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Comment by disantlor | Hacker News Reader

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disantlor·

yes but that’s also what makes it regressive

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By that same logic, purchasing hamburgers is regressive.

No, you don’t have to purchase a hamburger to earn a living, but you probably have to travel.

You have to purchase food.

Yes, and taxing food would be regressive, just as taxing/tolling commuting would be. (It's for this reason that supermarket/unprepared food is often untaxed.)

Groceries are generally taxed differently because people need to eat. It is not a human necessity to travel long distances to work. It seems to me, if you subsidize travel for low earner you're subsidizing companies that pay their employees poorly, not benefiting the employees themselves. Maybe a subsidy for low earning jobs that are a public good make sense (teachers, for instance), but why should we give subsidies to private for-profit companies to allow them to avoid covering the externalities of their business?

Where their employees choose to live is not an externality caused by the business IMO.

Choosing to open a business that pays minimum wage in an area without housing that is affordable for minimum wage workers inherently generates traffic, doesn't it? I don't have a very solid opinion on all this, honestly, but it seems logical. What do you think?

I suppose that choosing to open a business not in someone’s house generates traffic.

The alternative is not Walmart paying stickers $50K/yr. The alternative is no or fewer Walmart jobs in locales with these laws. IMO, that makes things worse, not better, for prospective Walmart employees.

I also feel like where I live is none of my employer’s business, provided I can do the job. Maybe I’d make an exception for fire or police, but even there I’d rather not make the employer totally paternalistic.

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