[Konnstann]

The problem is how to incentivize companies to pay workers the same amount for less work. A lot of people, for example, the service industry, can't just work shorter shifts for the same pay. If your job is delivering a product then you can, and a lot of people do, work hard enough to deliver and then goof off for the remaining time.

Take a Starbucks employee: They get paid per hour worked, so if they want to work less, they need more money. Now Starbucks needs to pay more people more money to maintain the same hours. This circles back to the popular discussion of automation and UBI or whatever, where Starbucks now has robots and the employees don't exist anymore.

On another note, I'd rather work a job I don't enjoy than be unemployed, I've had periods of unemployment and they were pretty bad.

[toomuchtodo]

Raise the minimum wage while reducing the work week to 4 days for full time employment (this brings the minimum wage closer to where it should be after not being raised for decades, while also giving labor a share of the productivity gains they should’ve been receiving since the 70s).

You squeeze Capital with labor law and regulation. Any reduction in employment due to rising wages can be fixed with social support systems funded by corporate taxes that were previously tax breaks or deductions on automation expenses.

The wealth in the system exists to do this. It’s a distribution issue.

[dTal]

This is the right answer. The only reason we don't work 80 hour weeks for 2 bucks an hour is because the law forbids it.

[mruts]

This is just false. Approximately only 2% of American workers are paid minimum wage. Everyone else makes more.

[dTal]

Technically true. But the minimum wage is still clearly an anchor. The amount above minimum is a signal of your worth as a worker. Consider this[1] income distribution chart (with its precipitous falloff left of the minimum wage mark). It's clear that "at or just above minimum" is the largest demographic, even if it represents a small fraction of the whole. If the minimum wage were raised, it wouldn't simply bunch the left of the graph together - the entire curve would move.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Di...

[embersbreaking]

@mruts: "but then inflation will just go up a similar amount"

That is a faith-based belief.

[mruts]

Of course the entire curve will move, but then inflation will just go up a similar amount. This means that everyone will effectively be making the same amount of money.

Because of this, I think minimum wage is unnecessary and just manages to distort the market and prices out some people out of any job whatsoever.

[Ericson2314]

You give people more money for less work by making it policy. UBI, in other words. Captalism isn't going to do this one on its own.

[Konnstann]

Yes, I even mentioned that in my comment, the problem is actually implementing the system. It's all well and good to say "UBI" but getting it past the lobbyists and through Congress is another thing. I'm trying to understand how we get there, not the end goal, since that's obvious.

[Ericson2314]

A bunch of rich people want UBI for some reason. It's very simple unlike say healthcare so it is harder to stealthily undermine, which is the main tactic of unpopular lobbying. So it has probably more of a chance than other stuff at the same scale.