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Comment by darknavi | Hacker News Reader

This is so open faced and gross. It reminds of someone talking about getting paid minimum wage. If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."

It also reminds me of State Farm's (auto/home insurance in the US) website with this link at the bottom:

> Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information (CA residents only)

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> If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."

Doesn't this apply to all pay rates? It's not like high-paying jobs are high-paying for the love in the employer's heart.

When does a wage stop being gross? 1c over minimum wage? $1 over?

Don’t get mad, get active. Keep cranking on the policy ratchet, progress and success is clearly possible.

The “progress” is driving a wedge so deep in US society that many think there won’t be a country left after the progressives are done. They have all but destroyed any national identity and made us very easy to invade and continue to try to do so with gun control laws. you’re happy about progress, I’m terrified because the progressives don’t consider whether something they want is good or bad for the country, they just demand it regardless.

My comment speaks specifically to consumer/citizen data privacy, which shouldn’t be a partisan or contentious issue (imho).

then reword it.

That's what Disqus has at the bottom of every of their comments section[0]. I find it ridiculous.

[0] https://electricdusk.com/img/disqus-gdpr-violation-marketing...

I would like a tax relating to privacy violations to be retroactive in all these other states. It’s actually legal to apply a retroactive tax, so why not?

> If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."

The minimum wage is the government saying "if you produce less value than this arbitrary cut off, you aren't allowed to work".

No it isn't, because wages aren't set based on some objective measurement of the quality of value produced. If that were the case, increases in productivity would have resulted in a commensurate increase in wages, but the only increase is the gap between wages and productivity.

So all of the AI engineers getting large bonuses it has nothing to do with the value?

What you’ve described here is the way it’s supposed to work. But after decades of “progress” in removing morality you see the wage gap problem now.

Ah, lovely, you're one of those people.

If you produce less value than the cutoff (whatever that means; wages are set based on how little a company can get away with paying, not on some arbitrary "value" you've assigned to the work), companies that employ you still have to pay you a living wage. Or not even, since minimum wage usually lags a living wage.

The funny thing is, I bet you're also the kind of person who is against welfare programs. So if the minimum wage didn't exist, people in these sorts of jobs would get paid so little that they'd end up on welfare. Not sure how that would be an improvement.

> If you produce less value than the [minimum wage], companies that employ you still have to pay you

True enough, I suppose, but … if one produces less than one costs, a company will not employ one. Why would a company employ someone who produces less than he costs?

the improvement here is in increasing skills, not paying someone more than the value they produce for the country, nor paying someone not producing any value.

welfare is great if your field is being phased out and you need retraining, or you’re disable or handicap but i loath people taking it when they simply don’t want to work and continue to have more kids that the state then pays for.

to help you understand this better let people move in with you and live off of your resources until you have none left for yourself. then don’t complain.

also insults aren’t allowed on HN

Wages are more a factor of supply and demand and negotiation resulting from that than of value produced.

Otherwise we can have a long argument about if NFL players today truly produce 2-3x more "value" than 20-30 years ago for playing the same game.

(You might say "value" itself is coming from supply demand and that yes if more people have demand for NFL tickets or advertising spots during NFL games now then yes, the players are producing more value... but at that point when we acknowledge how interconnected and shape-able it all is, we could say that minimum wage is the government redirecting labor and businesses away from roles and behaviors that aren't even enough to cover the cost of living towards ones that are more valuable. Which would be... good?)

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