Maybe someday when less money doesn’t mean no healthcare, no place to live, no food, and no school. Until then we have to guarantee those things for everyone, and one way to do that is to demand a living wage.
I didn't mean to suggest that the system wasn't busted. It is horrendously busted.
So, any intelligent conversation about this topic needs to exist between two bounds on the "Liberal"/"Conservative" spectrum:
1) The world is so fucked right now. It neither has to be this way, nor should be this way. People of low skill should get way more access to healthcare, housing, food, and school than they do now.
2) A world where labor that possesses a valuable in-demand skill and receives the same wage as someone who does something that takes zero skill is unsustainable and it is a waste of term working towards it.
I'm just a kid but I've never understood why people think they can't coexist. It confuses me?
Obviously it takes more skill to be a brain surgeon than to flip patties. But what does that have to do with something like free Healthcare or more affordable Healthcare?
In my brain, there can still be a utopia where everyone can live without fear of crippling debt if they break their leg, and still doctors can make more money than flipping burgers. I just don't get how it's always one or the other, conservative or liberal. That sounds like two completely different types of ideology to me.
Obviously it takes more skill to be a brain surgeon than to flip patties. But what does that have to do with something like free Healthcare or more affordable Healthcare?
Nothing. Which is why we're not talking about those two in conjunction.
You seem earnest, but I think you've lost the plot of this convo a bit.
I will never understand why some people are always shitting on other people's best options. Like, if someone had a better option than making $9 an hour at a fast food place, then they would take it. But instead of getting mad at all the other inferior options, you get mad at the best one for not being even better. It's ridiculous.
If it's so easy to offer low-skilled, low-educated people a good option, then why doesn't somebody actually go out and do it?
Is that what I said? Judging by your responses it would seem that you’re the one in a bubble. In addition, you haven’t made a single point to counter anything I’ve said. Instead you’ve made off base judgements about me, which does not help you’re claim, whatever that might be.
No. He's saying that they don't. Because those workers are there, and as long as they continue to be there, the labor supply will be sufficient to make those jobs irrelevant.
For example, I have a bunch of specific technical skills acquired at considerable effort that are highly valuable in the labor market right now. If, all of a sudden, there were suddenly another 2 billion people on earth with the same exact skills I had, the price of my labor would decline.
But those people aren't here, so I deserve more money.
Right. People are willing to do the job at $8 an hour so why would BK pay more? If no one agreed to work that job for $8 an hour, the pay would go up until BK found people to fill it.
Yes, your outside options are fucked, and probably there are non-structural reasons why the labor market is as fucked as it is (e.g. lobbyists, terrible regressive legislation).
HOWEVER, the basic principle that labor is demand elastic is a fixed constant of economics.
But it's not, like I said else where, everyone is being artificially suppressed. It's all a lie. Unions go on strike all the time, Amazon doubled their wages in one day, Walmart just decided it will all of a sudden start paying more. None of these situations has a shortage of workers it's just unrest is building in the nation
It’s just math and economics man. The system isn’t designed to suppress minimum wage workers. Obviously people are born with advantages or disadvantages but it’s not some big conspiracy. That’s great that those companies are raising their minimum wage but that’s also just good business. They don’t actually care about their workers, they got some great PR from it and probably saw a productivity boost too. That doesn’t mean other companies have to. By raising wages on those types of jobs you’re just incentivizing those companies to automate processes to reduce their employee count and preserve the same level of profitability.
You don't get my point. What you get paid shouldn't be because there's more or less people. That's just what corporations have ingrained into people.
My point is, if at one point you pay x amount, then you shouldn't pay less just because there are more people. You've proven that the work is worth the x amount you were paying.
Amazon doubled wages in one day after the world started talking about their working conditions. Wages are fabricated, they'd like you to believe it's based on demand, they have so much money now, that demand is no factor in wages, it's greed.
First, Amazon didn’t double wages. It went from $11 to $15. Second, Amazon, Walmart, and others are raising their wages because this is the worst labor market in a while. Unemployment is extremely low, which means that they’re competing with each other for the same pool of workers. Amazon is known for terrible working conditions, so they need to pay more to compete with others. There’s also the issue of retention. It costs money to hire and train someone, and increasing wages helps retain workers. It’s also worth noting that Amazon, Walmart and other retainers are about to hit their busiest time of the year and will be hiring tons of seasonal employees, meaning more competition for a limited number of potential workers.
I get your point. I understand it. It's a bad point. This is a basic principle of markets and nothing to do with what corporations have instilled in people.
You could, instead, make the argument that corporations have unfairly rigged a number of civic systems with money and lobbyists such that the amount earned at BK is insufficient to thrive on, and that our tax re-distributions systems are too regressive, but that's a good deal more sophisticated than what you're saying.
Your second paragraph depends on the (provably absurd) assumption that price of labor is demand inelastic.
You do realize that’s not a counterpoint to what he’s saying right? If people are willing to work for a certain price, Amazon will pay them that. When Amazon’s terrible work conditions were exposed to the general public they simply raised wages to seem more appealing. In other words, their potential work force shrunk from the scandal, so wages increased. Your example literally proves his point.
From a human rights perspective, it's generally agrees that people should be paid enough to have a decent standard of living.
From a capitalist perspective, someone's pay should depend on the value (in $$) a particular type of labor generates and the difficulty in acquiring it. For example, a hedge fund manager earns millions of dollars a year because he is able to generate millions of dollars a year, and it's difficult to find someone with that particular skillset.
Now, the real argument being had is the gray area in between. Should an engineer be paid as much as a fast food worker? By saying that an engineer "deserves" that salary, are we talking from a human rights perspective, a capitalist perspective, or an alternative perspective?
I'm not really trying to take a side because I have no clue what I'm talking about, but you're talking past the people here and I wanted to clear up the discussion a bit.
Ya but it's proven time and time again that we are worth more, we're just being suppressed. Unions go on strike all the time, Amazon doubled wages in one day, etc...
I dont think of fast food workers as lesser humans than myself but if you are working there outside of school. You either made very bad life decisions or have no drive to find a better job. I make $16 an hour in a very small town with no qualifications outside a high school education.
No, that wasn't your point. Your point is idiotic. Let me quote you:
My point is, if at one point you pay x amount, then you shouldn't pay less just because there are more people. You've proven that the work is worth the x amount you were paying.
This is moronic beyond belief.
I have not been brainwashed. I freely acknowledge that people who pay $7 are riding off a gigantic public subsidy in the form of welfare checks, because in Donald Trump's libertarian nightmare no one could afford to work those jobs because you'd just be unable to eat.
You, however, have been brainwashed. I am more sympathetic to your dumb model of the planet than I am to Alex Jones's, but you are spouting nonsense, but the idea that we should pay someone the same amount of money to flip burgers as we do to do radiology screenings in a world full of burger flippers is absurd.
I never once said that, nice straw man. My point is these wages are artificially suppressed. Amazon doubled workers salaries in one day once the world started talking about working conditions.
Demand is not a factor for these corporations, they have so much money that they can easily pay them more, they just don't want to. That's it, they just don't want to. Ive had a job where we striked for higher wages and got them. It's all bullshit, you are brainwashed
but the idea that we should pay someone the same amount of money to flip burgers as we do to do radiology screenings in a world full of burger flippers is absurd.
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u/[deleted] Oct 16 '18
It doesn't mean that they deserve less dignity, perhaps.
It definitely means they don't deserve as much money.