"We can never make enough money..." | Hacker News Reader

"We can never make enough money..."

nytimes.com

9 pointsconover27 comments

Why is it that the article subscribes to the idea that working at a McDonald's for ten years means you should be paid more? Is the worker better or more efficient or more resourceful than somebody who has worked at McDonald's for 2 years?

Perhaps now, but having stable employees certainly saves a company the money required to hire and train new employees.

"...often too little to support themselves and their families."

http://www.livingwage.org.uk/

Just why do the rest of us have to subsidise employers who pay less than a living wage through taxes? Never understood that.

Because full employment even when we have labor surpluses is desirable as who knows what people would do with too much time on their hands. I'm only half joking about this.

Absolutely, but just make sure the minimum wage is actually viable. I resent that a chunk of the tax I pay is effectively given to the likes of G4S to bolster their profit.

It's not a choice between living wage and minimum wage, it's a choice between minimum wage and unemployment. Some people do not produce more value in an hour than the living wage, so if the wage goes up they will lose their job.

Surely its the way you think about it. Do products/service dictate wages, or is salaries of workers that dictate the cost of a product/service.

The empirical evidence on a relationship between minimum wages and economy-wide unemployment is extremely mixed. How you describe it is how things work in toy economic models, but any model with a hope of being realistic would at least have to account for the fact that employment demand isn't external and static. Other complexities include how it interacts with automation: in some jobs, artificially raising the cost of low-end manual labor just moves forward a few years the point at which it becomes cheaper to automate the job, which may be good or bad for overall employment.

If we eliminated the programs that transfer funds to low wage workers (and reduced your taxes commensurately), do you believe that wages would go up? If so, why?

That website wouldn't display much for me. I eventually found out in order to see the text, you must have Flash.

In-case others don't want to install/activate flash, here's the content:

    Current Living Wage (London): £8.55
    Current Living Wage (UK): £7.45
    Current Minimum Wage: £6.19

    "Paying the London Living Wage is not only morally right, but makes good business sense too." - Boris Johnson - Mayor of London

    "The Living wage is a really important idea." - Ed Miliband - Leader of the Opposition

    "We want good people and the Living Wage is an excellent way of getting and keeping them." -  Linklaters

    The Living Wage is an investment which makes sound business sense. Join hundreds of other businesses today and apply to become a Living Wage employer [Next to "Find Out More" button]

Yes, I know, poor design, but the campaign has made some impact in the UK. Thanks for posting content.

Employers are not subsidized, people are.

If anything employers are obligated to pay a higher cost for labor since they need to compete with government programs that pay people not to work. Even programs which pay people regardless of employment status create disincentives for employment (thereby requiring employers to pay more), due to diminishing marginal utility.

The most recent empirical study on this that I've seen: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/matthew.notowidigdo/research...

There are many examples of employers (corporations) that are subsidized.

Record profits, declining real wages over the last ten years for average employees, and massive increase in pay for management over the last 30 years suggest that employers aren't being obligated to pay too much for labor. Do you have any data that suggests that labor is costing too much as a result of government programs that pay people not to work?

The distribution of resources (wealth) is grossly unfair and anyone working ought to make a living wage. It is immoral to do otherwise.

I don't dispute that many corporations receive subsidies. I dispute that government benefits given to low skill workers are a subsidy given to their employer.

Do you have any data that suggests that labor is costing too much as a result of government programs that pay people not to work?

I cited one bit of data that showed exactly this in the post you just responded to.

Costing too much as in companies folding as a result of this alleged increase in labor cost.

Government subsidies allow a persons surviving wage to be lower. And with low skilled workers, their wage tends to be pushed down to a wage they can just about survive on, or your workers die. Thus government subsidies are indirectly founding companies, by allowing them to lower wages beyond what would normally be possible.

Employees will not die if their wages are reduced to $4-8/hour.

As proof that this is not the case, consider that most nations of the world have lots of people not dying on an unsubsidized $8/hour. Mexico is a fairly wealthy nation, and the GDP/capita is equivalent to a full time job at $8.33/hour (adjusted for PPP).

Literally billions of people avoid death on far less than $8/hour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

1 dollar means different things in different countries. In some countries 1 dollar could buy you decent food, for a few days.

There's differences in rent. Living in a slum is illegal in developed countries.

The numbers I give are adjusted for purchasing power. Workers will not engage in a massive die off on $8/hour or even $1/hour.

Well I'm just repeating Adam Smith on how low skilled jobs are priced.

They go as low as they can go, without something bad happening to the employee.

We're not subsidizing the employers, we're subsidizing the employees who have families their current earning potential can't match. Plenty of people can and do survive on £6.19 an hour without government subsidies and have plenty of unemployed people waiting to take their places. Those who work full-time for minimum wage and still need another £8k per annum from the government to feed their family and keep them housed in London aren't going to get it voluntarily from their employer. One could always propose pushing the national minimum wage up to the ~75% of current median income some subsidy recipients need, but that's not exactly a measure that's likely to be free from side effects on consumer prices and job availability.

If having children is a basic human right, isn't the capability to be able to raise them also a necessity (a human right of the child's fulfilled in proxy by the parent)?

One of the points in the article is the disparity of pay between lowest income workers and executives.

So really, aren't we subsidizing executive's pay?

It appears that it is easier to squeeze the poorest than the richest. The richest have more power to protect their interests.

Interesting how one word is not mentioned in the article that has a huge impact on the issue of wages for the lower classes.

Please, don't make us languish, and do tell.

immigration

When a company lowers wages on its rank and file its executives should not enjoy increases.

I really want to have nothing to do with this article, but I think a little context is needed for readers living outside the U.S. Otherwise the subject matter and tone seems a bit odd.

Our president has decided to start concentrating on wage disparity, considering inequality to be immoral. (Cynics argue that with the NSA scandal and many others, anything to change the subject is a good move) The NYT here is picking up the ball and running with it. You'll note that the entirety of sources quoted are from one side of the American political spectrum.

So if the comments here seem bitter and contentious, and the commentary itself not helpful in covering both sides of the discussion, it's because it fits into a larger national political discussion (of which you may be unaware).

As for the subject itself, we've kicked this around a hundred times on HN. I selected this as flaggable, simply because I don't expect it to generate any new insights and simply cause a lot of useless and pointless nerd bickering.

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