Hacker News Reader

No - that type of job shouldn't exist. Automate them, offshore them, let the business models that depend on this type of exploitive labor fail. Eventually, this sort of job is going to disappear anyway.

If paired with robust social safety nets, we can absolutely require jobs to pay a living wage.

View on HN

There are people willing to take those jobs. You would be taking a job away from a willing worker and doing what? Tell them to take welfare? Not everyone in the workforce is a sole breadwinner for their family. Regulating those jobs makes all of those workers worse off and is an economic loss to the system.

They're willing to take the jobs because that's (presumably) all they can do now. The social safety safety nets I'm proposing would include robust access to quality education for the economically displaced.

I firmly believe that any currently "unskilled" worker can re-tool and become much more productive if given the opportunity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com