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If you want to advocate the position that there's some age where the correlation between work and income can or should be looser, be my guest.

For me, the bottom line is that spending 40 hours a week doing something that requires no skill should still entitle the employee to be able to live a basic life. Further, that it should require only one person in a family to do that work in order for the family do live a basic life. If the person wishes to earn more then they will need to acquire more skills one way or another.

I do not believe there can be any moral justification for somebody receiving 40 hours of someone's effort (even an unskilled effort) and not giving that person enough for a basic life. I don't care what the age of the person doing the work is, and yep, if the company cannot do that, it doesn't deserve to exist - it doesn't do anything valuable enough to pay its employees adequately, so it can disappear and nobody except the owners will care.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/San-Francisco

So it costs a family of four about $7000 a month to live in San Francisco

Should the minimum wage there be $48/hour after taxes?

That’s $60/hour before taxes according to this gross up calculator

https://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/grossup/california/r...

Portland Oregon is #25 on the list of the 50 largest metro areas in the US. A living wage there is about $44/hour for a family of four. Should that be the minimum wage in Portland?

https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/41051

For the purposes of my answers, I am taking your cost-of-living values as they are. I am not convinced they are correct, but willing to assume that they are.

> Should the minimum wage there be $48/hour after taxes?

Yes.

> A living wage there is about $44/hour for a family of four. Should that be the minimum wage in Portland?

Yes.

What's your alternative? "Oh sorry, your job is requires so little skill that even though you could just spend 40 hours a week doing it, you will need to find at least another 20 hours a week doing something else to be able to afford a basic life"

I find that morally unsupportable.

So you want to raise the minimum wage of everyone in San Francisco to $131K a year? How is that going go work out for inflation?

You want to raise the minimum wage of everyone in Portland to $91K year?

Let’s say the average grocery store has 6 people working every hour for 16 hours a day and 355 days a year. Their labor cost would be $1.465 million. Grocery stores already operate on thin margins (https://www.biz2credit.com/blog/2020/05/22/grocery-store-pro...) are you prepared to pay enough for the labor cost of the entire food chain to quadruple? From the people in the field, delivery truck drivers, etc?

Let's just say that I don't subscribe to the conservative traditional view of economics and politics that you're using to point out how absurd this sounds.

Yes, I believe we should be paying much, much more for most of the things in our lives. Right now, those of us who make about 80% of median income and above are essentially riding on the backs who make less. I think this is immoral, although I recognize that changing it is a millenia long project that faces staunch opposition.

I want to see GDP distributed more evenly. In reality, the likely end game is not that everyone in Portland makes $91k a year or more, but that there is massively more redistribution within the economy, high end incomes fall, overall highest:lowest income ratios drop, housing prices drop (because more housing is built, and housing ceases to be an investment), and lots more good stuff that

I wonder, how do you personally justify millions of people working for less than a living wage? Do you feel that there just has be a bunch of people who lose out in life, and that's just the way it is? What makes it all seem OK to you?

I am not justifying anything. I am putting numbers behind your belief that “everyone who works for 40 hours a week should be able to support a family of four”. It’s easy to talk about ideals until the cold reality of numbers, inflation, etc are brought up.

How do you propose we restructure our economy so that everyone get a wage that supports a family of four?

How many people do you think will “lose out” if inflation sky rockets where food isn’t affordable? You can look at places like Venezuela to see what happens.

Do you personally give away enough of your income to bring your compensation down to the median household wage of $65K a year?

I assure you that I’m not a conservative by any means. I’m card carrying member of the F*## the police (and have been since the 90s), BLM, keep religion out of policy, pro-choice brigade.

But I’m also a student of economics and an MBA drop out with one course remaining (CS undergrad)

sudosysgen 1466 days ago

Well not quite. They exist because they are profitable on average.

scarface74 1466 days ago

You think that most companies that are YC funded and seeking additional rounds of funding are profitable?

"on average" does not mean "most companies".

It could mean that, but in all likelihood it means that some YC funded companies make huge amounts of money for YC that sufficiently balances the losses that they keep doing it.

Ya know, like most investment (that works).

That’s not how VCs make money. They make money based on “exits” either via acquisition or IPO. Over the last few years, most companies had exits without ever showing profitability.

Joe Bob’s Burgers don’t have the luxury of losing money hoping they can survive long enough to find the “greater fool” either via acquisition or IPO.

> That’s not how VCs make money. They make money based on “exits” either via acquisition or IPO.

It doesn't matter. The only question for YC is whether they make money or not. They make money on some of their investments, and lose it on others. It's fairly clear that on average, that is, summed across all winners and losers, they make money overall.

I’m not questioning YCs business model. I’m calling out the hypocrisy of people who say that “companies who can’t afford to pay their employees a livable wage and stay in business don’t deserve to exist” while many people here work for companies who are only able to pay their wages even though they work at non profitable companies because they are being propped up by VC funding.