Living Wages
Living Wages
57 comments
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If we have a social safety net, Universal Basic Income, then we can finally eliminate the need for a minimum wage.
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UBI is pointless so long as there are landlords who can jack up rent. It is essentially a landlord subsidy, and it does nothing to address actual contradictions within capitalism.
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The landlord problem is indeed a problem, but UBI isn't mean to address that specific flaw in society, it doesn't mean we can't do it until we fix everything, it just means that certain landlords will get to enjoy an additional subsidy for a little while.
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Landlords needed to die anyway though. Basic pre-req for human dignity and flourishing.
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A functioning social network will cover the rents. Still, this makes controlling rents even more important as otherwise the social network will become non viable amor even a way of redistributing public wealth to said landlords.
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It's worked pretty good in most experiments.
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What’s the impact on mobility though of lower socioeconomic people?
Suddenly you have hundreds of millions of people who don’t need to be in economic centres for work and can move wherever they want without affecting their income.
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But think of how many businesses profit off the poor!!
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If you have basic universal income, all products and especially rent becomes more expensive overnight so still not much of a safely net. Increase UBI to keep trend with the prices and you have some serious inflation.
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This is the same tired argument that's been used by the wealth hoarding class since like the 1800s. The facts don't support it.
8 hour work days will kill the economy - nope
5 day work week will kill the economy - nope
Minimum wage will kill the economy - nope
<Insert the same argument for UBI>
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Something that I find odd about this argument is that you're supposing an increase in prices will subtract from income to counter out the UBI, but it can only
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What if both are true and we're all just waiting to be replaced by more productive entities
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maybe don't make the rat race a death race too? start there?
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working conditions would still be changed either way once people figure out that not burning out people is more productive for the jobs
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I think the employer makes a valid point. If they pay the employee a living wage while their competition does not, then they cannot compete.
This is where minimum wage comes into play! Minimum wage needs to be whatever a living wage is so the employer does not have to worry about what their competition is paying. Their employees.
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@bort@sopuli.xyz has a decent explanation on why UBI can replace the minimum wage.
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Hate comics with exaggerated faces like this. Just reminds me of that shithead Ben Garrison.
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It's always telling that you never see an actual dollar value attached to this nebulous "living wage"--the ideologues know that doing so would force them to make a concrete argument, which can then be scrutinized properly (and invariably fall apart once realism is applied).
The people who make these arguments don't realize that "the more productive entrepreneur" is invariably only the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets. This 'argument' put into practice would slaughter 99.9% of small businesses, leaving only the megacorporations to be employing anyone. And what happens when all their positions are filled? Well, the rest have no jobs and no income at all, but hey, at least they don't have a job that's paying 'less than living wage'.
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It’s always telling that you never see an actual dollar value attached to this nebulous “living wage”
That's because what's a living wage depends on what things are needed, and what they need, making it inherently variable. A living wage should cover everything a family needs: food, shelter, transportation, childcare. If you live somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere, then a living wage needs to be cover car payments. If you life in a walk-able neighborhood, then you don't need a car, hence the living wage there would not need to cover car payments. So here is the argument: A family should earn enough to cover food, shelter, transportation and childcare.
The people who make these arguments don’t realize that “the more productive entrepreneur” is invariably only the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets.
That's not true. The corporation with the "deepest pockets" is the one who has the most money, they're not necessarily the most efficient one, e.g. they could be wealthy because they are a huge conglomerate, but they need a huge bureaucratic apparatus to manage their operations.
This ‘argument’ put into practice would slaughter 99.9% of small businesses, leaving only the megacorporations to be employing anyone.
Not true, see above. Also, if wages are higher, more people can safe money, allowing more people to start a business. Hence we'd have more small businesses, rather than less.
And what happens when all their positions are filled?
We decrease the amount of labor time that is considered full employment, forcing them to hire more people to reach the same output.
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That's because what's a living wage depends on what things are needed, and what they need, making it inherently variable.
And conveniently, always able to be argued that it hasn't been achieved yet. The equivalent of always answering "how much do you think you should be paid?" with "More.", ceaselessly.
A living wage should cover everything a family needs
So everyone should be paid as much as it'd take to support a family, even if they're single?
If you live somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere, then a living wage needs to be cover car payments.
Car payments? What car? What term? What interest rate? Car payments vary WILDLY, based on both individual decisions, and different creditworthiness. "Sorry boss, you gotta pay me more, because I got a 96-month auto loan on this BMW at 18%".
This is a joke, right?
If you life in a walk-able neighborhood
So we're implementing wage legislation on the "neighborhood" level? Sure, let's add to the unrealism pile, lol.
food
What kind of food?
shelter
What kind? Apartment? House? How many bedrooms? Bathrooms? Square footage?
childcare
For how many children?
if wages are higher, more people can safe money
More people will have NO money, because they'll have been fired by their employer who realized they cost more than they're worth to the company.
You can't save money without an income.
And even if you're one of the lucky ones who still has a job, there are practically zero small business categories with profit margins large enough to support such a massive increase in labor costs.
We decrease the amount of labor time that is considered full employment
So, the existing workers' income drops again? lol
forcing them to hire more people to reach the same output.
You can't force them to hire anyone. They will hire more people only if doing so increases their profits. If it doesn't, they won't. Period.
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If they can't find a way to pay a "living wage" they will just reduce their number of employees and make the remaining ones do more work. Or even worse, they'll be replaced by some form of automation.
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Replacing workers with automation is great, the problem is who benefits from the less work required by fewer people. Our current system, Capitalism, means that increased productivity comes at the workers expense and fewer workers see the benefit.
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The counter to this is obvious. What's stopping them doing that for workers on less than a living wage?
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That happens anyways. You're doing the equivalent of saying, "well people get murdered sometimes anyways, so why make it illegal?"
If you don't even understand how regulations help people, maybe you should shut up and listen to more discussions before piping off about how people will be replaced by automation. They will anyways, fool!
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The issue this is ignoring is how the government can make an industry so expensive that it cant compete with foreign countries and that industry leaves the developed country or just doesnt exist anymore. So it was never the employers fault it was just made too expensive.
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No, it's totally the employers fault. Invariably they made the choice to go overseas rather than accept lower profits.
Those things the government does to make it more expensive to operate in a country?
Those are things like "a livable wage", "health care", "workplace safety", and "environmental protection".If you can't stay in business while doing those things, you don't deserve to be a business.
When a business cites government overhead as a reason for going overseas, always look at what they're saying they don't want to pay for.
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Why would they pay more when they can find a replacement for less?
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This is why the system is broken
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Nah, the system is not broken. The system is working exactly how it is supposed to. That is why we need a new system.
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57 comments
This is really good and all, but like why are they in the woods?
They're collecting straw for their men
I think you might be confused where straw is grown. They’d be in a field if they were collecting straw as it’s a byproduct of grain production.
Looks more like a park to me.
average lemmy user discovers the outdoors for the first time
Yeah, I've seen a bunch of these guys comics, and they're all like this. The art is almost superfluous. An afterthought.
It's the kind of comic where it feels like the word bubbles were made first, then some random, generic art came second.