Minimum Wage Clock
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That said, CEO salary does strike me as strange. Who needs 8 million per year + stock? I'd think more CEOs would voluntarily take a pay cut.
Is that an accurate description of CEOs worth billions of dollars though? How hard are they supposedly working? I'm probably lazier than most of them as an IC with disabilities and non-work interests... but it's not humanly possible that they get ~40,000 times as much done in a day as I do.
But you do understand why a popular singer or a football player get that much more than you?
OP is saying "in terms of goals, the end goal should be reduction of poverty, not reduction of rich people".
You're saying "in reality, data says that reduction of rich people tends to correlate with reduction of poverty", thus opening up reduction of rich people as one potential path towards the reduction of poverty.
I don't think it's been definitively demonstrated that the existence of rich people necessitates the existence of poverty. I would agree that, in reality, the creation of rich people tends to also lead to the creation of poverty.
It's his name on the front of the book, but he is not necessarily the primary author. That sounds a little unethical to me.
[0] https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/380231/James-P...
[1] https://theconversation.com/why-you-dont-need-to-write-much-...
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/featu...
Taylor Swift, perhaps? Paul McCartney. You only need one example to disprove the case.
It doesn’t seem ridiculous that if you make something and charge $10 and 100 million people pay you that you’re necessarily doing something unethical.
They’re such outliers that it’s still a safe assumption someone has done something exploitative if they’re a billionaire.
Secondly they are receiving endowments from many individuals and organizations on top of tuitions and cuts off the top of grants researcher working there receive.
Thirdly they arent just getting simple compound intrest from money setting in a savings account instead they run private equity funds and hedge funds, which are themselves morally suspect
They had a rough first 10 years breaking even vs GDP/c under Batista but there was rapid advancement after that until collapse of the Soviet Union.
Source: Capital by Piketty
That may be true, but I personally also think curbing the wealth of the extremely wealthy is a worthwhile goal in its own right. It's dangerous to give individuals so much power, which is one of the most common lessons in the last 10,000 years of media and also blatantly obvious from the ways many billionaires (and non-billionaires, frankly) use that money to manipulate, harm, disenfranchise, and silence the public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Ko...
Which is why we need governmental solutions, laws, taxes, etc and can't rely on just good will.
I havent read the book you recomended, but I will check it out. I'd also recomend the book "On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake" as it's a great description of how global elites have largely captured government for their own ends since the gilded age.
Profit, dividends, and buybacks are unpaid wage.
Are you sure about that? What if he spends that money supporting political figures and economic policies that make your life worse?
If you look at income distribution graphs of the last few decades and the political influence those in the highest percentiles wielded, it's not entirely unfair to question whether this might make the life of the average citizen "worse".
The housing issues are at best partially caused by the rich; plenty of places to put a cheap tar paper shack but for whatever non-market reason you cannot.
Also, at least in the USA, money is efficiently convertible to and from political power. So outsized wealth translates into outsized political power. Satya Nadella having far more money than I means he also has far more political clout than I have.
Does Satya Nadella not giving all of his extra monies to better causes and instead keeping it for himself make the lives of others (those in poverty) worse? Or "not better"? aka "billionaires choose to retain some portion of their earnings/wealth instead of dedicating it to poverty"
Then the question becomes "why do we expect those with a lot of money to selflessly not want to keep the money for themselves and instead give back/give it away"
Two words: generational wealth. Such CEO salaries are legacy builders. That's why no-one in their right mind would turn it down.
That is simply not true. Money is not an absolut good, but relative. When a few people own a large portion of money, that affords them the power to decide what people do and usually makes their life worse.
Fortunately the people living in the United States of America have a society of laws and have been to bat against the monopolistic tendencies of unfettered capitalism at least once before.
Maybe a lot of companies (erhm, platform-companies) use unfair market dynamics that should be regulated to yield a fair market place (Eg. European platform directives)?
For an ideal marketplace it should never be possible to accrue extreme wealth as other providers should swoop in when they discover that there are profit opportunities. If the marketplace does not work like that, then regulation should ensure that we go towards an ideal marketplace.
This is, btw, why all industrialised countries have rules against monopolies.
Ie. extreme wealth inequality is a sign of a dysfunctional capitalistic system.
> Any income differential that results in a power imbalance makes the world worse.
And that might be true but I think it misses the point of the argument. Increasing the quality of life for the global poor is much more important than capping Satya's wealth. There's no equivalence here.
Eg. global minimum tax schemes are a promising category og tools to fix this. Indifferently to how you see it, that would decrease somebody's wealth, that they are being taxed on their (foreign) assets.
Increasing quality of life for the poorest people will have to require wealth (and power) redistribution – but that should happen within a framework of fair regulation and fair taxing.
And I doubt any of them would take a pay cut.
Accumulated capital is a type of artificial intelligence. Its goal is to defend its existence and accumulate more. When it accumulates more, it needs to defend itself more. This means tax laws and interpretations that benefit a very certain type of citizen. It means international treaties that allow the movement of capital when the local laws become inconvenient. It means business regulations that protects investor instead of consumer interests.
If you let this go on for a certain amount of time, the structure of the economy starts to make no sense to the vast majority of the participants.
The only effective ways to deal with this are progressive taxation and labor regulations. Bring back the 90+% top tax bracket that Thatcher and Reagan disposed of. Tie minimum wage to regional cost of living indices.
Of course, this article only discusses wages. The truly wealthy don't make much from income. It's incredible that capital gains tax is less than income tax.
I do prefer market solutions that Charity/Philanthropy offer vs governmental spending. And sometimes I think about how many of the richest have a 100% tax bracket as they've pledged their fortunes to charity after death.
Probably seems contradictory to my parent comment, but as I said I'm just not sure of the best path forward tbh.
I recommend reading the History of Equality by Thomas Piketty to better understand the efficacy of progressive income tax and wealth tax.
In practice, laws ostensibly intended to support philanthropy are used as tax dodges, money laundering schemes, workarounds of campaign finance laws, etc., with all manner of perverse incentives and conflicts of interest involved. The big money is generally less in "market solutions" and more in "hacking the tax code for the benefit of the wealthy".
In my opinion financial gifts to organizations should not offer tax write-offs for donors (especially of estate/inheritance taxes), or at any rate the maximum write-off should be capped based on plausible middle-class contributions; and universities, churches, and charities should generally pay the taxes businesses pay. If people want to spend their money on charitable activities, that's great, but the government should not be in the business of differentially subsidizing them based on the whims of the wealthy. If we want to have direct government subsidies of charities or educational institutions, it should be based on some transparent and democratically accountable grant system.
If we want to help ordinary people, the most effective method is universal direct cash transfers from the government (without means testing, weird income cliffs, or bureaucratic hoops), better labor protections, and restructuring the tax code to be more progressive (e.g. toward land-value tax and away from sales tax, treating capital gains as income, adding higher-rate income tax brackets at the top end, and raising caps on payroll taxes).
That's not the same as a 100% tax bracket, because those resources are free to be deployed while the person is still alive. Also, with charity, the devil is often in the details. The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, for example, is focused not only on helping stop disease in disadvantaged countries but also encouraging stronger IP protection in medicine[1] and pushing for privatization of education[2].
Charitable organizations can be conduits for transforming economic power into political power. This is not the same as a tax.
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/06/19/bill-mel...
Tim Cook's 100k/hour doesn't get taxed at the current top rate, let alone a new 90% rate.
The benefits of local business are 1) that dollars spent there generate more wealth for the local economy, as they're not extracted to offshore bank accounts; and 2) that there can be more accountability to and involvement with the community served.
However, just because someone hasn't expanded their business to the state/national/international levels doesn't make them a good person, a good manager, a good CEO, or a good community member. The term "petty tyrant" is often used to refer to small business owners who abuse their employees and/or community.
This is only one side of the equation. Globalization also means the local economy is also "extracting" wealth from other economies.
>2) that there can be more accountability to and involvement with the community served.
Yeah, like car dealerships using their "accountability to and involvement" to forcibly insert themselves in the value chain?
... more than large corporations do? Nonsense
> Yeah, like car dealerships using their "accountability to and involvement" to forcibly insert themselves in the value chain?
I would suggest you reread the sentence you quoted and then go ahead and finish reading the rest of my comment, because this sounds like an argumentative retort but I don't think you understood what you're replying to.
Corporations aren't some entities from another dimension. Their earnings must ultimately go to someone. For the global economy as a whole, all the "extraction" that's happening ultimately net out to zero.
>I would suggest you reread the sentence you quoted and then go ahead and finish reading the rest of my comment, because this sounds like an argumentative retort but I don't think you understood what you're replying to.
I suggest you do the same. I was simply pointing out the dark side of the dynamic you described. Yes, car dealerships are pillars of many communities. They sponsor local clubs/sporting teams and local politicians. However, all that "involvement" means they wield enormous political power, to the extent that they're able to lobby state representatives to forcibly add themselves to the automotive value chain. Whether that's better for the consumer, and the local community as a whole is questionable. After all, they're getting the money from the local community, and if their services aren't needed (why do you have to go through a dealership rather than ordering through a web app?) then they're ultimately leeches and a net negative for the community.
I have no idea how this relates to what I was talking about. The reason I asked you that question is because the topic was "local business vs large corporations." What did you think I was talking about?
> I was simply pointing out the dark side of the dynamic you described.
You mean the dark side that I explicitly described in my original comment? Now it's my turn to stop reading, because this is not productive.
https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained...
Steep financial liability for pedestrian/cyclist accidents for not only the driver but also the vehicle manufacturer or anyone involved in modifying a vehicle would also help.
I think even diehard libertarians would admit that "regulations work" in the sense that using the government's monopoly on violence to force companies to do something will cause them to do said thing. The debate is whether the upsides outweigh the downsides (eg. due to regulatory capture).
For a point of comparison, software security is largely unregulated. There's no law that says Google needs to deliver security patches for 5 years, or they need to implement security measures like verified boot, yet they do so anyways, presumably to compete with Apple which is doing something similar.
That isn't really the debate, because we had that debate and decided it was (see seatbelts for an example). Though I guess literally every issue could technically be relitigated and debated constantly ad infinitum, so you're not technically wrong. But we didn't listen to people who said "if you want seatbelts required, just stop buying cars that don't have them".
What we see now, for the most part, are individuals who disagree with our consensus, but that's to be expected no matter what we had ultimately decided. So in this case, "it worked" is shorthand for "it successfully got us closer to achieving the goals we decided on"
The question how valuable consumers perceive safety features to be, and what their rate of adoption would be; additionally, which ones would they choose? Two interesting examples are seat-belts and air-bags; the former is in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per life saved, and the latter is generally estimated to be in the millions of dollars per life saved. Was mandating the air-bag the optimal way to use that money, or did the government commit statistical murder (a term often used in the field).
And it's compounded with things like housing and food. You can't go without either unless you want to live a completely undignified existence and with a vastly shortened lifespan.
Another example to throw in there is indoor smoking too. People never stopped going out to eat or to bars when you were forced to sit in a thick haze of second hand smoke, and even if you did avoid it there were hundreds of other people who didn't care. I can't imagine how things would be if the push to get rid of it happened in more recent times rather than 20-25 years ago. Red states certainly would have never banned it and there would be droves of people going out intentionally to force you to inhale their second hand smoke to own the libs.
This enormous global system of powerful corporations and nation states crafted this system because it was in their best interest. Feels sort of tone deaf to say "well, you got what you deserved, you created this sytem by buying this specific computer and cheaper food!"
Night/farmer's markets are quite popular here in NZ but we haven't toppled global inquality by visiting them yet and I doubt continuing to do so is going to make a difference.
I can choose to participate in “fast fashion”, or choose to buy some of my clothing second-hand.
I can choose a vacation by flying to Greece, or hiking the local area, or anywhere in between.
I can often choose to wait another year to upgrade my phone/computer/device.
Corporations don’t just do stuff, they respond to our actions.
Voting in booths generally works better to affect change in systems like these with externalities, but voting with action and wallets also works.
I do consider that I have a responsibility to act ethically versus other people, and that includes making choices as a consumer.
And generally the people propping up these organizations are the people with disposable income because they're the ones who can pay the margins that keep the companies rich. If you can afford a new Macbook, you can afford something from Framework. The person without a choice is buying something used from eBay or doesn't have a laptop at all.
Corporations respond to our actions, certainly. But in the same way (and for the same reason), we respond to corporate actions. You can bet that every single one of those CEOs in the article is doing everything they legally can to prevent people from "choosing" to go elsewhere. Some are going beyond that.
No single raindrop can cause a flood, but many singular raindrops are required for it to happen.
Indeed, sometimes the role of the union is to get everybody doing the same thing, and provide a safety net for individuals who suffer repercussions for doing the thing.
I find that voting in booths doesn't tend to actually do anything, and voting with wallets actually accomplishes things.
However I really do wonder how much choice we have. Ultimately what I am going to say next comes down to believing the market is actually inefficient and prone to mistakes / manipulation.
While we can buy a gas guzzling car or a smaller greener vehicle, there is a lot of time energy and effort spent to manipulate the perception of the smaller vehicle so that its seen as less attractive to purchase, as well as less attractive to make.
More deeply, I'm not totally convinced that changing an individual to act ethically actually changes the group dynamic or consumption habits. Because by stating we have a responsibility to make ethical choices as a consumer we assume people act rationally all of the time when making purchasing decisions, which really isn't the case otherwise marketing wouldn't be effective. Finally, companies don't really respond to individuals, they respond to groups of people that fit their ideal customer profile. These groups likely have a different set of ethics than us and likely will not change to fit a different world view, at least in aggregate. Individually, sure, but not the whole group.
Maybe more succinctly, I believe there is a real distinction that occurs by looking at group dynamics which cannot be inferred or changed at the individual level and because of that choosing to act ethically as an individual wont ever get the attention of billionaires or massive corporations.
Not trying to be argumentative, I live in the same way you describe, but ultimately I don't think its going to change how apple operates. No matter how many people I tell.
The only intellectually dishonest comment here is this one.
It is the other way around, consumers wanting to keep consuming and feeling good about it while blaming someone else.
I want cars I can wrench on, and software I can trust. I want things that are mine first, not the manufacturers.
It. Will. Not. Happen. Short of doing it ourselves, because businesses can't spawn around those values.
So to hell with you pinning this on "well it's the consumers fault". To hell with that. The conspicuously absent feature is entirely a byproduct of industry. Not consumers. No one can consume what "industry" decides is bad for business.
You might want certain things, but that does not mean you can afford to pay the price that would be sufficient to serve the market (since there would be so few like you). Consumers, as a group, will most likely choose price and getting the job done quickly.
Also, some things in life might just be so technically advanced that you will not find all the optionality you want.
What do you think "doing it ourselves" is? If you want open hardware and nobody makes it, you make it, or do a Go Fund Me etc. Then somebody makes it.
Notwithstanding what other people say, customers do actually prefer these things, if nothing else because they cost less. Once somebody makes a free and open chip design, companies will prefer to put that chip design in their devices because then they don't have to pay for one and don't have to deal with BS where their own customers want updates but upstream provides neither updates nor documentation. Because now upstream is a community anybody can participate in that keeps providing updates for 20+ years.
Customers don't prefer these things only when they're forced into an unnecessary trade off against something else. You want a Ford or Toyota running open source software but your choices are a closed source product in mass production or a kit car you have to assemble from parts. You don't want to assemble it from parts so you pick the first one. But that only sustains as long as nobody is making a competitive mass-produced car which is open source.
As soon as you have one, the permissionlessness is an advantage. Repairs are cheaper so TCO is lower so Consumer's Reports tells normies to buy it. Then the competition has to do the same thing because it's better.
Consolidated markets are a problem. If you wanted to do "iPhone, but open" you can't just glue a screen to a RISC-V CPU, the chip has to be competitive and have third party apps etc. etc.
But not everything is like that. If you wanted to do "desktop PC, but open hardware," that's the sort of thing people are actively working on and could plausibly succeed. So support them, contribute, and buy it when it's available, because it's not impossible.
Strong disagree. It feels like an attempt to convince the public at large that a) they still have significant agency and b) they should feel extremely guilty and/or empowered by that. This paradox is usually a polite fiction at best, and in the worst-case it's a well-orchestrated psy-op.
Like how "recycling" in many communities is just a different funnel that goes to the same dump, or how many good water-preserving citizens are encouraged to have short showers while we ignore the thirsty golf course next door. What are the real scenarios where the habits of the general consumer actually matter, if we stack them up against corporate consumption and those inefficiencies? Does it really make any sense for John Q. Public to feel bad about driving a gas-guzzler to work when the international shipping industry or the municipal/state government isn't looking to upgrade to electric? Or we could talk about the conspicuously missing mass-transit projects that would remove the need for the cars we're supposed to feel guilty about. Why are consumers who are already hard-pressed expected to lead the charge anyway?
> feeling good about it while blaming someone else
But we don't feel good! We feel bad because we got the wrong light bulbs and dishwashers. Every "drop in the bucket" matters, but going after drops in the first place is a paradox, so we won't feel good after we're living in dark rooms with dirty dishes either. I sure hope this actually matters and it isn't a scam to sell more dishwashers and light bulbs! Like come on, efficient appliances are great, but does it really matter when coal was still ~10% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2022? (source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/use-of-coal.php )
Yes, recycling was a ruse to allow people to keep consuming and feeling good about it.
>or how many good water-preserving citizens are encouraged to have short showers while we ignore the thirsty golf course next door.
This one is a valid example, and it is very easy to solve. Marginal water prices. The more water you use, the more you pay. Same with electricity.
> Does it really make any sense for John Q. Public to feel bad about driving a gas-guzzler to work when the international shipping industry or the municipal/state government isn't looking to upgrade to electric?
Yes, because it’s John Q Public that will not vote for a politician to increase fossil fuel taxes high enough to curb excess consumption. In one fell swoop, the problem of carbon emissions and plastic degradation could be solved, but John Q Public WANTS cheap travel and cheap out of season fruits.
Also, in this specific example, John Q Public is literally opting to buy gas (and electric) guzzlers instead of more energy efficient vehicles. Nobody forced anyone to buy big SUVs and compact SUVs.
>Or we could talk about the conspicuously missing mass-transit projects that would remove the need for the cars we're supposed to feel guilty about.
Because John Q Public (at least those with kids) wants detached single family homes on a 0.1 to 0.25 acre lot with a 2 car garage and a front and back yard. And mass transit simply is not tenable at those low population densities.
There’s a few people out there willing to make the sacrifices, but by and large, the population will opt for short term comforts.
Kind of like this:
It is objectively true that the public has significant agency, and the empirical evidence is the number of companies that took a political stance on some issue and then had to reverse it because of (uncoordinated) public backlash. Your unfounded assertions are categorically refuted by concrete examples such as Target and Bud Light publicly reversing their stances on some issues after consumer backlash.
While that is true, typically the customers in aggregate have far more power, both in monetary powers (it's a distributed power), and in democratic powers. Yes there's lobbying in the US, but if individuals gave $25 per voter to their desired cause they'd exceed the lobbying power. ($3.5B lobbying vs 168M voters from quick googles).
> Feels sort of tone deaf to say "well, you got what you deserved, you created this sytem by buying this specific computer and cheaper food!"
Except that it was introspective, not finger pointing. I do prefer a system where i get to choose as opposed to mandated.
Second, no, it's absolutely not a cop-out. You mentioned yourself that nation states crafted this system. You're a member of one of those nation states, and there's a very strong chance that it's a democratic one, in which case you still bear the responsibility to elect responsible leaders!
The consumer absolutely bears all of the responsibility, because the consumer is, at least in the US and many other parts of the world, also the voter.
Your apathy in responsible company research and product purchase is extremely likely also coupled with an apathy in representative research and activism. No, merely voting for your preferred political party does not automatically install good regulators - you actually have to invest effort into research and activism.
Recognizing a car could be safer isn't contradicted by owning one. If anything, ownership should give you more insight into the material problems of the item in question.
Likewise, society is just everything. So suggesting improvements isn't contradictory.
However, there is some hypocrisy in lambasting the maker of the very luxury goods you purchase for exploiting people. You are kind of justifying the companies' exploitation by purchasing from them. And you can advocate for change from these makers without supporting them with your money.
And some people do come with the attitude of "I don't want to change a single thing about my behaviors or sacrifice a single thing, but I expect the world to get better somehow."
And if you point out any hypocrisy in a person’s action, someone will trot this out as if we can never call out people for contributing to a problem they are complaining about even if contributing is completely optional.
No matter which phone is chosen you can call someone a hypocrite for thinking that both google and apple ceos are overpaid. The illusion of a free market is no defence.
Consumer action is notoriously ineffective. It’s a well-studied thing in poli-sci and economics. You need government to overcome coordination problems there, even with overwhelming support for a cause. Because the price if you “cooperate” is way too high unless a huge proportion of others choose “cooperate”, and you can’t tell what they’re picking until after the fact.
[edit] it’s fine if your goal is to have good feels, on the ethics front. It’s a total waste of time and effort and expense if you want to have an effect on anything other than your own feelings.
Shouldn't corrective action be directed at individual offending persons, not applied as collective punishment?
While the above scenarios reflect the CEO's contribution to an organization's ability to capture value - there is a useful debate on whether these organizations should be able to capture that value. If the organization has a monopoly, then they can arbitrarily increase the amount of value they extract at the cost of other, more productive, sectors of the economy. Over-rewarding organizations and their leaders for capturing value incentivizes such anti-competitive behavior.
Have you been close to these positions in a huge company?
I really don't think that's the case at all.
Ex: Look what happen to DIS after Iger left.
Most senior managers can coast for protracted periods as it's rare to replace the CEO in an upswing, and the CEO mainly has to not piss off those they work with. It's tough for any senior manager to read the tea leaves reliably, and as such - they are often replaced after N months/years when some decision goes poorly. The actions/results/impact of decisions are spread so far between that it's often difficult to assess a senior leaders impact in an organization.
DIS has had some high profile troubles since Iger left - but he may simply have seen the writing on the wall that the time to go out on a high note had come. I can think of several firms with similarly well-timed exits.
Myself I am from Denmark. Here we don't have a minimum wage, but we do have a strong union culture. This ensures power dynamics on the labor market ensuring that everybody gets a fair wage.
At first blush that may sound bizarre, as there are a lot more consumers than providers. But from an individual company’s PoV that may be reversed: internal decisions are easier to make than customer-responsive ones, especially as the number of customers goes up. This is why we have things like food safety regulations.
The minimum wage should be the same for everyone. There's plenty of 18 year olds out there doing more than their 30 year old counterparts and getting paid less for it.
Many adults are living in this situation right now.
I think the difference is too big to be honest, but I do understand where it comes from.
Of course this punishes ALL 16 years old when some would perform better than an older employee, but there's no perfect system.
It's not a cap, it's a minimum.
This is so people can employ kids who have very little economic value and train them to have lots of it.
misphrased, fixed.
>This is so people can employ kids who have very little economic value and train them to have lots of it.
But 18 year olds are not kids anymore and are capable of providing just as much economic value as a 25 year old. Especially if the employer is a coffee shop or restaurant.
Minimum wage should be the same for all ages. It should be at the discretion of the employers to pay more to experienced employees.
I'm not sure that's true - experience counts in those industries. I speak as a former 18-year-old coffee shop person.
I think this is a result of minimum wage not being enough for people who can only get a minimum wage job, but are getting on in years a little. I.e. it's been lobbied into effect by those representing slightly older people to increase their wages, rather than decrease the wages of 18 year olds.
You are assuming that age equals experience, but a 19 year old might be working at the coffee shop for a year already when a 25 year old is just starting. Shouldn't the 19 year old have a higher pay then?
As for age discrimination: is only letting people vote at a certain age, age discrimination?
That's why someone's financial situation should be considered before deciding to have kids. It is a conscious decision that is actively taken and therefore no reason to put younger people at a disadvantage.
> As for age discrimination: is only letting people vote at a certain age, age discrimination?
Yes, that is age discrimination. It is usually accepted, because there is an argument for it: in the public's view you should be mature enough to understand the importance of elections and inform yourself before you can vote. That maturity certainly depends on age to some degree. Nevertheless, since it is still age discrimination, the specific age is often debated and here in germany it was reduced multiple times in the past, for different elections. I have even seen arguments that said kids should have a sort of "proxy" vote through their parents, by deciding who to vote for together.
That is a good ideal world principle, but given minimum wage itself is a non-idealised concept, instead designed to ameliorate real life, I don't know how much it apples.
> Yes, that is age discrimination
If you're just defining age discrimination as "a legal differentiation based on age" then I agree with you. That is tautologically true. A bit like not letting 7-year-olds drive on public roads.
I'd say minimum wage should at least ensure that everyone with a job can live a life without poverty and in dignity. That does not sound like a non-idealised concept. If the real-world minimum wages satisfy this ideal is a different matter.
> If you're just defining age discrimination as "a legal differentiation based on age" then I agree with you.
Is there another good definition? You have to recognise that some rules are disadvantageous to some groups of people (in this case grouped by age) to properly weigh their disadvantage against the advantage the given rule is meant to create (e.g. to not have toddlers recklessly drive around in cars) and then decide if the given rule is reasonable and fair. I guess you could argue that a law is not really that discriminatory if its positives outweigh the disadvantages it puts some people at, but it would still put some people at said disadvantage and in the case of different minimum wages by age I simply see no such reasoning for its positives (i.e. none) to outweigh the negatives, and therefore it is discriminatory.
> A bit like not letting 7-year-olds drive on public roads.
While not exactly with 7, where I live 8-year-olds can drive on public roads and from age 10 onwards they are even required to do so. Of course I am talking about bicycles and only if there is no (usable) bike lane. Not having 7-year-olds drive cars is just another case of "it is in the publics best interest, and it also does not hurt them much".
No, I mean in an ideal world everyone has a job that pays, and progresses towards better jobs. Minimum wage is to cope with this not being the case.
> Is there another good definition?
Yes - age discrimination as defined in law: some things are illegal to discriminate on. Using the same phrase as the legal one is confusing, which is why I was trying to clarify.
> Not having 7-year-olds drive cars is just another case of "it is in the publics best interest, and it also does not hurt them much".
This is what a lawmaker judged the minimum wage age-based cases to be as well.
So it must be defined as illegal in the law to be considered discrimination? If we remove e.g. race or gender from that law, then those types of discrimination are suddenly OK? That seems like a bad argument.
But yes, those laws should explicitly mention age. Unfortunately, here in Germany, that is not the case.
> This is what a lawmaker judged the minimum wage age-based cases to be as well.
If a lawmaker judged that the positive "none" outweighs the negative of "lower minimum wage for younger people" then that lawmaker simply made a bad decision. Just because they are a lawmaker does not mean they can't be criticised.
No, I'm saying it's confusing to use terminology that's also separately legal teminology to describe something.
> Just because they are a lawmaker does not mean they can't be criticised.
True but I don't see the relevance.
> No, I'm saying it's confusing to use terminology that's also separately legal teminology to describe something.
Well, you seem to argue that one should not use the term "discrimination" if it is not legally defined to be such, because that would be confusing.
Let's assume a hypothetical situation in which the law did not state that you cannot discriminate based on sex/gender and the minimum wage law stated that woman have a lower minimum wage than men. Would you consider this to be gender discrimination?
If yes, what are the fundamental differences between this hypothetical situation and the real world situation of lower minimum wages for younger people? Why would you consider one to be discriminatory and the other to not be?
If no, then I have no further questions. We seem to have a very different understanding of what discrimination is.
I for one would definitely consider this hypothetical example to be discrimination and obviously apply the same logic to the actual situation as well.
No, we don't. You already understood that my point is it's confusing to use the term in a context where it has another meaning, without disambiguating.
> If yes, what are the fundamental differences between this hypothetical situation and the real world situation of lower minimum wages for younger people?
If there wouldn't be the confusion then I wouldn't bring up the confusion.
> Why would you consider one to be discriminatory and the other to not be?
You're missing the point. There are some things we allow and some things we don't. E.g. 3 year olds can't drive. Would you consider that to be discrimination? The answer is "Who cares - we were just talking about avoiding using terms with multiple meanings in written conversation."
The true sign of a 20-something is thinking they know everything because they have the book learning fresh outta school. But having 20 years on the job experience teaches you so so many more things that is never so much taught as, ahem, experienced.
Young people between the ages of 18 and 23 are not generally doing knowledge work, they're working in cafes and bars where 1 year of experience can be as effective as 20. People between these ages should be entitled to the same minimum wage.
In knowledge work, of course 20 years of experience is much more valuable than none.
Some of that is pleasant as it means people can enjoy child-like comfort for longer, but too much of it seems like it would have adverse effects.
This sincere befuddlement that a 20-something has the same experience is just bizarre to me coming from anyone that's not a 20-something. Sure, there's some talented 20-somethings, but that's true of any generation. I was a 20-something at one point long ago myself, and I too fought these things and constantly had my "experience" and "opinions" qualified with someone that undeniably had experience. It was truly frustrating, but also a bit of "told ya" when they'd come back and say I was correct. It's an age old growing pain. Why is this being questioned I have no idea. Yes, you will meet qualified 20-somethings, but you will inevitably meet many many more of them faking it till they make it but ultimately prove their inexperience.
TBH, this isn't even the most relevant argument here.
We don't have minimum wage laws because we think that every person produces at least (say) $15/hr of economic value.
We have minimum wage laws because we believe that no human being should have to work more than 40 hours a week to earn enough to live.
And there are 16-year-olds who are working to provide for their families (parents are dead, or disabled, etc, etc).
I agree - that's what creates some of the adverse outcomes. Jobs that are worth less than that need to have automation added in to increase the value of those jobs per-person hour.
In the US, for instance, Medicare only serves sufficiently old people.
Instead, it's the differences between CEO compensation.
Sundar is making $300 to Satya's $65? what?
I know it's an estimate and the numbers are made up at that level but still!
On one hand, if I could get compensation in the hundreds of millions per year, it's tempting to think that I'd "work" for six months and then retire with wealth beyond my wildest dreams. On the other hand, nobody appears to do that. So maybe it's lifestyle inflation, or maybe it's just intoxicating to have that kind of power and status and everything that comes with it besides the money. The existence of government executives and military flag officers, who aren't even paid that much money and could retire whenever they want with generous pensions, seems to indicate that money isn't the primary motivation.
In terms of negotiations, it's hard to imagine that the boards of Alphabet or Microsoft couldn't find someone equally qualified to take the CEO job for less than these amounts.
Likewise if Zuck had been content selling to google and retiring to an island or wherever, he probably wouldn't have become a name we all still know.
I mentioned military flag officers because that's the world that I know best. Most career military officers have no interest in becoming the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or whatever; they're perfectly content with a normal, middle-class retirement as a lieutenant colonel long before they would become any kind of powerful public figure. So the only people who remain on track competing to become generals or admirals are already kind of weird in this way.
Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg is bigger than the difference between Mark Zuckerberg to the average US worker.
To be fair, Mark Zuckerberg does probably make more money from the appreciation of their existing stock rather than their new compensation. David Zaslav, the second lowest listed on the website does ~630x the average worker and Elon Musk makes ~320x David Zaslav.
The average S&P 500 CEO does ~270x the average worker and ~1110x the minimum wage. Elon Musk makes ~750x the average S&P 500 CEO. Elon Musk makes the average S&P 500 CEO look proportionally poorer than the average worker and almost makes enough to make the average S&P 500 CEO look like a minimum wage worker.
The disparity in Mexico is crazy.
But the only people "harmed" by a CEO's high pay are the workers of the same company, since they are the one's with a "zero sum" split of the company's revenue. (I.e. the money split between all employees (as expenses) and shareholder profits).
Lack of fairness, to me, mostly starts with inequitable health, education at an early age, and parents in survival mode.
I don't think fixing the last is as easy as increasing minimum wage, given that adds even more incentives to replace workers with automation. But the planet has untapped resources, not there due to any human investment or effort, whose raw value would go a long way toward lifting many people out of poverty, if that value was shared. (And without taking anything from the value created by those who extract and transform those resources.)
The question you need to ask is how replaceable are you in a company? If you are the guy at Mc Donalds flipping burgers at 20$/hr, literally anyone and almost everyone can replace you with low efforts. Teach me how to flip burgers and I will be able to do your job in about 4 hrs max. But put me in Sundar Pichai s place and I might actually screw the company. For example, do you have any ideas how to handle a congressional hearing on privacy violation without losing 90% of the stock value? Because I certainly don't and before your say that your lawyers crafted all the responses, let me remind you that every ounce of everything you do counts in such a scenario. Your body language, your eye contact, your tone and your gesture or lackof gestures. Open. AI suddenly announces GPT-5 tomorrow that far far outweighs Bard. What will you do? Do you know how to handle such a sudden announcement without losing 50% of the stock market value? Being a CEO is not an easy job. You can hire 999000 other people in place of Sundar Pichai but it will take them 10 years to learn the craft. That is the difference and this difference is what gets reflected in compensation.
We know that top CEOs make a lot of money, but it is not really relatable. But if you are a software engineer for instance, seeing how much faster your own clock ticks compared to minimum wage could be interesting. We probably all know some minimum wage, median and 1st decile workers personally. We are less familiar with top CEOs.
It would also be interesting to show what % of the mentioned CEO's employees make minimum wage... I would wager it would be very close, if not 0. Minimum wage is usually paid by smaller, more local operations.
[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817923...
However it does make for good shock jock value.
And once they're retired or been forced out or moved on to another firm, they're free to divest their earned stock without much scrutiny; I've never heard of a CEO being critiqued for selling off stock in a former employer. So in that sense, money is money.
Ye-es, but only if the company is doing well. If the stock collapses, which it can do in a lot of companies, then it's not money. Imagine if Microsoft hadn't pivoted successfully to its new form, or if Google fails to find its footing in a ChatGPT world. Those are big, vital things that need navigating, and they are worth incentivising CEOs for. You might say that the vesting period should be longer, and perhaps that's right, but then other companies will poach them with shorter vesting periods, and the usual market dynamics apply where companies are vying for talent.
Think about it. You create a thing, a useful thing. We value that at 100K and given your outsized role in bringing it into existence, you have an equity of 40%. In absolute terms, you'd have 40K at this point, which seems perfectly fine.
Next, you (help to) scale this company up to a valuation of $100B. Your stake is now $40B.
The percentage is the problem here. It's a wild concept to be a procentual owner of a thing of an indefinite size which can only typically be scaled up by the labor of thousands of others.
It's a concept we made up. It does not exist in material reality. You did not produce the value from $40K to $40B, yet you're rewarded it anyway.
You did produce some value, quite a lot even, which would justify a (very) high salary. Equity sure is a great way to get rich quickly and I know a lot of you are in the game, but it's a strange concept regardless.
Suggestion: Put the CEO salaries on the same row as the minimum wage, to show the contrast without scrolling down.
This is one of the major things that is breaking our society.
by the time I finished reading the text, the US minwage clock was at 10c, and in the time it took me to get to this sentence, it's half a dollar, an amount I certainly wouldn't object to for a few minutes of effort.
Thomas Sowell makes this point regularly in his books. Here's some related points on minimum wage laws: https://www.aei.org/economics/thomas-sowell-on-the-cruelty-o...
Children's toys and equipment is an example. They have lots of regulation around requirements for recall procedures and product registration that add a lot of operational overhead for launching products in that space. Many businesses shy away from it because of those expenses, making it so certain ideas will never materialize there.
Sometimes these kinds of regulations are good, sometimes they are not, but they are always limiting and the regulation steers the decisions private businesses will make.
0 != null
There is an argument to made that minimum wage laws reduce employability of low-skill employees. While many people will already come into that argument with some disdain and hostility, starting the argument with "As a reminder, the minimum wage is actually $0" is a surefire way to raise hackles.
Government couldn't negotiate themselves out of a paper bag, why let them say what can be paid?
In the time it takes someone working minimum wage to make enough to afford a single $0.25 gumball, Sundar Pichai makes enough to afford an Apple Vision Pro ($3500) plus tax.
I mean have a conversation about the wage gap sure but know that these numbers are not meaningful as it regards the US.
Source: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=201911...
Source?
Cars have gone up about 25%.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/people-spe...
Relatively few workers actually earn minimum wage, but a substantial share of workers are classified as “near minimum wage” earners. These two groups (minimum wage workers and near-minimum wage workers) make up nearly 1 in 3 workers.
The main point is that just looking at "minimum wage" workers doesn't tell the story. I don't believe you're being intentionally disingenuous, but there are many U.S. states where the minimum wage is an unlivable $7.25/hr and hasn't changed for 10 years or more.
If we have an officially defined metric it should correlate with real conditions in some way, get updated to reflect inflation etc.
Can you give an example of such a welfare program? I'm not aware of any that use the minimum wage as a baseline. Most use the federal poverty level, which is pegged to the cost of food (and is updated yearly for inflation).
> It's sometimes advantageous for a politician to say...
I don't really care what politicians say; I'd rather have policy be evidence-based rather than reaction-based
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44667 references some federal metrics that incorporate the MW as an input.
You missed my point. I'm saying we shouldn't write laws with the goal of changing what politicians say.
> references some federal metrics that incorporate the MW as an input
You are misunderstanding that report. It's discussing potential ways to index the federal minimum wage to inflation. All those metrics do not include the minimum wage as an input
When I was a teenager, I worked as a fast food cook and got paid $6.51/hr. The minimum wage where I was at the time: $6.50. This was probably so they could claim that they "paid above minimum wage" in their marketing to potential employees. Based on this experience hearing that "no one is paid the federal minimum wage" is not very convincing to me.
Where did you get this data?
And, out of curiosity, what percentage of people are within, say, $0.50/hr of minimum wage?
a) prevents people who are happy to work for less obtain a job which is uneconomical at the minimum wage, or
b) it creates an effect similar to communism, where everyone doing a job at or below a certain value gets paid the same, no matter what the value of their work is. This leads to the higher quality workers reducing their output, as they are only getting the paid the same as someone producing work of, for example, half the value of their own.
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”
Additionally, you are describing an effect where removal of the minimum wage would result in more people working, but what of the wages of people who currently work for minimum wage? Clearly the jobs are economical at that rate, but I have a hard time believing that employers paying $7.25/hour would continue doing so if they weren't legally required to. I would be willing to wager my life savings that the loss in income associated with that would dwarf the amount of money being made by the hypothetical class of people you're describing.
Also is the goal to maximize the number in the workflow, or get people out of poverty? Having them work for less may increase employment figures but they'll still be in poverty. The minimum wage has shown to decrease employment but also lift the people employed out of poverty [1].
1. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage....
If some employer is currently paying e.g. $10/hour when the minimum wage is $7.25/hour, why would that change if the minimum wage were $5/hour or $0?
If anything they might have to pay more, because the employee might prefer a job paying $5/hour to one that pays $10/hour but incurs $6/hour worth of commuting expense and then the original employer would have to pay $11/hour to retain them.
> Also is the goal to maximize the number in the workflow, or get people out of poverty?
These are not unrelated goals. Generally people who can't find work end up in poverty.
> The minimum wage has shown to decrease employment but also lift the people employed out of poverty
You don't need a study for this, it's exactly what you would expect to happen. If you raise the minimum wage to $10, some jobs that pay $9 are still sustainable at $10, so those pay $10, some aren't, so those people lose their jobs. The proportionality of each one is going to depend on current economic conditions and not be a universal constant.
But the part where you cause people to lose their jobs is bad -- in some cases it will exceed the entire benefit of the remaining people getting paid more, but either way what it's competing with isn't placebo, it's alternative policies to get people out of poverty. Why would you do the one that causes people to lose their jobs when there are several alternatives that don't?
These fictional people who would love to work for less than $7.25/hr are free to do gig work that nets them less. They are also free to panhandle on the side of freeway off-ramps, which I imagine many would prefer to the concept of being paid $5/hour to take orders from a person who lacks enough respect for their fellow man to pay them more than that.
The removal of the minimum wage would simply be a gift to employers taken from the pockets of actual workers. Businesses don't just pay the minimum wage out of the kindness of their hearts; to pay that wage is code for "I would pay you less if I could."
>These fictional people who would love to work for less than $7.25/hr are free to do gig work that nets them less. They are also free to panhandle on the side of freeway off-ramps,
Being unable to work in a employment relationship, and forced to do "gig work" and "panhandle" doesn't count as "freedoms are being taken away"?
>The removal of the minimum wage would simply be a gift to employers taken from the pockets of actual workers. Businesses don't just pay the minimum wage out of the kindness of their hearts; to pay that wage is code for "I would pay you less if I could."
This is a case of fabricated options[1]. The possible outcomes aren't: a) worker makes $5/hr and b) worker gets makes $10/hr (the minimum wage). Sure, in some cases the employer might grumble but ultimately stump up the extra $5/hr, but it's also possible that the employer lets the worker worker go instead, automating his job or having his work shipped overseas instead.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gNodQGNoPDjztasbh/lies-damn-...
It's nit really "minimum" if companies can pay less legally.
Minimum wage laws don't do that. You're completely within your rights to volunteer your time for no compensation at all if you wish.
In the UK you'll get benefits to top up your wage anyway.
In industries where the availability of workers is high, the amount of value produced per worker does not particularly relate to the amount that that worker is paid.
If the worker produces more than enough value to their employer that that employer could pay them enough to live with dignity while also making a profit on that worker, then perhaps they ought be required to.
There are many, many situations where it is simply not possible to just "find more valuable work to do" or to just "work harder" and have it result in more money.
We can't all be CEOs. Society depends on these "lowly" jobs. If the three jobs above ceased to exist we'd all be in trouble. They're all important enough to warrant a dignity wage.
In first grade we all learn that food, shelter, and water are the most basic living requirements. Add standard-of-living necessities such as internet, education, and healthcare access into the mix if you feel generous.
How can we afford NOT to provide basic requirements for these keystone jobs? Sure, they aren't "innovating" the newest phone or providing value to shareholders (gross), but in many ways they're far more important.
If you really want to own a Ferrari, or really anything extraneous, sure you should have to pull on those bootstraps. But not for food. Not for water. Not for shelter.
This feels like a variant of "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded". If there was some critical job that's going unfilled, the offering price will go up and up until someone bites, ensuring it will be filled.
Workers can’t hold out. They (we) need food and housing. Individuals can’t hold out hoping wages go up.
From a group standpoint, unions have been weakened to such a degree in the US (where I live) that it’s hard to put together an action.
Now if unions were strengthened and grew to a point that the minimum wage had no bearing on real life. Sure, get the government out. It’s probably better that way. But you can’t strike down group power and force people to eat crap.
The issue is that there is no such uniform amount.
If your spouse makes 85% as much as the two of you need to live with dignity, you don't need to make as much as they do and may prefer not to because the lower-paying job is less difficult or more satisfying. For someone else it could be 95%, or 99%, or 250% and the second job is pure supplemental income, so what's the minimum meant to be here?
The minimum wage doesn't account for costs. A job across the street from you means you don't need a car, don't have to pay for fuel or maintenance or transit tickets and don't have to spend hours in traffic (which you could have spent working and getting paid). For a long commute this difference in value can be more than the entire minimum wage.
It's possible for jobs to provide training, which is attractive for entry-level workers or anyone trying to change occupations or learn new skills, because school otherwise costs money. But if you're spending extra hours "at work" getting trained while the value of the training comes out of your paycheck, there isn't any sensible "minimum wage" for this. You could be receiving $50,000/year worth of training while "getting paid" only $5000/year and you're the one coming out ahead because you don't otherwise qualify for a job that pays $55,000/year. You might still be ahead if you were paying them $5000/year.
So how are you supposed to set a minimum wage if the "minimum amount required to live peacefully and with dignity" is different for everyone, and setting it below that threshold deprives people of valuable alternatives?
There aren't enough jobs with that number of hours because companies have per-employee overhead and will choose someone who can work full time over two part-time employees. So then you get stuck with the full time job you hate that pays more than you need instead of the full time job that you enjoy that pays exactly what you need.
Moreover, even if you could find a job working only three hours a day, you're still commuting two hours a day to get there when the lower-paying job was closer, so now you're still spending almost as much time and ending up with even less money because you don't get paid for commuting and you have to pay for transportation.
But you can't end up with less money since that's not enough, so now you have to work more hours. You need the full time job in order to pay for the transportation to get to it. Which means all you've done is add two hours of your own time commuting while trading a job you enjoyed for one you don't.
> And for the person getting the training, that still doesn't affect their cost of living. Training isn't cash in hand.
Schools don't pay cost of living for their students. If you don't have the money you're expected to do some other paid work to come up with it.
The employer offering the training could offer you more paid hours, but that's not going to result in exceeding a minimum wage when averaged in with the negative $/hour training time. Especially if the extra hours are counted as overtime even though they wouldn't be if the employer and the school were separate entities.
> I'd personally target the living expenses for a single person, living in a studio or 1 bedroom apartment, with the expected average commute for the area, and who is generally healthy.
Which is completely arbitrary, since that is neither the average person nor would you want it to be. In fact, people making minimum wage tend to have longer commutes, because they have a low skill level and you prohibited them from trading lower wages for a shorter commute.
It also doesn't make any sense. If you're anyone other than that person, you may not need as much (e.g. you have a roommate or live with parents), so why shouldn't you be able to take a job that you prefer for non-wage reasons over one that pays slightly more? Or on the other side, if this is regarded as necessary (i.e. we're not going to solve the problem in a way that would make this unnecessary, such as a UBI), you'll be screwing over anyone who doesn't qualify for your arbitrarily structured assistance programs. And the assistance programs are frequently poverty traps because overlapping means-tested assistance programs cause their recipients to be subject to excessive marginal tax rates -- sometimes exceeding 100% of their marginal income, not that 50+% is anything reasonable in the alternative.
I wonder where are these people. Do you know any? Would you be "happy" to work for less than minimum wage?
> it creates an effect similar to communism
Sure, gommunism is when minimum wage. Most of Europe is in fact gommunist today, while its bourgeoisie gets richer and richer by the year.
I'd wager that the number of people who are truly content doing this work as opposed to a higher-paying job is effectively zero. That is to say, a number of people so low that it is irrelevant.
I'd be very happy to work for less than the minimum wage if that's all my work was worth and the alternative was no job..
> Sure, gommunism is when minimum wage. Most of Europe is in fact gommunist today, while its bourgeoisie gets richer and richer by the year.
The root cause of this wealth disparity is the fiat money printing. The value of the units of currency are halving every decade without people realising, so most people have been getting an annual real wage cut for the last 53 years only offset by consumables becoming less valuable through efficiencies of production. The prices of hard assets like real estate show the true extent of the currency debasement.
so, who decided? why? to benefit whom? i suppose therein lies the root cause.
Workers are getting pay cuts while thinking they are getting pay rises, and they then blame the shops who have to ask for increasing numbers of the the devaluing units of currency in exchange for the same item.
Is this a scenario you feel you are qualified to answer for? Have you, as somebody with meaningful living expenses, ever been in a scenario like this? If not, I'm certain you do not have an accurate picture of what that would be like and what you would consider your options to be.
I'd say that the US national minimum wage has already effectively been scrapped through neglect (I assume mostly willful neglect), so congrats?
Can you convince me this argument isn't also in support of slavery? (through fear)
Or was that actually the point and you mean to advocate for slavery?
Your arguments for b are equally malignant. If you will pay someone the minimum mage, for a minimum amount of work, and everyone else who could perform a higher standard doesn't because you refuse to pay them more than the minimum wage, good! Providing equal value of effort for value of compensation isn't communism, that's known as capitalism.
singapore is uh... ranked 149 out of 157 in the oxfam inequality index.......
[Citation needed]
Not to say that there's anything reasonable with the wage inequality. Rather that the situation is probably worse than you may think.