[exoverito]

I appreciate where you're coming from, but you risk making the perfect be the enemy of the good. What's worse, being paid less than a 'living wage' or being unemployed? The problem with a minimum wage is that if it's set to 20/hr, but some people are only worth 10/hr, then they become unemployable and have 0 income. Price controls result in shortages. In this case it's a shortage of jobs. Same phenomenon results from rent control, you will get a shortage of space at the enforced price level.

The main solution is to increase economic freedom and reduce regulatory burdens. Allow people to build. Too often they are prevented by restrictive zoning laws, absurd environmental reviews, everything-bagel mandates for diverse contractors, etc. Ironically, big corporations and billionaires often love regulation because it raises the barrier to entry and reduces competition.

[LinXitoW]

If people are only worth 10/hr, but they need 15/hr to not die, the state has to step in to subsidize the exploitative business. Alternatively, the employees turn to crime, which is again a costly externality the company causes, or they die and the companies back to not having employees (or customers).

I absolutely agree that some of the regulations are bad, and in general building more is the main solution to these problems. Zoning and parking space requirements are especially egregious in the USA.

The example in this thread, of "co-locating" everyday commercial with residential, is another part of the solution. I can move further away from the city if the daily necessities are easier to reach. This would also help with traffic, which would then help people needing to commute.

[danaris]

See, there's a fundamental flaw in your logic, at least based on my own:

I don't believe that any human being is "only worth" $10/hr, or whatever arbitrary level you set.

Every human being deserves to have the resources to live. And to a first approximation, every human being is capable of doing enough work to be worth that. (The exceptions are people with various kinds of disabilities, whom we should be caring for, without question or reservation, and providing accommodations for those who can work, if they aren't just expected to Not Be Disabled.)

If a job wants to create a position to do [thing], but [thing] will only bring in, say, $5/hr worth of profit...then the job simply shouldn't create that position as-is. Either the owner needs to do it themselves, or they need to find a way to change what the job does so that it makes them enough money to cover labor costs.

[nradov]

Your beliefs don't change economic reality. Some workers simply aren't capable of generating $10/hr of economic value. If wages are fixed at a higher rate then all of those people will be unemployed. Employers won't voluntarily hire them and lose money. Instead the work will be automated or not done at all.

One potential solution is for government to subsidize their wages through mechanisms like the Earned Income Tax Credit. That helps low-skill workers to gain some experience and move up the ladder without artificially distorting the labor market.

[danaris]

> Some workers simply aren't capable of generating $10/hr of economic value.

The only ones that I believe this can genuinely be true of are people with various types of disabilities. Which I addressed in my post.

The idea that there's this large percentage of fully able-bodied workers who are completely incapable of ever being trained to do any kind of skilled work doesn't pass the smell test. At best, it reeks of various racist/eugenicist ideas.

[nradov]

I guess your belief is based on "vibes", not on actually hiring low-skilled workers. A lot of people are not medically disabled but are just kind of lazy or incompetent or unreliable. This has nothing to do with race or whatever so it's weird that you would bring that up.

Some of those workers can be trained to be more valuable. But employers generally aren't going to hire them based on hope.

[tester756]

There's no flaw in the logic, just you value things differently.

>Every human being deserves to have the resources to live.

That's true.

>I don't believe that any human being is "only worth" $10/hr, or whatever arbitrary level you set.

Then you haven't seen much of the world