I can see that. I have a tendency to overcomplicate things I say, sorry. I think there are ultimately better ways to make the economy work for everyone than a minimum wage increase, but I definitely support a minimum wage increase as the easiest good thing we can actually get in a reasonably short time.
I’m sorry, but shifting the cost of employing a person to the public while keeping the profits made off that employee private is the sort of nonsensical corporatist bullshit I usually only hear from the far right.
You want to make liability public and keep profits private? Should we just go ahead and eliminate corporate taxes while we are at it. I mean there are plenty of people in the U.S. and if we taxed those low income deadbeats big business wouldn’t have to pitch in a dime right?
Really, you are talking about Gilded era colonial business ideals. We put that in the ground a long time ago. It’s dead because it should be. Those who choose to incur costs should be the ones who are responsible for the liabilities that come with it not the people who suffer due to that self same liability.
1 Like
What I want is to acknowledge that an offered wage is not a reflection of worth of the person, but of the economic value of the labor they’re being asked to perform in a specific role. The intrinsic worth of any person is infinite. Money is not. What I really want is for everyone to be guaranteed enough money to live with dignity, no strings attached, so anyone who wants to buy their labor has to offer enough to make it worthwhile. What I want is a world where if given job produces $10/hr of value to the company, then the company can offer that, AND for the world to be such that no one is in a position to need to take that job at that pay. Since UBI is still an unpopular idea, I’d happily accept setting a much higher minimum wage instead.
In the long run, I think maintaining the idea that offering a person a low wage for a given job is an insult or an offense will cause a huge amount of harm. But that’s a very different discussion, and way too O/T to discuss here.
I think maintaining that a person can be paid less that what is required to have a roof over their head is wage slavery and causes a huge amount of harm right freaking now. Your argument is based on the assumption that the cost of goods and services is a fixed feature when it simply is not. Raise the price of your goods or services to cover your costs. It’s not rocket appliances.
The only reason labor is valued so low is that we removed collective bargaining from the table for most workers. There is no market force requiring anyone be paid less than a living wage. That’s nothing more than rhetorical spin.
The fact is that Americans are some of the most productive people on this Earth. Profits and productivity is at an all time high. To suggest that paying more would somehow harm businesses is a view one takes when one considers massive profit taking at the expense of human lives a legitimate business practice.
Edit to add: the solution is really stupidly simple and has been in front of us for decades but for some reason the narrative never seems to make much public impact. Increase the corporate and personal tax rates to what they were in 1957 when people had decent pay and CEO’s made only a bit more than the average worker. By taxing we encourage money to be diverted from profit taking and back in to business growth, re-investment, and workers wages while also discouraging pay disparity.
There may come a time when universal income becomes something we should look at but let’s not pretend that day has come when the pay disparity between workers and the C suite is at an all time high along with corporate profits and tax benefits. After all, every dime of those profits are made off the backs of the workers… not the CEOs and shareholders. Until we take care of that disparity, calling for universal income is … well … a bit much to swallow.
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
