130K a year.

Finally, only 15% of federal spending goes to the military. Most of our spending is already for social security, Medicare, education, retirement benefits, etc.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-w...

This is why capital gain taxes are generally different from income taxes (the previous are lower and can be offset by losses to prevent risk taking).

Social security and Medicare are funded directly via payroll taxes, they are not part of he general fund and you pay for them separately. Comparing them is like comparing medical insurance premiums or 401k savings to military spending.

Social Security and Medicare taxes have always been mixed in with regular income taxes. The government “borrows” money from the social security fund and issues the funds IOUs. There is no separate account where money is stashed away and only spent on SS and Medicare.

> Social Security and Medicare taxes have always been mixed in with regular income taxes

No, they never had. In fact, 47% of the population doesn’t pay income taxes at all, just payroll taxes, which are capped rather than progressive (anti progressive, actually).

The government does borrow money via IOUs to fund things like military mostly, but they also borrow money via treasuries, are you saying China’s export surplus should be mixed with regular income taxes as well?

Despite all of the accounting tricks, at the end of the day, “payroll taxes” are spent to fund every part of the government just like all of the other taxes. We just happen to have a surplus now.

Once the tide turns and social security is running at a deficit, regular income tax will have to pay for social security. It’s all the same money.

We already don’t have a surplus in payroll taxes, and will in a decade or two run out of the money already lent to the general fund. Still, that money has already been allocated and Americans have been paying for it specifically. If congress meant otherwise, they should have included it as a benefit paid for via taxes, but they didn’t set t up that way at all.

Congress only "means" what makes them look good for the next election cycle. But sooner or later, either benefits will have to be cut, or taxes raised. Either way Congress won't be able to do what they said they could do.

> When you “tax the rich at 90%” it disincentivizes people from working

It reduces the incentive to sacrifice other things for additional income once you've already reached the level at which the increased tax kicks in, yes.

Why is this a bad thing?

So what is a “fair” amount that people should earn? I bet the people living in the Midwest would love to tax the “liberal west coast elite” living in Silicon Valley 90%. Should 90% start at $150K? $200K? Or is the definition of the “rich” “anyone who makes more than I think I will make”.

> So what is a “fair” amount that people should earn?

I reject both the concept and it's relevance; no marginal tax rate below 100% is an income ceiling, and setting marginal tax rates at particular levels neither requires nor implies that a single such “fair” amount exists.

> I bet the people living in the Midwest would love to tax the “liberal west coast elite” living in Silicon Valley 90%

I bet most of the low income population of the West Coast (and Bay Area in particular) would like that—and benefit from it, in terms of effects on local cost of living—more than anyone in the Midwest.

> Should 90% start at $150K? $200K?

I didn't actually endorse a 90% marginal rate for federal income tax; disagreeing with a particular argument against a thing isn't endorsing it.

If I were to propose rewriting marginal rates, I'd probably do something like drop the 32% bracket down to start at about the 90th individual income percentile (instead of about the 95th, where it is currently), and drop the existing higher brackets in favor of adding additional +8% brackets at the 95th, 97th, 98th, and 99th percentiles, topping out at a 64% rate.

But more important, I'd tax capital gains as normal income, with options for both advance recognition and deferment to handle irregular streams (whether from capital events or otherwise.)

The CEO of walmart most certainly isn't worth 22 million/year. If you can't bring in 21/hour as a cab driver you probably shouldn't be driving cab, especially considering you should be pulling in, what, well over 100/hr gross?

What evidence do you have that the CEO doesn't bring that much in value to Walmart?

"Bad managers cost just as much as good managers."

https://investorplace.com/2018/07/are-ceos-really-worth-what...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highe...

I CTRL+F'd for Walmart in each article but didn't find anything. I thought that was the topic of discussion?

You're mistaken

These articles present an incredibly naive analysis of the situation. The logic is "high pay should equal high stock performance" but this fails to recognize that in an effecient market the ability and salary of the ceo would already be priced into the stock, and thus would have "no effect" on its performance. You can't prove that the stock would've done less-worse if a different (lower paid) ceo was there, which is essentially what these articles try and argue.

The economic argument however, also includes taxes, the welfare state, etc;

If a job pays less than the cost of living in an area, then the job is somewhere between subsidized by the government or not economically viable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com