I doubt that guests in restaurants will start flipping their own burgers, or folks will stop ordering home deliveries, so I don't think the demand is a problem here. Real problem is on the other side, the vast supply of that segment of the workforce. These are easily replacable employees, so employer has unfair "if you don't like it, leave it" leverage over them - plus most of them can't really afford to be picky about jobs as they need that money badly. And employers exploit it.
People absolutely might order fewer burgers or order fewer home deliveries if the price of those things were to rise. In some cases employers also have the option of automating tasks that are currently done by people.
Very important distinction here, and that is self volition. To be clear I'm not saying it's good or bad. I think it's a genuine question. What if there are simply not enough jobs available at the rates that people want to be paid?
> What if there are simply not enough jobs available at the rates that people want to be paid?
Or what if there are, but it turns out there are aspects of employment other than money?
Suppose you can get a job at minimum wage, but then you have to own and maintain a car to get there, and sit in it for three hours a day uncompensated, and have an inflexible schedule that rarely lets you see your kids.
Or you can spend 8 hours a day driving, but all of them are compensated, so you have 8 hours of work time instead of de facto 11 hours, and you set your own schedule. But you get paid 20% less for 28% less of your time. Or consume 10 hours of time for the same amount of money as 11 but are now paid "20% less per hour" because 3 hours of driving time weren't being accounted for as work time.
Are we so sure the people taking this deal are victims who need to be prohibited from doing this?
It's not like this is a new debate. The US introduced a federal minimum wage in 1933 after a long push to end non-living wages in sweatshops. From the Wikipedia article [1]:
"Minimum wage legislation emerged at the end of the nineteenth century from the desire to end sweated labor which had developed in the wake of industrialization. Sweatshops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered nonliving wages that did not allow workers to afford the necessaries of life. Besides substandard wages, sweating was also associated with long work hours and unsanitary and unsafe work conditions."
Some other countries have universally binding collective agreements [2] that have the same outcome of establishing a salary floor.
> What if there are simply not enough jobs available at the rates that people want to be paid?
Decisions are made by others that put people in a position where there is practically no self volition, only struggle.
There is no shortage of resources or capital that requires us to put these people in that position, as evidenced by the, ever growing, vast sums of wealth controlled by a tiny minority.
We could choose to restructure things in such a way that people are paid more fairly, and everyone works less.
Suppose there is some work which has a maximum value to the employer of $9/hour, e.g. because that's how many more sales they make if they have an employee stocking shelves in addition to checking out customers instead of having one employee do both, because then there is less time when a product isn't on the shelf. So they might offer to pay $8/hour, if someone is willing to work for that. If you set the minimum wage at $10/hour, they aren't going to pay that for this, even if they have a billion dollars, because paying $10/hour would cause them to have $1/hour less.
If what you want to do is tax the rich and give it to the poor to make sure everyone has a minimum amount, that's a UBI, not a minimum wage.
I was pointing out that GP's claim of people taking these jobs out of "self-volition" is directly at odds with their supposition that we might just not have enough well paying jobs for everyone. Minimum wage/UBI has no bearing on that.
> Suppose there is some work which has a maximum value to the employer of $9/hour...If you set the minimum wage at $10/hour
Then the employer should raise their prices or the job shouldn't exist. The present situation of forcing people into, or exploiting people who are in a precarious situation is disgusting. It's bad enough when applied domestically, look only to US states stripping back child labour regulations[0], not long after children were found to be working night-sifts cleaning slaughterhouses[1]. The same reasoning is exhibited by western companies who are all too happy to turn a blind eye to foreign child and slave labour if it keeps manufacturing costs low.
> I was pointing out that GP's claim of people taking these jobs out of "self-volition" is directly at odds with their supposition that we might just not have enough well paying jobs for everyone. Minimum wage/UBI has no bearing on that.
But now you're using a different meaning of volition. They're not required to take a job at $6/hour instead of one at $10/hour. They might still choose to take it anyway if the higher paying job has a heinous commute or is third shift or dirty or dangerous etc. That's a choice, and removing it makes things worse for them.
If there is no $10/hour job at all, they still have a "choice" between the $6/hour job and not making rent, but that choice is between two bad options, and now you want to say that it isn't really a choice because a low-paying job is nothing compared to homelessness. But then you say this:
> Then the employer should raise their prices or the job shouldn't exist.
"Companies should raise prices so people can get paid more" is not how you cause people to have more. They just lose the higher nominal wages to higher prices. And in general if customers would pay more, they'd already be charging more.
So how are you squaring "the job shouldn't exist" with the job being their only alternative to something so unreasonable that you regard it as a lack of volition?
> But now you're using a different meaning of volition. They're not required to take a job at $6/hour instead of one at $10/hour. They might still choose to take it anyway if the higher paying job has a heinous commute or is third shift or dirty or dangerous etc. That's a choice, and removing it makes things worse for them.
I've used the same meaning of volition throughout. GP posited that there may exist X well-paying jobs but Y people, where Y > X. In that situation there is no self volition once the well-paying jobs have been filled; even if some people willingly choose not to take them. Once again it's about agency not UBI or minimum wage.
> "Companies should raise prices so people can get paid more" is not how you cause people to have more. They just lose the higher nominal wages to higher prices.
That's pure conjecture, not fact. Productivity and wages decoupled 50 years ago.
> So how are you squaring "the job shouldn't exist" with the job being their only alternative to something so unreasonable that you regard it as a lack of volition?
The answer to a desperate child isn't paying them a pittance to clean a slaughterhouse. That we've decided to do so is a choice, not a necessity, and is an indictment of who we are as a society.
> GP posited that there may exist X well-paying jobs but Y people, where Y > X. In that situation there is no self volition once the well-paying jobs have been filled; even if some people willingly choose not to take them.
By definition, people choosing not to take them is self-volition. They'd rather have the low-paying job because it's easier or closer, and they have a choice. There are also a large number of people for whom not working is a viable option, e.g. if your spouse makes at least twice minimum wage, your household has as much income as some couples who both work. Then a choice between a low-paying job or doing household labor is actually a choice.
But here is what I mean by two definitions. If you have to choose between low pay and homelessness, is that a choice? If it is, all of those jobs are volitional. If it isn't, "the job shouldn't exist" is the opposite of a solution.
> That's pure conjecture, not fact. Productivity and wages decoupled 50 years ago.
Average productivity and wages decoupled, highly asymmetrically. Someone who makes a computer that can do the work of a thousand bookkeepers or stenographers is extremely productive, even if they "only" get paid 10 times more than the bookkeepers did. But the productivity for cashiers and dishwashers is not much changed. Businesses are not going to opt to pay someone more than the value they produce for the business and the value produced by unskilled labor is commonly quite low.
> The answer to a desperate child isn't paying them a pittance to clean a slaughterhouse.
But then:
> Once again it's about agency not UBI or minimum wage
A UBI would provide agency by allowing someone to turn down a low-paying job without being in a state of desperation. The job might then have to pay more or offer some countervailing benefit to get anyone to take it, and the people who choose to or not would then actually be making a choice.
If not that then what are you proposing as a way to achieve agency? Expecting businesses to choose to pay people more than their labor is worth isn't going to do it.
> If not that then what are you proposing as a way to achieve agency? Expecting businesses to choose to pay people more than their labor is worth isn't going to do it.
I'm not dismissing either solution, they're just not relevant to the original point of the discussion. My response to GP was in regards to the lack of agency in a situation where there were fewer "quality" jobs than those who desire them. How agency should be introduced to that scenario is irrelevant to the scenario itself.
> By definition, people choosing not to take them is self-volition. They'd rather have the low-paying job because it's easier or closer, and they have a choice. There are also a large number of people for whom not working is a viable option, e.g. if your spouse makes at least twice minimum wage, your household has as much income as some couples who both work. Then a choice between a low-paying job or doing household labor is actually a choice.
You've latched on to "some people choosing", ignoring that once the desirable jobs are chosen, they are no longer an option. If there are 5 high quality jobs, 5 low quality jobs, 12 people, and 2 people choose a low quality job; then 3 people have no choice of job, and 2 have no job at all.
> If not that then what are you proposing as a way to achieve agency? Expecting businesses to choose to pay people more than their labor is worth isn't going to do it.
Again, it's not the discussion I was looking to have.
> You've latched on to "some people choosing", ignoring that once the desirable jobs are chosen, they are no longer an option. If there are 5 high quality jobs, 5 low quality jobs, 12 people, and 2 people choose a low quality job; then 3 people have no choice of job, and 2 have no job at all.
But none of those numbers were in the original scenario, and you've switched to low quality jobs from low paying jobs.
If there are 6 high paying jobs, 6 low paying jobs and 10 people, not all 10 people can have high paying jobs, but 4 or more of them might choose low paying jobs because of some countervailing advantage over the higher paying jobs.
The problem comes if you try to prohibit people from taking low paying jobs, because then you have 10 people and only 6 available jobs.
And even in your scenario, if you remove the option to take low paying jobs, what it does is cause 7 people to have no job instead of 2.
We've seen this name come up in different ways in different time periods. Recently, it's 'late stage capitalism'. Or it's a failure of neolibetalism as a monetary policy.
And these failures are old enough that even Marx and Engels saw it in the 1800s, with their critique of capitalism.
Exploiters will exploit in a capitalist economy. It'll always be easier to exploit than to make laws to prevent exploitation. Or in this case, yet to make laws to prevent it.
The billionaires didn't get rich on hard work. They got rich on your hard work, and by keeping the surplus on every transaction. And with "gig work", they take their cut from both sides, due to information asymmetry. But you do the work, and you keep the pennies.
And anyone smart enough can put together that scams like Uber count on no commercial insurance coverage, not being paid for wear/tear/gas/time, not getting essentials like workers comp if injured.
Remember, 'gig work' a Shrodingers Job: it's a job until it isn't.
And you also have to remember what money is: it's a crystallization of goods+services+time. What if there's not enough good jobs, due to mass automation? If it's a socialist country that planned for it? It's a good thing. It frees people up to do their interests. There's 12 Earth's of food made per year. Why are there hungry people.
And that answer: neolibetalist capitalism. Having hungry, homeless, poor people is the 'stick' in this system.
Taking slavery out of the question since that is obvious removal of rights of free will..
If someone had the choice between being homeless, of working full time for a small business that in exchange let them sleep in the warehouse and brought them breakfast and dinner each day, but offered zero pay, would that be ok? Because on one end that seems like charity to me, but also others would view it as exploitation.
When I was a child I had the same idea. I imagined myself a rich man, living in a large mansion. I would invite the homeless to live in the mansion in exchange for their labour, providing days off and a stipend.
I grew up.
To exploit someone's desperation for personal gain is an idea that has no place in a civilised society. More so when that society is fully capable of ensuring no-one ends up in that position.
Society can. But the person that employed me part time in highschool wasn't able to. So yes, he had someone living in those conditions in his warehouse (not me). I think it was better for the person than being homeless.
Is that really any different than a young adult moving back in with the parents and helping around the house?
> Society can. But the person that employed me part time in highschool wasn't able to. So yes, he had someone living in those conditions in his warehouse (not me). I think it was better for the person than being homeless.
The existence of a worse alternative does not justify a situation in isolation. I don't doubt that it was a better alternative to homelessness but it was not the only alternative. We would never attempt to justify slavery with the suggestion that it was better than being murdered.
That's not to say that the people involved were moustache twirlingly evil but it also doesn't make the situation moral/desirable.
> Is that really any different than a young adult moving back in with the parents and helping around the house?
Generally, yes. There's a decades long filial relationship, the child's time is free to pursue paid employment, and the parents are unlikely to kick the child out because business is slow or the dishes haven't been washed. A homeless person living and working in a warehouse has been put in a position where they're obliged to comply with the employer's demands. If they're working full time for the employer for free/very little then they also have very little ability to save enough to have the agency to move themselves on, or push back against unreasonable behaviour.
If you've ever had a bad boss, imagine that person deciding whether or not they want to make you homeless at any given moment.
One, young adults do get kicked out of their home on the whim of their parents all the time.
Two, a HUGE percentage of low income earners could be made homeless by losing a job at any time, which they do, combined with maybe an unlucky event or two.
