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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

> That does not sound like a non-idealised concept.

No, I mean in an ideal world everyone has a job that pays, and progresses towards better jobs. Minimum wage is to cope with this not being the case.

> Is there another good definition?

Yes - age discrimination as defined in law: some things are illegal to discriminate on. Using the same phrase as the legal one is confusing, which is why I was trying to clarify.

> Not having 7-year-olds drive cars is just another case of "it is in the publics best interest, and it also does not hurt them much".

This is what a lawmaker judged the minimum wage age-based cases to be as well.

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> Yes - age discrimination as defined in law: some things are illegal to discriminate on.

So it must be defined as illegal in the law to be considered discrimination? If we remove e.g. race or gender from that law, then those types of discrimination are suddenly OK? That seems like a bad argument.

But yes, those laws should explicitly mention age. Unfortunately, here in Germany, that is not the case.

> This is what a lawmaker judged the minimum wage age-based cases to be as well.

If a lawmaker judged that the positive "none" outweighs the negative of "lower minimum wage for younger people" then that lawmaker simply made a bad decision. Just because they are a lawmaker does not mean they can't be criticised.

> So it must be defined as illegal in the law to be considered discrimination?

No, I'm saying it's confusing to use terminology that's also separately legal teminology to describe something.

> Just because they are a lawmaker does not mean they can't be criticised.

True but I don't see the relevance.

> > So it must be defined as illegal in the law to be considered discrimination?

> No, I'm saying it's confusing to use terminology that's also separately legal teminology to describe something.

Well, you seem to argue that one should not use the term "discrimination" if it is not legally defined to be such, because that would be confusing.

Let's assume a hypothetical situation in which the law did not state that you cannot discriminate based on sex/gender and the minimum wage law stated that woman have a lower minimum wage than men. Would you consider this to be gender discrimination?

If yes, what are the fundamental differences between this hypothetical situation and the real world situation of lower minimum wages for younger people? Why would you consider one to be discriminatory and the other to not be?

If no, then I have no further questions. We seem to have a very different understanding of what discrimination is.

I for one would definitely consider this hypothetical example to be discrimination and obviously apply the same logic to the actual situation as well.

> If no, then I have no further questions. We seem to have a very different understanding of what discrimination is.

No, we don't. You already understood that my point is it's confusing to use the term in a context where it has another meaning, without disambiguating.

> If yes, what are the fundamental differences between this hypothetical situation and the real world situation of lower minimum wages for younger people?

If there wouldn't be the confusion then I wouldn't bring up the confusion.

> Why would you consider one to be discriminatory and the other to not be?

You're missing the point. There are some things we allow and some things we don't. E.g. 3 year olds can't drive. Would you consider that to be discrimination? The answer is "Who cares - we were just talking about avoiding using terms with multiple meanings in written conversation."

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