[beagle3]

But welfare payments are paid according to need.

My understanding on Sanders' statement is that it could be paraphrased: "If walmart employes didn't get state welfare, waltons wouldn't be as rich, because they would have to pay more (employees who can't afford food and shelter can't work for you) ... ergo, walmart employees are, at the moment, practically, a conduit of welfare from the state to the waltons".

(That is how I understand his statement -- I don't agree or disagree, I don't know the details well enough to do either)

[wutbrodo]

> ergo, walmart employees are, at the moment, practically, a conduit of welfare from the state to the waltons

This doesn't make any sense (though you have paraphrased Sanders accurately). While technically true for some definition of "conduit of welfare", the same is true of almost everybody in society. Welfare recipients are integrated into the economy enough that "if X didn't get welfare, person Y wouldn't be as rich" is true for many, many, many values of Y (neighborhood stores in poor areas, people benefiting from reduced crime ("stealing bread to feed your family" used to be more than a trope), etc). To give an example in microcosm: if you buy a used car on Craigslist from someone, the fact that the seller is a welfare recipient doesn't mean that you're a beneficiary of welfare because you're not paying him enough to live off of.

To the extent that society is responsible for helping the poor (FTR, I personally believe in this responsibility), it makes absolutely no sense to claim that employers (as opposed to the welfare system) are responsible for filling the gap between "market value of a person's labor" and "how much income he needs to reasonably survive".

This particular claim of Sanders is absolutely idiotic: people are blindly pattern-matching it to support for the poor when in reality he's arguing for shifting the burden of subsidies from all of society to arbitrary consumers/business owners/employees affected by artificial wage floors.

[sce]

> To give an example in microcosm: if you buy a used car on Craigslist from someone, the fact that the seller is a welfare recipient doesn't mean that you're a beneficiary of welfare because you're not paying him enough to live off of.

I think the difference here is that it's not a matter of a single transaction, it's an employment, so what the employer is basically paying for is the employees time (and time is finite). So a better example would be that you pay someone on craigslist for a service, e.g. paint your house. If the painter works full time painting houses and still needs welfare, then the taxpayers are basically subsidizing house painting ("conduit of welfare" as it was phrased). Why can't those that need their house painted pay what it actually costs to get the job done? Because if the full time painter needs welfare, they're in reality paying him too little.

[wutbrodo]

> I think the difference here is that it's not a matter of a single transaction, it's an employment, so what the employer is basically paying for is the employees time (and time is finite).

I think the distinction you're making here is more than trivial, and considered mentioning it but decided that it's still not relevant. My point was that Sanders definition (esp as paraphrased by you) is silly to the point of being meaningless, since it consisted of "X isn't paying enough for Y to get off welfare, thus X is receiving welfare". This applies to my example writ small. Your painter example isn't much difficult from the Craigslist example: the person spends his time doing multiple things that add up to less than enough salary to live off of. That doesn't make any of the purchaser's of his services responsible for the shortfall. To the extent that anyone else is responsible, it's all of society.

> Why can't those that need their house painted pay what it actually costs to get the job done? Because if the full time painter needs welfare, they're in reality paying him too little.

You're defining "what it costs to get the job done" very bizarrely here. If the painter takes odd jobs but his wife is employed too such that the two of them are somewhat comfortable (at least above the poverty/welfare line), by your definition it would suddenly "cost less to get the job done" (since the shortfall to a reasonable income has now diminished/disappeared)? This is of course an absurdity.

The problem again is that you're picking a way to place responsibility for subsidies that makes no sense from either an efficiency or an ethical standpoint. Assuming a need to take care of the poor, we all share that responsibility. The only reason we've "decided" that the burden should fall on arbitrary industries and their employees/customers/owners[1] is because that way we can pretend that we don't believe in taking care of the poor and the robust welfare system that it would entail. All we're doing is creating a shitty, roundabout version of welfare.

Note that I have a tendency to consider complete systems when it comes to policy. In the current political climate, it's no doubt more feasible to implementing higher minimum wages than, say, a basic income. So despite thinking that minimum wages are a terrible idea in a well-functioning system, I wouldn't necessarily vote against them in our less-than-optimal system. I just don't think there's any reason to delude ourselves into thinking that they're good policy per se.

[1] And in a weaker effect, that their effects should fall on arbitrary

[harryh]

It's not clear to me that they would have to pay more. In previous generations people leaved in much worse poverty and still managed to show up to their various jobs.

[sce]

In the case of minimum wage, they would indeed be forced to pay more, rendering the need for welfare to those same people unnecessary, thus shifting the cost from the state/government to the employer.

That is in effect wealth distribution, which again closes the big income inequality. (That's the intended effect anyway.)

[Plough_Jogger]

> thus shifting the cost from the state/government to the employer.

This would simply shift the cost from the state/government (read taxpayer) to end consumers (read taxpayer).

[sce]

If the employer responds by increasing the prices of the goods/services they sell, then yes. However, in the market the consumers have a choice, so they can choose to not buy something, or buy somewhere else, and the market thus regulates itself. Don't want to pay taxes? Not much choice there. So I think having the market regulate itself is better than enforcing the cost of labor through taxes. (Who knows, maybe the employers would be forced to cut their margins even.)

[harryh]

beagle3 argued that in a world without welfare, Wal-Mart would have to pay more or their employees would be unable to work due to lack of basic necessities. I was only arguing against that assertion.

[beagle3]

I was merely paraphrasing my understanding of sanders' argument.

But the argument has merit if the wage is not livable. The two issues the make this an issue (or a nonissue) is what is a minimum livable wage, and whether or not it is the governments role to enforce that or not. (No idea about the first, I think Yes about the second)

[harryh]

Ya, I get that you were paraphrasing. And you did a fine job in my opinion, so my refutation was more aimed at Bernie than you.

With regards to enforcement of a minimum wage I would say that if we, as a society, want to enforce minimum living standards that is a burden that should fall on all of us and not just companies that employ low skilled labor.