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Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

Arguably, if the value people will pay for something can't support the human dignity of the people who make them, then it's not worth subsidizing so that it is affordable. Do you have an counterexample?

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There's an obvious problem with your argument: in order for wages to support the human dignity of workers, those workers must be able to actually buy things with their wages. The sectors that would have trouble increaing wages due to the limited amount people can pay for them include stuff like food. You're treating the workers producing the goods and the people buying the goods as two seperate groups when in fact they're broadly one and the same, which obscures the fact that the actual end result of your proposal is that people whose economic value falls below whatever minimum standard of permissible human dignity don't get to eat anymore.

Increased wages also drives more automation. For critical goods like food, that's what would replace those workers if their labour value is below minimum wage, and they would have to move into positions that can pay better. That's arguably better than leaving them in poverty working below a living wage.

If those people could move into positions that can pay better, they already would have done so, no? Eliminating their jobs through automation isn't going to get them promoted, it's going to get them fired and unemployed

> If those people could move into positions that can pay better, they already would have done so, no?

No, because those positions pay the same as what they're currently getting, but not how much they would pay with a higher minimum wage. The context is that a person's current position is unprofitable under a higher minimum wage, but other positions would not be, thus their wage ends up boosted even if it means getting a new position.

Furthermore, targeted automation has tended to increase employment in other industries, historically.

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