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Comment by esarbe | Hacker News Reader

Rent-seeking might not be the only problem. Worker exploitation is also a serious issue on my list. How on earth can someone defend not paying a living salary for a full time job?

Add to that that the legal framework (talking about the USA) is seriously skewed to favor employers and disadvantages workers and any attempts to unionize. This has to stop.

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Great point, but worker exploitation (like so many other problems) flow out of perverse rentier structures. In fact this is one of the first principles discovered about how rent works, termed the "law of rent" by David Ricardo over 200 years ago. I.e. that the rent collected from productivity will always be such that the remaining wages are only exactly as good as the "margin of production", a.k.a. the next best alternative to engaging with the labor economy, subsistence living. This is why you can have exploding productivity and still subsistence standard of living for labor, where the entirety of the excess is captured by rentiers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent

> How on earth can someone defend not paying a living salary for a full time job?

Putting the employer on the hook for more aspects of the employee's well-being (healthcare, living wage) only increases the gap between employed and unemployed, therefore increasing the bargaining power of employers. I think it's better to have society provide a basic standard of living (most importantly housing and healthcare) to all poor people, employed or not.

Money is a public good as well. Money taken out of circulation is bad for the economy and drives a big chunk of economic problems in society. It's easy to tax so the valuation argument doesn't even make sense. There are companies with $100 billion or more in their bank accounts. That's a million paychecks that didn't happen.

Isn't it weird how it is possible to prevent other people from working by simply withholding money? Meanwhile we expect the people who couldn't work as a result of this withholding of money to keep working, we consider them lazy and not worthy of sympathy.

This is a total misconception. Anyone's $100B in a bank account has no bearing on money supply. In the short term, yes, money is taken out of circulation. But if that causes increased demand for liquidity, and banks are willing to meet that demand at the interest rate set by the central bank, money will be created by the loan that is initiated.

What dries up money circulation is not any one company's hoarding, but the banks' willingness to lend as a whole, and the economy's desire to borrow and spend as a whole.

What is a "living salary"?

If I'm a single mom with 3 kids, is the "living salary" the same as a single 20 year old who lives at home?

Short introduction to definitions in the field of applied economics, see OECD and WHO publications for details. A living salary is a colloquial phrase, more precisely we should talk about the net equivalised household income. Gender and marital status is irrelevant for the calculation.

Let us assume both household's single earner brings in 15382 €/a (EU-27/28 average net income for 2013). Household 1 with two juveniles and one child is 6688 €/a, poverty. Household 2 remains 15382 €/a.

Pretty low quality question. Of course the salary will not adapt according to individuals expenses and neither will it here in Scandinavia. However, the father will of course be obliged to pay child support. The mother will also receive a monthly allowance for each child. She will also likely be eligible to rent support. So children is a special case, but a living wage doesn't involve that.

How did you think this would actually work?

So the govt subsidizes the businesses low wages? Corporate welfare?

No. I've already written that obviously the amount of children of each individual can't determine what a living wage is supposed to be, but then you still twist this to be a question of subsidy to the business in bad faith?

It’s not bad faith. Plenty of arguments in the US have been around wages where the govt has to provide additional support. It’s called “corporate welfare”. The argument is the company should pay enough on its own.

Why can’t you have a conversation in good faith?

I'm not repeating myself again. But given your comment history I'm sure that you're just here in bad faith in general.

Avoiding the question just makes me think you don’t have an answer.

For the last time. The concept of a living wage is not adapted on an individual basis. The problem of the US wrt a living wage is certainly not that single mothers of 3 children are the standard model, and you know that, hence bad faith. You can't change the subject to your own trolly question if it constitutes "corporate welfare" and expect an answer.

You sound very upset.

It sounds like in Scandinavia you don’t worry about corporate welfare. That’s news to me, but good to know.

> You sound very upset.

Not really, but what's the purpose of this particular reply other than to try to wind me up?

You’re avoiding answering the question.

I've answered both your original questions multiple times:

> What is a "living salary"?

> If I'm a single mom with 3 kids, is the "living salary" the same as a single 20 year old who lives at home?

Your diversion with focusing on a new totally unfruitful topic is not my problem.

So you’re saying Scandinavia is ok with subsidizing the salary of certain people to make it a “living salary”?

That’s a yes/no question. Not sure why you’re struggling to answer it.

> Why can’t you have a conversation in good faith?

I think cloudfifty already answered the question in good faith. And honestly; this question comes over as a bit trolly.

But hey, I'll bite!

> The mother will also receive a monthly allowance for each child. She will also likely be eligible to rent support. So children is a special case, but a living wage doesn't involve that.

In this case, rent support would come from the state and if the mother in question is also working, you could classify this as additional support. So, if the mother is working, she should get a salary high enough to not warrant this kind of support. (Given that rent is usually highly dependent on the location of the property, not having such a support could further push gentrification and require longer commute for the mother in question. In this case we also need to make sure that the day care for the kids doesn't suffer in quality if the mother in question has to move to a less desirable living location.)

In general, we should not do corporate welfare. In particular there might be cases where we need to support people, even if they are working.

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