| > 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 |