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by Drakim 2143 days ago
Isn't that part of the point?

Right now there is an incredible power imbalance between employers and employees, where for the employer it's an inconvenience if they lose the employee, while for the employee it's loss of access to food, shelter and medicine if they lose their employer.

This means that the employer can squeeze the employee, allowing them to pile on with abusive working conditions, bad pay, and poor compensation. Lots of workplaces outright steal out of the paychecks for the employees in plain daylight and get away with it because the employee knows that if they raise a fuss they might get fired.

Nobody would work for 1 dollar an hour, as you say. So companies will have to offer more to attract workers. And the workers have the option of saying "no" if what they offer just isn't good enough. So they would be two equal parties, bargaining over what the labor is worth, without neither having a gun pushed against their head if they say "no".

Weirdly, a lot of people seem to think things are as they should be. People should starve and be homeless if they aren't willing to work under unsafe condition, or being blackmailed into working for bottom wages just to have food to eat tomorrow. I'm not a fan of that sort of Social Darwinism though.

1 comments

Yes! With a robust, livable UBI, even without a minimum wage, you wouldn't see $2/hr jobs. Can you think of a job you'd personally take for an extra $2/hr if your needs were already being met by UBI? Wages would have to be set to a level that incentivize working. Shitty jobs would actually have to pay more than fun or easy jobs, because "not taking the job" is always a realistic option.
> Can you think of a job you'd personally take for an extra $2/hr if your needs were already being met by UBI?

Yes, if it prepared you for better jobs. Low wage dead-end jobs might not exist (then again, they might, different people have different utility functions), but low-wage on-ramp jobs that cannot exist now certainly would.

“Shitty” jobs wouldn’t have to pay more. Those jobs wouldn’t exist.