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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> Isn’t income equality (government interventions in some aspects aside) a mere reflection of people’s contribution to a economy and their ability to negotiate?

Watch the elision between this and the next sentence:

> So, are you assuming/applying everyone more or less has the same contribution or do you want everyone to be paid the same irrespective?

The bit that's gone is "their ability to negotiate", which depends to a great extent on how wealthy you are already. BATNA, and so on.

Also, conflating income from labour with income from capital confuses the issue further.

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Income from capital is generally lower in low-interest regimes. We probably saw inflation in asset classes such as housing and stock as a result of monetary oversupply and cheap access to capital. Not factoring in such things into inflation is a question the Fed would have to address.

With a sufficient social net and minimum wages, even poorly qualified have good negotiation power. No offense, but I’m also not sure how paying 30 USD/h to somebody who doesn’t speak the language and is performing low complexity work is doing society any good. I live in Europe and there is no way anybody would come for house cleaning, shopping or whatnot below that - because they are just better off with free housing, free healthcare, free schooling and money on top.

Unless they are disabled, people should be doing their own house cleaning, doing their own shopping, and etcetera.

Service jobs should be limited to corporations. In your home, you (or your children) do it. Otherwise it's a waste of human talent to have another human dedicate their life to doing a menial task.

I don’t understand your point. It’s not a zero-sum game where some people are forced to clean houses. If they want to not clean houses they can change career.

If you don’t pay them you’re not somehow freeing them up to realize their potential, you’re just giving them fewer customers. At least where I live a lot of professional house cleaners are small business owners.

Sure, I'm probably going to extremes. There are definite economies of scale to specialize in house cleaning and the like. I'm thinking more about the stereotypical rich person type of service with multiple dedicated servants for a single household.

I also think you should grow your own vegetables, keep your own chicken and generate your own electricity. I mean, I’m thinking more about the stereotypical first world person that can just go into a supermarket and buy whatever he wants.

Unfortunately the majority of people in the first world live in areas where that just isn't possible. Outside of a potted plant or two.

But yes, victory gardens FTW! :) At the very least they build in more resiliency.

I think you're being tongue in cheek, but I responded to a person elsewhere online a while back from India who was basically justifying hiring servants as being beneficial. I disagree and think that that's a sink of human resources. The economy, and capitalism, can come up with better uses for most people who are full-time servants.

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