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Comment by sennight | Hacker News Reader

> ...but cannot afford to pay them a living wage then that business should close.

There is actually a solution for that not involving burdensome regulation: capitalism. Crap business models get outcompeted.

> They're just exploiting workers...

Slavery is illegal, so these poor coffee slaves have bigger fish to fry.

> There was a time, not very long ago...

Before the US offshored all its heavy industry and proudly declared itself a "service based economy".

> ...even someone in an entry level position, still absolutely deserves a living wage for their time.

lol. There do exist people so useless that their labor doesn't even rate minimum wage. Now the bottom rungs of the ladder are gone for them, and they can't even get on the job training. The military figured this out a long time ago, which is what brought about the creation of IQ tests. Anyone below 80ish couldn't be trusted to do anything without constant direction.

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> There do exist people so useless that their labor doesn't even rate minimum wage.

People who can't do a job should be replaced with someone who can. If a company still has to hire a warm body to do that job, those employees are automatically not useless. Every person who puts in 40 hours, no matter what their purpose, is entitled to a living wage. That doesn't make all labor equal. Highly skilled workers will always demand more money than what they'd need to live comfortably. With lower skilled jobs companies pay much less for labor, but in either case businesses still have to compensate employees for their time. Our time is very finite and extremely valuable. Honestly, our current 40 hour work week is demanding too much as it is. However useless you think someone's job is, if their company could get by without someone doing that work they probably would, but as long as somebody is doing the job and putting in the hours that employee deserves a living wage.

> If a company still has to hire a warm body to do that job, those employees are automatically not useless.

If a company doesn't hire that warm body to breakdown cardboard boxes or drag around dust mops, then it is useless. Remember the donut hole welfare talking point in the 90s? That is what this is.

> Every person who puts in 40 hours, no matter what their purpose, is entitled to a living wage.

Says you, about an arrangement that doesn't involve you. You should be careful what you wish for, because you could easily get exactly what you are demanding - and be very unhappy for it. Here is how that could happen: massive coordinated campaign to shift the consensus position for an acceptable standard of living, with a catchy hook - "You'll own nothing, and be happy"; resulting in people eating bugs, sleeping in concrete tube "pods", getting paid a dollar an hour, and dying alone.

> Says you, about an arrangement that doesn't involve you.

This is something that was also said by the judge in the 1907 Australian Harvester Decision which set a set a ‘living’ or ‘family’ wage.

It was ruled to allow an unskilled labourer to support a wife and three children, to feed, house, and clothe them.

This became the basis of the national minimum wage system in Australia that persists to this day, that a minimum wage should allow a 40 hour work week to feed, clothe and house a worker and reasonable immediate dependants.

> resulting in people eating bugs, sleeping in concrete tube "pods", getting paid a dollar an hour, and dying alone.

Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

Any ideas on when your predicted outcomes will kick in?

> Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

Didn't you guys recently have COVID concentration camps? You might wanna rethink that position.

> Any ideas on when your predicted outcomes will kick in?

Ask Klaus Schwab, he and Bill Gates seem to have their fingers on the pulse of awful things going down in the world.

> Didn't you guys recently have COVID concentration camps? You might wanna rethink that position.

True or not, what does that have to do with literally anything that's been said?

Spoiler alert, true.

>>> ...shift the consensus position for an acceptable standard of living...

>> Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

> ...recently have COVID concentration camps?

I pointed to a shifting consensus position, he denied it, I pointed to an outrageous example of the warping of normalcy in his own backyard. That clear it up for you?

> he denied it

Who denied what now? Can you quote the denial, I'm not seeing it.

"Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

Any ideas on when your predicted outcomes will kick in?"

And the question stands.

If a minimum living wage leads to economic collapse .. when will that happen (given that's not yet happened after 115+ years in practice)?

And the answer remains the same: a redefinition of what constitutes the standard of living is far more likely than "economic collapse"... it is already happening.

You're right about the importance of how we define a living wage, but it's ultimately workers that set that standard, as they are doing now, by fighting for it. You seem to recognize that it would be undesirable for workers to be forced to live uncomfortably, while at the same time suggesting that they shouldn't unionize to fight against that same outcome.

I can't take "forced to eat bugs/sleep in pods" seriously, but so far the only people trying to make sure I can't own things are the companies who insist on pushing everything into the cloud and/or encumbering it with DRM. I'm all for fighting that too.

> ...ultimately workers that set that standard, as they are doing now, by fighting for it.

Until it becomes a union shop, then it is the union organizers setting the standard - sitting between those in a position to pay and those seeking pay. These union bosses are surely paragons of incorruptibility with the workers' best interest driving their actions.

> I can't take "forced to eat bugs/sleep in pods" seriously...

Then you haven't been paying attention for the last 30 years. These are things that have been seriously discussed in the opinion molding class quite publicly for a long time now. Remember the push for "rewilding"? That didn't go away, it just got rebadged as "15-minute cities". The WEF now openly promotes a "Great Reset" where-in everything is effectively rented. Businesses that have been trying to get people to eat their bug food have complained about packaging requirements, as nobody wants their accurately labeled products. Not to worry though, "climate change" driven legislation seems to be attacking all the alternative sources of protein. These aren't conspiracy theories, it is a plain reading of publicly available documents put out by these people for years.

Even among Hacker News comments, you are not a serious individual.

> There is actually a solution for that not involving burdensome regulation: capitalism. Crap business models get outcompeted.

If that were the case, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?

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