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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

Yeah why not? I mean you're doing an argumentum ad absurdum but you have the right idea.

Minimum wage and employee protection laws are the way forward. Everybody should be able to live comfortably, working at most 40 hours / week.

Minimum wage is bad in its own way, because it sets a "what is the least we can get away with" boundary for employers, but in the current employment climate, employers can and do get away with paying less (see the service industry where employees are expected to collect tips to stipend their wages, see the gig industry where the employer doesn't give a shit that the employee has to struggle full days to get enough work to get paid).

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With globalized world, many of us compete with people and companies from places with much lower total cost of life.

You can definitely manufacture an umbrella or a car cheaper in China or Serbia than in the U.S.

This means that there is a natural ceiling on wages in some sectors, unless people start "Buy American" even if the price of the product is considerably higher. Which, in turn, will lower their own purchasing power.

As seen in practice, most customers would rather purchase cheaper stuff made abroad by cheaper workforce. The E.U. has a lot of protective measures in various sectors precisely because they know that the same would happen if the restrictions were lifted.

> Everybody should be able to live comfortably, working at most 40 hours / week.

What if they aren’t productive enough to earn that amount of money? Where does the money come from?

Other people of course. Just like for people who can't work at all, for example because their health doesn't allow it.

How is this any different to a welfare state, then?

It's not any different. If by "welfare state" you mean "a decent social safety net". Which the USA should definitely have.

Why does it need to be different from a welfare state?

I don't think you have a picture of what a welfare state is. Sometimes it helps to take it to the extreme:

You have millions of people sitting in their government provided housing, waiting for their government provided payouts, so they can avoid having to get out and work. This sound familiar yet? Then what you have to do, after production grounds to a halt, is to start to force people to work which is exactly how you get labor camps.

Ah yes, the well known labour camps of Scandinavia.

I'm pretty sure you may be trolling but if you're not, reading up on the western european welfare states would probably be a good idea.

I was taking it to the extreme as I said above. Obviously it is possible to have a country that has welfare without labor camps. I was merely trying to point out that by having unemployment benefits, you actively discourage people to get jobs and essentially tax payers pay for people to not work.

At least in the UK, we have an inordinate amount of benefits cheats that live off other people's money. If you only extend benefits to people who physically cannot work -i.e. disability benefits, then you stop this happening.

> At least in the UK, we have an inordinate amount of benefits cheats that live off other people's money

...

> perceptions among the British public were that benefit fraud was high – on average people thought that 27% of the British welfare budget is claimed fraudulently; however, official UK Government figures have stated that the proportion of fraud stands at 0.7% of the total welfare budget in 2011/12

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_fraud_in_the_United_...

Sorry but my definition of a benefit cheat is much more liberal than the government's:

> Fraud: Cases where all three of the following conditions apply:

The conditions for receipt of benefit, or the rate of benefit in payment, are not being met

The claimant can reasonably be expected to be aware of the effect on entitlement

Benefit stops or reduces as a result of the review. [1] <

Firstly, the data is only from those who got caught. I would say there is probably a lot more that haven't been. Also, you can claim benefits by going to the job centre every so often, but you don't need to actually get a job.

Anecdotally, my mate's dad does this. He has been living off of benefits for 10+ years, even though he is more than able to work. If someone can get away with it for that long, how is the system not broken?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-...

I think this argument makes sense in white collar jobs, but productivity in blue collar jobs is very scalable by capital (e.g. automation). People without much qualifications can make a multiple if there are adequate jobs.

It's a real good thing that all of the money was imaginary in the first place. It can come from wherever. It's just a means to allocate the resources that actually hold the value, but is not valuable itself.

That’s a false argument. Pretty much every employee is productive enough to be living a decent life. The same can’t be said about their bargaining power.

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