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Yup. Using humans to get stuff done isn't our only option anymore, so a difference between the stock market and labor market isn't surprising.

I live in a liberal area and I'm facebook friends with a lot of Burners (people who have gone to burning man). I see a ton of image macros and posts where people are implying that it's a moral wrong that businesses are doing well while we have high unemployment. :-/ For me, once I understood the (technological, economic) reasons for the difference it became less of a moral issue and more of a practical issue. (i.e.--- had to throw out my semi-useless degree and learn a valuable skill. My valuable skill is copy-pasting coffeescript!)

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> For me, once I understood the (technological, economic) reasons for the difference it became less of a moral issue and more of a practical issue.

keywords: "For me"

Everyone seems to lose their empathy for the poor and unfortunate once they become successful themselves. But I bet before you landed your sweet coffeescript gig, that you were pretty empathetic.

It's not a practical issue. It's purely a moral one. We all enter the earth on unequal footing. The system rewards luck and pedigree more than it rewards effort and hard work. The very conditioning brought upon youth by poverty makes it so unlikely that they'll ever aspire to the heights of the upper class, or even the middle class. Access to education is still not equal, neither is access to food, clothing, or shelter. Try getting homework help from your parents when they are on drugs.

Don't forget it's a moral issue, just because you've experienced some relative prosperity. Society is selfish to boot.

The system rewards luck and pedigree more than it rewards effort and hard work.

What evidence do you have for this?

Ah so you believe in the labor theory of value.

www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0691.pdf

What's your explanation for the income distribution among different races? White people are just harder working? What evidence do you have that effort and hard work are rewarded more than luck and pedigree?

The data does indeed suggest white men work one hour/day more than black men (women work about the same). Your theory seems to have some merit, though I'd love to see more than just one data point.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t03.htm

Another data point - poor people work very little (by choice).

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2009.pdf

Empirical evidence is not required to prove what is common sense.

Lets say I was born in Darfur. Bad luck, bad pedigree.

Lets say I was born in Afghanistan. Bad luck, bad pedigree.

... do I need to continue

BTW, pedigree is not the same as "breed" -- it is the totality of everything, including what family you come from, who your parents are, and all that. Society judges you heavily, just based on that, starting with your first day at school.

Worldwide I agree with you - but empirical data is easy to come by (as your examples demonstrate). Inside the us I'm far less convinced.

Inside the US there is a rough equality for opportunity to become "middle class" which is constantly shrinking.

To become an elite upper class person, family helps a lot.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/09/22/are-we-entering-the-a...

What is morally wrong is the idea that everyone should have a job in a society where it's so obviously unnecessary for everyone to work, and where the level of productivity is in fact detrimental to the people and their environment in the long term.

What I'm saying is that we should get rid of the idea of not having a wage job at all as inherently less respectable than working with anything and introduce a guaranteed minimum income.

This, exactly. On hn we can have these discussions (and see a lot of people hold these welfare=lazy straw man views) because most of us have jobs that haven't been automated away... yet. But that day is coming. Probably a lot sooner than most of us realize.

I can't help but agree that a policy of full employment or guaranteed minimum income is going to be necessary in the not-too-distant future, unless we're comfortable living in a society where most people are destitute because they weren't born to already-rich parents.

The problem with that is it incentivizes more and more people to just stop working, and instead become dependent on the guaranteed income, government, and the fewer and fewer who create the wealth necessary to fund that guaranteed income. Someone has to pay for it, and they will extract a price in power.

Ultimately you end up with a large portion of the populace dependent, and hence politically powerless, undermining democracy and our republic.

The real answer is, as usual, the harder one - continually improving education and access to education for the lower and middle segments, breaking cycles of poverty (and violence where applicable), eradicating Learned Helplessness [1], building better tools that enable more people to adapt to a new environment where machines have supplanted humans for some tasks but not all (FOSS and 3D printing being particularly interesting here).

It's a hard, imperfect task that will never be finished, but better than making the entire world completely dependent on a few.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

> and introduce a guaranteed minimum income.

Nixon tried this in 70's. It came surprising close to passing on the grounds that it would be far more efficient and lead to better outcomes than the patch work system of social programs we currently have.

How is it not immoral? Why should employees work full time yet still need food stamps to get by, while employers see record profits? How is it moral to not pay someone a living wage, while the wages at the top go up?

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/hidden-...

How often is this really happening? and what is the cause?

Is it because the employer isn't paying employees enough or is it because the employee made poor life decisions (had kids too early, didn't learn any marketable skills, etc)?

Minimum wage isn't meant to support an entire family. There are plenty of places you can rent these days that are cheap (Just looking on craiglist, I can see rooms for rent that someone can easily afford on minimum wage) and you can buy cheap food (Walmart is the cheapest in my area).

It isn't ideal or easy, but it's not impossible. A bigger problem is the education of our citizens on life decisions that may cause difficult times for many years to come in their future. No amount of government regulation will solve these issues.

The other problem is globalization. Many people here love the Internet and the freedom it brings, but it also brings competition from countries like China and India.

Is it because the employer isn't paying employees enough or is it because the employee made poor life decisions (had kids too early, didn't learn any marketable skills, etc)?

WOW! This is not only textbook false dichotomy, but also a fundamental attribution error [1].

"Had kids too early" - what if their pregnancy was a result of rape, and they could not afford an abortion (or it was illegal in their state)?

"Didn't learn any marketable skills" - what if they weren't born into a good family and didn't have the role models that could teach them what skills are marketable in the first place.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

How moral is it to not earn a living wage, but expect others to supply it anyway?

The Waltons' fortunes are built by our labor, unless you think they could staff ~9000 locations by themselves.

Non-sequitur.

The Walton's fortunes are built by trading for our labor, benefitting both. This does not obligate the Waltons to pay "living wages" where the value of one's labor does not rise to the cost of one's living expenses.

The point is that we are not asking Walmart to "supply" us with a living wage from somebody's personal bank account or that somebody else work harder so we can get paid more. The workers are already creating a value for the company significantly larger than what they see every two weeks. We are asking that Walmart/Employer-X give us a larger portion of our labor back.

So ask for a raise.

A thing is worth only what another is willing to pay for it. If others are willing to do the same work for the objected-to price, you're asking too much.

Of course the company gets more value out of the work than the employee. If it were just break-even, the question would be "why bother?" and either just not have the work done, or find a radically different way to get it done (say, hiring Roomba if the cost of human floor-sweepers gets too high). The great thing about employment is BOTH get more out than they put in - yes, that includes the employee working there instead of elsewhere for lower pay, or not being paid for not working anywhere.

Sucks, yes, at times. Most of human history involved a lot of effort to eek out a meager existence. If you want more, you gotta do more that others are willing to pay more for.

Oh, and yes - you ARE asking for a "living wage from somebody's personal bank account". The Waltons are people too.

I rather feel like campaigning for a living was IS asking for a raise.

although the comment that I was responding to (yours): "How moral is it to not earn a living wage, but expect others to supply it anyway?"

presents asking for--or rather receiving-- a raise as immoral.

I was pointing out that people are already earning a living, they are just not being paid it.

It's not wrong for businesses to do well -- but it's arguably wrong and certainly unsustainable for business prosperity not to trickle down to average people doing better.

Most businesses will optimize for profit within the parameters they are given. That's why workers need to have unions.

Supply-side economics do have a grain of truth to them, a very small one. The problem is they are "trickle down" and there are a lot of people who need a bit more than a light sprinkle to happen.

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