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Comment by spugody | Hacker News Reader

Who defines what a fair wage is?

Whatever enables a dignified existence. It doesn't require much imagination to figure out what's included in that.

Does it include children? How many is considered dignified? Some people have to have 3 just to keep the population steady.

If so, is it appropriate for a childless 18-year-old on minimum wage to earn that much (he could probably lease a Ferrari or retire at 38)

Is it appropriate for a company to pay a childless person less than a person with children? Why? What if he’s sterile?

Seems very tricky to me.

I like how the premise of this argument is that it's somehow horrible to pay someone too much. How horrible that an 18 year old be able to afford more than the rent on a crappy apartment. The more you empower young people with a livable wage the less of an influence their parent's money or lack of is on their life.

Just pick a floor that's good enough for everyone, accept that will be people with low expenses who will be "overpaid", and stop trying to figure out what every individual deserves.

I don’t think we produce enough for every minimum wage worker to earn enough to have 2-3 kids and raise them in a dignified manner (or the equivalent in Ferraris and hedonism). Kids are really, really expensive.

In my country, Sweden, we have a very generous child welfare and parental leave. I have no children though. By your logic I should be envious and bitter? But I'm proud. It's called solidarity and having a healthy society benefits a childless me as well.

It's not tricky, and has been going on for the last fifty years or so just fine.

That's not the same as a minimum wage that is high enough for people to raise three children.

We were talking about wages, not state benefits.

State benefits are a much better way to address income inequality or poverty than minimum wages are.

Well, if the businesses and corporations doesn't want to pay the taxes to fund it, they obviously have to fund it instead.

In a free market, the market does.

In most actual cases, some combination of a sort of free market, monopolies over labor (unions) and capital (large corporations), and government regulation does.

It would be better to say the market sets wages to maximize efficiency. With wages being price signals people are supposed to respond to in choosing and changing jobs.

The "fairness" view assumes everyone is born into their jobs somehow and stuck there. If people could choose any job they wanted, fairness is irrelevant because everyone has an equal choice. This is obviously an ideal, but then the opposite extreme is unrealistic too.

the models of market fairness work perfectly in a world where people could simply choose not to work, and where everyone has the ability to work to qualify for any job.

however in the real world people are forced to work by a need to survive, which puts disempowered people in a position to be exploited. and there is unequal access to education, to the leisure time to participate in education, and to the material security required to have a brain that is able to focus on education, so not everyone will be able to even make an attempt to qualify for every job. not to mention the fact that there is unequal access to the networking and connections, and to the non-merit-based "qualifications" that bring certain people to power (e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. all the isms).

so exploitation and injustice abounds in an unregulated system which tends to entrench and concentrate power within the hands of those who already have it

I've never heard of "models of market fairness", it sounds silly. I called the extreme where fairness was irrelevant an ideal. I take it you agree with that point. Though I don't see that much of what you are saying is particularly crushing to the ideal. In "the real world" one also doesn't need to switch jobs every day like a day trader changing stocks.

I also take it you concede that pursuing fairness leads to reduced efficiency? You can't very well serve two optimals.

> I also take it you concede that pursuing fairness leads to reduced efficiency?

Efficiency of what? Yes, it reduces the efficiency by which overall wealth is created (whatever that means). And yes, it enhances the effiency by which a society provides for the needs of all.

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