[amadeuspagel]

>Any business that cannot survive while paying its employees a true living wage does not deserve to exist, because it is offloading its costs onto the rest of us through the various social programs its employees depend upon to survive.

That's not true. The rest of us would have to pay those costs anyway. It's not like the person wouldn't exist, if they didn't have a job.

[danaris]

Um...what?

Given the choices

a) Business pays employee a living wage; taxpayers pay nothing for that person's survival

b) Business pays employee a less-than-living wage; taxpayers pay partially for that person's survival

c) Person has no job; taxpayers pay fully for that person's survival

(Note, of course, that this leaves off choice d) Person has no job, or does not make enough from their job to survive; for whatever reason, they also cannot obtain welfare, and they die.)

...I think that most people would agree that the best of these three is (a). In that situation "the rest of us" most certainly do not have to pay those costs.

Furthermore, I think the more important point than "the person would still exist if they didn't have a job" is "other, better jobs would still exist if that company folded due to unprofitability, or was never created in the first place".

People have an inherent right to life, liberty, and property.

Businesses are not some sacred abstract; they exist purely to support people. Any privileges they have (down to and including their existence), we grant them, and we can revoke from them if they are not fulfilling their fundamental purposes.

[amadeuspagel]

>Any business that cannot survive while paying its employees a true living wage does not deserve to exist

Given that we're talking about such businesses, the choice is between b and c, and b is clearly preferable.

[danielscrubs]

Depends on if B leads (via lower wages) to more of B to compete.

For example the government may say that to clean their facility, cleaning companies need to be able to do a, b, c and after that it all comes down to the price. Almost all of them can do a,b,c so they compete on price, on cleaning company is not paying taxes though so can offer lower prices and wins all deals, forcing all other companies to stop paying taxes to survive, and makes the whole trade in that area morally bankrupt.

See also: construction business & tipping.

[test48782]

If type b companies are not allowed to exist, the market will then be able to support more type a companies and may ultimately have less type c individuals. It may result in a net decrease of social services used.

[cheesecracker]

It's a completely backwards way of thinking. A "business" or "entity" can afford to pay x for service y. If x is too low for you, don't take the job. That's it.

It's pure fantasy to assume every employer could pay a living wage. For example, take house cleaning. What if some pensioner can spare 30$/week to have their house cleaned. How are they supposed to pay a living wage? If somebody steps forward and says OK, I'll clean the house for 30$, fine. If not, tough luck. But to demand the pensioner should pay a living wage (like what, 2000$ or more to have their house cleaned), or call them evil for not paying enough, is backwards and absurd.

[danaris]

I would call yours the completely backwards way of thinking. Again, my thinking puts people at the center, not "businesses" or "entities", nor "money".

I don't call them evil for not paying enough.

I say they don't make enough to employ a cleaner as that cleaner's full-time job.

[cheesecracker]

i say that "living wage" nonsense is hate speech. You are not just saying "oh those businesses can't afford to pay a living wage", you are saying they are greedy and make people poor and so on.

And the full-time job is not a valid argument. So if some company were to split their jobs into part time jobs, it would make it OK for you? I rather doubt that.

[dwb]

Having a completely free choice whether or not to take a job is a luxury afforded to very few people.

[cheesecracker]

Very few people can afford to pay other people a living wage. What's your point?

You only exhibit the socialist magic thinking again As if there are infinite resources, and the only problem is to redistribute them. That's not how the real work works. If you want to eat, somebody (possibly you) has to hunt or farm, gather resources, and so on. It's not a given that any number of people can simply earn a "living wage" or even have a job. Somebody has to create such jobs, that are productive enough to feed somebody.

Instead of complain about stinginess of businesses, prove your theories by creating jobs that pay better.

[dwb]

I didn't say anything about resource distribution, I was refuting your idea of "if you don't like the pay then don't take the job". It's a simple fact that this isn't a realistic way of seeing most people's choices.

However, yes, I would agree with previous commenters that if you can't afford to pay people enough to live on then you don't have a business that society should deem viable. If everyone in society was scrabbling around for resources then you might have a point, but in actual fact, the dominant situation is that there is a tiny group of people who are extraordinarily wealthy, a larger-but-still-not-massive group of people who are comfortable, and a great deal of people who get what's left, often not very much at all. Resources are so unfairly distributed I just don't find your argument at all persuasive.

Socialist thought doesn't assume infinite resources, it just says that democracy should be extended much further than it is right now, particularly to the workplace. We could "create" jobs collectively and not leave the decision of how much to pay to a small group of people who have all the power simply because they have the money to start with.

[cheesecracker]

Just because somebody is rich, doesn't imply there are many resources. It's just a debt owed by society, which can also go bankrupt. Jeff Bezos earning another Billion does not imply more houses have been created or more plants have been reared and so on. It just means people bought stuff from him, in return for a promise to pay them back in the future (money is a promise of future goods). If Bezos decided today to buy loads of grain with his Billions, to feed the poor somehwere, that grain would be missing somewhere else.

The talk about "businesses that society should consider viable" is nonsense, as the example of the pensioner wanting someone to clean their apartment shows. What should they do if society doesn't consider them "viable", commit suicide?

If society doesn't deem some business "viable", they can simply refuse to work for that business.

If you want to create jobs "collectively", sorry to say, you are in full blown socialist territory, and you will fail, for the same reasons that socialism always fail (because planning economies can't assign resources efficiently enough).