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Comment by davengh | Hacker News Reader

I think they're referring to the reported costs of social programs used by WalMart and Amazon workers because they average pay is so low.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-...

https://newrepublic.com/article/146540/amazon-thriving-thank...

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The implicit premise of such arguments is that every WalMart (etc.) worker receiving benefits; would be employed at a party disqualifying them from public benefits if not for their present employer.

This is quite implausible, of course, which is why it's never explicitly argued, but the entire criticism falls apart without that assumption.

Why does every employer pay poverty wages and what can one of the biggest (or biggest) private employers in America do about it?

It's interesting you take the position that Walmart is helpless to pay its workers more, as if they were some mom and pop operation.

It’s interesting you take the position that Walmart should irrationally pay more when their current workforce is clearly fine with the arrangement.

I've always found it to be an odd displacement of responsibility. If somebody doesn't have the resources they need to live, it's our collective ethical responsibility to provide a resource floor. Walmart et al don't magically gain ethical responsibility for providing this floor just because they purchase someone's labor, in the same way that buying a dresser from someone off of Craigslist doesn't make you responsible for making the seller has enough income overall. It's difficult for me to see this view as anything but a desperate ploy to abdicate direct responsibility for taking care of the neediest and foist it off on some perceived other

I think it's more of a remnant of a primary-employer-as-patron model of thinking that still permeates much of modern society as something of an echo of feudal social relations than a “desperare ploy” to do anything, but otherwise I agree with your characterization of it as a displacement of social responsibility onto a private actor that is both poorly positioned to carry it out (in that any greater effort of them to do so to their employees would probably reduce the number of employees and increase the total unmet social burden) and lacking incentive to do so.

> I think it's more of a remnant of a primary-employer-as-patron model of thinking that still permeates much of modern society as something of an echo of feudal social relations

As always, I'm never sure which side of Hanlon's Razor to fall on, since the level of stupidity and the level of malice required for either explanation are off the charts

> Why does every employer pay poverty wages

Most employers of relatively unskilled labor pay poverty wages because they can get the labor they are seeking at that price, and they haven't identified ways to get sufficiently better returns paying more to justify higher pay.

> and what can one of the biggest (or biggest) private employers in America do about it?

Why should they?

I'd rather just tax capital earnings as income, tax high-end income more, and fund a UBI than expect employers to act irrationally as public benefit agencies.

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