If a business can't pay a living wage, it's not really a successful business. I, too, could become fabulously wealthy selling shoes if someone just have me shoes for $1 so I could resell them for $50.
> If a business can't pay a living wage, it's not really a successful business.
Let's consider the implications of this. We take an existing successful business, change absolutely nothing about it, but separately and for unrelated reasons the local population increases and the government prohibits the construction of new housing.
Now real estate is more scarce and the business has to pay higher rent, so they're making even less than before and there is nothing there for them to increase wages with. Meanwhile the wages they were paying before are now "not a living wage" because housing costs went way up.
Is it this business who is morally culpable for this result, or the zoning board?
There are certainly elements of this. And there are also elements like my city, where some of the more notable local business owners and developers are all _way too cozy_ with the City Council and Planning/Zoning Boards (like not just rubbing shoulders at community events, fundraisers, but in the "our families rent AirBnBs together and go on vacation together) which gives them greater influence.
All that being said, though, Robert Heinlein said once:
> There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
> And there are also elements like my city, where some of the more notable local business owners and developers are all _way too cozy_ with the City Council and Planning/Zoning Boards (like not just rubbing shoulders at community events, fundraisers, but in the "our families rent AirBnBs together and go on vacation together) which gives them greater influence.
But now you're just condemning the zoning board and their cronies as it should be, as opposed to someone else who can't pay higher wages just because real estate got more expensive since it got more expensive for them too.
> Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
Which is basically useless in this context because when costs increase you could apply it equally to not raising the minimum wage (the individual has to suck it up) or raising the minimum wage (the small business owner has to suck it up). Meanwhile neither of them should have to suck it up because we should instead be getting the costs back down.
But in that case they are successful; they're just not paying very much relative to the cost of living as a result of someone else's imposition of artificial scarcity
But they do have employees. Their employees are just unhappy because now they're barely scraping by, but most employers can't afford to pay them more because the employers are in the same boat paying the high real estate costs themselves.
Can we use the same argument for all of the businesses that are only surviving because of VC money?
I find it rich how many tech people are working for money losing companies, using technology from money losing companies and/or trying to start a money losing company and get funding from a VC.
Every job is not meant to support a single person living on their own raising a family.
That's what VC money is for. When it comes to paying below a living wage, we typically expect the government to provide support to make up the difference (so they're not literally homeless). Businesses that rely on government to pay their employees should not exist.
That’s kind of the point, a mom and pop restaurant or a McDonald’s franchise owner doesn’t have the luxury of burning $10 for every $1 in revenue for years and being backed by VC funding.
Oh and the average franchise owner is not getting rich. They are making $100K a year to $150K a year depending on how many franchises they own.
Also tech companies can afford to pay a tech worker more money because you don’t have to increase the number of workers when you get more customers.
YC is not going to give the aspiring fast food owner $250K to start their business like they are going to give “pets.ai - AI for dog walkers”
In that case they probably shouldn't be running a McDonald's. They aren't owed that and they shouldn't depend on their workers getting government support just so the owners can "earn" their own living wage.
Yet tech workers are “owed” making money because they are in an industry where their employers “deserve” to survive despite losing money because they can get VC funding - funded by among others government pension plans?
I find it slightly hypocritical that people can clutch their pearls at small businesses who risk their own money while yet another BS “AI” company’s founders can play founder using other people’s money.
Classically, not all jobs are considered "living wage" jobs. That whole notion is something some people made up very recently.
A teenager in his/her first job at McDonald's doesn't need a "living wage." As a result of forcing the issue, now the job doesn't exist at all in many instances... and if it does, the owner has a strong incentive to automate it away.
> A teenager in his/her first job at McDonald's doesn't need a "living wage." As a result of forcing the issue, now the job doesn't exist at all in many instances
The majority of minimum wage workers are adults, not teenagers. This is also true for McDonald's employees. The idea that these jobs are staffed by children working summer jobs is simply not reality.
Anyone working for someone else, doing literally anything for 40 hours a week, should be entitled to enough compensation to support themselves at a minimum. Any employer offering less than that is either a failed business that should die off and make room for one that's better managed or a corporation that is just using public taxpayer money to subsidize their private labor expenses.
A teenager is presumably also going to school full time and works their job part time, not ~2000 hours per year.
If we build a society where someone working a full time job is not able to afford to reasonably survive, we are setting ourselves up for a society of crime, poverty, and disease.
Let's talk about steelmanning, shall we? Why should I show good faith when absolutely no one else in the conversation is?
Take it from the top. First reply: The majority of minimum wage workers are adults, not teenagers. This is also true for McDonald's employees. The idea that these jobs are staffed by children working summer jobs is simply not reality.
The steelman position would grant that in fact, it's traditional for teenagers working summer jobs to do just that, and proceed to explain why high minimum wages as a one-size-fits-all policy are still a net win for society. Instead, autoexec starts by attacking an unstated position -- that these are necessarily 40-hour/week full-time jobs -- and wraps up by plainly and literally denying reality.
Second reply: A teenager is presumably also going to school full time and works their job part time, not ~2000 hours per year. If we build a society where someone working a full time job is not able to afford to reasonably survive, we are setting ourselves up for a society of crime, poverty, and disease.
At least kube-system doesn't make the mistake of assuming that all jobs require 2000 hours of work per year, but they fail to acknowledge, much less address, my point that not all jobs are done for survival purposes. Not only is that not an example of steelmanning, it's followed up by an irrelevant bare assertion made without the faintest trace of historical grounding.
Moving on to array_key_first: Just the simple fact that mcdonalds is open during school hours is enough to demolish the "teenagers flipping burgers" type arguments.
Once again, the fact is that jobs such as burger-flipping have traditionally provided part-time and summer jobs for young people living at home who are looking to save up a bit of money and get some work experience. This reply doesn't care to acknowledge the basic facts of the matter, much less address the strongest possible interpretation of my argument.
Then there's this zinger from swiftcoder: Turns out our supply of underage workers is neither infinite, nor even sufficient to staff all fast food jobs in the nation. If you are looking for an example of a strawman argument in this thread, how about picking on an actual one before jumping on my case?
Come back with your "steelman" bullshit when you're willing to apply the same rules to all sides of the argument.
> At least kube-system doesn't make the mistake of assuming that all jobs require 2000 hours of work per year, but they fail to acknowledge, much less address, my point that not all jobs are done for survival purposes.
I think we both can agree that there's a lot of nuance when it comes to wages and employment. How much time is someone spending at that job? What type of living situation do they have? What other sources of income do they have in their living situation? What are their expenses? etc.
You're right that not all jobs are done for survival purposes. But colloquially, when people use the term "living wage", they're talking specifically about people who work a wage in order to survive. Which is the reason that most people have jobs.
> Not only is that not an example of steelmanning, it's followed up by an irrelevant bare assertion made without the faintest trace of historical grounding.
Do you mean that in the past people did not survive on a single income? Social and family structures in the past definitely look different than they do today. But that doesn't really have any relevance to the people living in the present. Socioeconomics changes over time. Many of the living situations of the past are straight up illegal today. I know relatives who grew up without electricity or running water and grew their own food for survival. They didn't need the modern concept of a "living wage", but at the same time you can't reasonably expect someone from today's world to do the same thing they did.
