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Comment by iagooar | Hacker News Reader

I think the article misses the point. Since when do you need to "justify" getting a salary that is above average?

I see it as simple as: I wanted X, I was offered X-10%, we settled on X-5%. I don't need to justify anything, to anyone.

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Hierarchy requires justification, and inequality requires justification, since always and forever.

You should be required to try to convince someone working three manual labor jobs and making $40k a year that your $150k salary for making CRUD apps in your underwear is morally justifiable.

Because the value of the output of the person making CRUD apps is presumably worth more than $150k to their employer, right? If a company pays its employees more than the value of their output, they'll go out of business.

I think this is tangential, but you're very correct! This alone makes you question the morality of capitalism. Your employer necessarily steals some of the value that you create, otherwise you would have no worth to the employer and you would either be fired or the employer would close up shop.

well I suppose my employer adds some sort of value to what I create or it wouldn't be enough to keep them in business either. I suppose I question the value of capitalism a lot anyway, but that doesn't mean I have to justify the money I make (in fact saying I should justify the money I make implies I should not question the value of capitalism when employed by capitalists).

The means of production that you use are privately owned by your employer, that's all they provide. Maybe they also do some managerial/clerical labor to lubricate the interaction of the commodity with the market, but this is really only the case for small businesses.

Imagine a shirt that sells for $20 on the market. The shirt is composed of $5 from raw materials and depreciated tools and $15 from your transformative labor. The boss pays you $5 for your work and makes off with $10. The boss steals way more than their investment. They'll tell you (e.g. Paul Pester from the article) that they have more responsibility: this is a bold-faced lie. Corporations are never held responsible for the havoc they wreak on society and the Earth.

The result of this arrangement is the obvious wealth inequality graphs that we've all seen. This is the true injustice. The CRUD worker making $150k and the food laborer making $40k are fighting for scraps. We should focus our fighting upwards.

The employer risks their money in return for the possibility of more money back

Employers take on risk. Risk of employing you, investing in the business, market research, risk of market down-periods, etc. Additionally, they're an intermediary that makes finding/retaining clients easier and more efficient.

So no, I wouldn't call it "stealing", rather an exchange that is not immediately obvious because it's not entirely monetary/transactional in nature.

No, you shouldn't.

Wages aren't a hierarchy, they're supply and demand. The only reason why someone earning 150k would have to justify their wage to someone earning 50k is if the person earning 50k wasn't afforded the same opportunities as the person earning 150k.

Wages are absolutely hierarchical. The people who have higher wages have higher rank/status/authority.

You just pushed the blame off to the market, which needs the exact same moral justification.

There are any number of examples of people who have low income, but much higher rank, status and authority within their circles than the average engineer has in his or her. If you are perceiving one continuous spectrum along which every human alive is ranked according to these measures, I would suggest that you might have a naive view of the world.

I wasn't being reductionist, that is not my world view; I recognize many different hierarchies. But wealth is an extremely important dimension and the one under examination here. Simple example: people with higher income hire literal wage slaves to do their gardening and cleaning. Low income people don't have nearly such authority.

+1 for having a cleaner. I pay her above the recognised living wage for the city though, so I don't feel bad about myself

The Employer does not "steal" from the Employee. There is an employment contract, the transaction is voluntary. Being an Employer has greater risk, and half of society hates you.

There is no voluntarism in slavery, even if it's of the wage variety.

But yes, sure! The employers are the oppressed class. All of us plebeians are so ungrateful of their estate inheritance -- er, brave risks. But don't worry for them! They can hire "domestic workers" to dry their tears with million dollar banknotes.

If ever a person wonders whether or not they're being paid fairly all they need do is imagine the scenario where they quit. The difficulty and financial losses felt by their employer should strongly correlate to their pay.

When your X is double, triple (sometimes even quadruple) the national median, I think you need to justify why you wanted (and felt entitled to) X.

Why?

Why? If someone is willing to offer me X, they value what I can do at X (or more). Why does that need justification if it's some multiple of the median?

Prepare yourself for the downvotes... Every time you suggest that some people are payed too much relative to others in the society which creates massive inequality you have a rush of libertarians trying to justify that it works as expected.

That justification is usually done once, to the employer/client :)

Someone felt that, even at this price, they would be able to profit from my work. Above that, what other justification could there possibly be?

Or, if you are an entrepreneur, your earnings are derived from organizing and selling the work of others. Again, what other justification exists, apart from "this many people wanted to pay me this price, those guys said they would do it for me at a smaller price, and I kept the difference."

As an employee, you don't. As a citizen, sharing responsibility for the economic rules we play by, you do.

The article is about how some people choose to justify their above average salary.

I don't see how it "misses the point" by not taking into account that you don't believe you need to justify your salary.

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