[ctl]

This is a pretty strong reaction to a pretty mild proposal. You know that the US already has a minimum wage and a standard workweek, right? The parent is advocating increasing the minimum wage 20% and decreasing the standard workweek 12.5%. That's not Stalinism.

Now, it's reasonable to point out that skilled laborers are basically fully employed right now, so the proposal would marginally reduce the supply of skilled labor hours -- and could thereby reduce skilled output.

But FWIW I don't think that's a very good point. Skilled labor is not really hour-limited in the same way that unskilled labor is -- that is, the output of a salaried full-time knowledge-worker employee is unlikely to change much (certainly not by 12.5%) if the standard workweek drops from 40 hours to 35. That's not how knowledge jobs work and that's not how salaried positions work. Whereas productivity in unskilled positions really would drop by somewhere close to 12.5% under the proposal. (Which is good; it opens up more of these "job" things that are so crucial to wealth distribution in the modern world.)

At any rate, if shorter work weeks for skilled workers bothers you that much, there's an easy solution: just say that you can only pay the minimum wage for the first 35 hours of the week, after which you have to pay at least 1.5 * minimum wage. Leave everything else the same. (Well, I like the parent's minimum wage hike too.) Now we're only cutting the output of near-minimum-wage workers.

I'm not at all sure that this idea wouldn't be disastrous, but I can't think of any good reasons that it might be. I feel like it's the most obvious way out of the current economic situation.

[brc]

It's not the mechanics of the price - it's the basic premise that you can fix things by forcing people to pay more for labour and to work less hours. A standard workweek of 40 hours is different to a maximum workweek of 35 hours. Put yourself in the position of a startup founder. You've got $x million of runway in your account. Now the government says your employees have to work less and you have to pay them more. Where is the value created? It's not.

As I said - what are you going to do, lock them up if they work 40 hours?

How about we just leave things alone with regard to minimum wages and let people work as much as they want?

Yes, there are already minimum wages, and we know that this already causes unemployment. If you increase the minimum wage by 20%, there will be a resulting hike in prices of things by some value. Now you've just made everything more expensive, and you've increased unemployment.

Yes, it's probably a strong reaction, but I just hate the thought of any of this type of 'solution' ever getting traction. It just seems so naive after these ideas have been tried and failed time and time again.

Anyone who is here and is interested in startups needs to understand how jobs are created. Jobs are created by the process of value being created, whereby the work of a person adds more value than it costs, and other people are willing to exchange something of value for it.

If I were president, I could dictate 100% employment tomorrow by enlisting everyone as air raid wardens or terrorist spotters and paying them a salary. But would we be better off? No. It doesn't work at any level. Sure, you can borrow a billion dollars and employ people to dig holes in the ground and fill them back in again, but then you've just made society a billion dollars poorer, and all that potential labor to do something with has been wasted.

Bottom line : people should stop trying to impose price controls on things, including labor. It has never worked, will never work and it frustrates me to see it being discussed.

[colanderman]

> Bottom line : people should stop trying to impose price controls on things, including labor. It has never worked, will never work and it frustrates me to see it being discussed.

You're right, this whole weekend thing sucks. Let's go back to the industrial revolution era and work 6-day 80-hour workweeks because that's what the market decides is the most productive. People who don't want to lose their free time can opt to work less and... oh wait, they'd be fired and be out of work. /sarcasm

This is why people organize... the labor movement is a natural product of a laissez-faire economy. Government exists to serve the people; i.e. the laborers. Hence, it makes sense for government to enforce labor policies.