Which is absolutely why government interference is sometimes merited.
And they’re right. A thing is worth what one person is willing to pay for it and another is willing to sell it for; that’s the only economical “worth” that matters.
(One of the major values to minimum wage law is to try to prevent an exploitative employer from paying someone in a disadvantageous position LESS than the market price because of some particular situation that allows them to be abusive.)
No it’s not. Socialism is when ALL means of production are owned by the people. Smapti works for a collectively owned company that exists in the context of a market economy. It was freely organized that way. Anyone is free to so organize a corporation, or to create a competing corporation that follows a more typical ownership model, or a not-for-profit, or whatever, and to compete in the free market and see how they do.
In personal news, my daughter is headed for her first job interview since the age of 16, going to work at a place which pays $17/hour.
The secondary economy has its limits, of course, and… for Sophia… a regular $17/hour paying gig is enough to get her to try the W-2 route.
Again, this is simply how Capitalism is supposed to work, even for… especially for… the shareholders. My kid is smart, driven, and is a good fit for a lot of teams… but you gotta pay her.
I haven’t read all of the posts (sorry!) so this may have been posted, but it turns out some GOP-led states (including my own Missouri) have figured out what to do about companies not being able to hire people for low wages - cancel the federally-funded unemployment benefit boost.
Note this is the same state that in the past refused to allow municipalities to increase their minimum wage and also recently refused to fund the Medicaid expansion that the voters overwhelmingly approved in a state-wide referendum.
That is the maximum benefit. It is based on your previous earnings. If you had (and lost) a $15 an hour job and worked 40 hours a week for at least two quarters of the previous year your benefit would be $288. With the $300 bonus it would be $588 - less than what you actually earned on your job (or would earn if you took a $15/hr job).
Now of course if you had a better-paying job pre-COVID and are getting the maximum benefit I could certainly see not taking a $600 a week job to give up $620 in benefits.
That comes out to $26.91 in American dollars and there’s no way I’d spend that much at Wendy’s for two of their meals. Here in Arkansas, purchasing those two meals would come out to less that $20.
$588 is 98% of $600. I would question the rationality of anyone who voluntarily works forty hours a week when you could stay home and collect 98% of that income in unemployment. Your time is worth more than 30 cents an hour.
Well there is an old school of thought that it is better when possible to earn what you need rather than taking assistance from others. Maybe that is not rational but there it is.
Admirable, but I don’t think it’s rational. As far as policy goes I am not comfortable assuming people will work when unemployment benefits provide 98% of the income they would get by working.
And there once was a time when CEOs would be embarrassed to be making 100s of times what the average employee made, especially when the company wasn’t doing well.
BTW, the higher paid unemployed person might be out looking for a job like the one he was laid off from, hard to do if you are working 40 hours a week with few breaks or off time.
I agree. But ultimately we individually cannot speak for the CEO or others whose greed is so perversely rewarded. We each have our own ethics and maybe none are rational. But I have to answer to myself and the person I want to be. Thus I hope l try to work to support my loved ones and help others whenever I can.
Yeah, except Republicans always talk about “personal responsibility” when it’s a matter of poor people taking shit wages. But they seem fine with CEOs making 100s or 1000s of times their employee’s salary or the majority of the wealth being siphoned to shareholders because “that’s the purpose of a corporation”.
Maybe if corporations have reached such a state where they only create extreme wealth for a relative few in order to provide the dubious benefit of creating junk people can’t afford (assuming they “create” anything at all), maybe we need to rethink their purpose or function in society?
As @Biotop mentioneioned there are other factors at work here besides strict rationality. Also the government has requirements that those receiving unemployment benefits be looking for work, not have been offered a job by their previous employer, etc… Now many of those requirements are not being strictly enforced these days.
It will be an interesting case study. The Biden administration and other Democrats claim that folks aren’t primarily skipping employment because of the enhanced benefits. Republicans assume that the primary (or one of the primary) reasons these jobs are going unfilled is the enhanced benefits. Now we have some states removing the benefits while others keep them. We should get some decent numbers over the next few months which position is correct.
One possible confounding factor is that apparently the Biden administration through the DoL is encouraging states to begin more strict enforcement of the “suitable job” requirement. We shall see how effective that is.
This is actually a great point as well. A laid-off programmer, for example, should not be taking a job at McDs, even if it would pay them close to what his unemployment benefit is. It’s far better for the economy for them to keep searching for a job more appropriate to their skill set and experience.
Now if they are just sitting back playing Call of Duty until their benefits run out then that is a problem as well (and, strictly speaking, against the law).
Lost in all the ‘lazy bums don’t want to work’ sermonising is that who exactly is going to be enforcing these new standards? Unemployment offices are still swamped with work dealing with existing and new claims, do the fiscal hawks want to have a bunch of new people on state government payrolls just to find these bums leeching of the government?
Indeed. In an ideal world people contribute what they are able and take only what they need. How we get there from here is of course the problem. Businesses that screw their employees because they can should not be surprised when people choose not to be their employees. People who accept charity without attempting to get beyond needing charity should not be surprised when handouts are few.
Human beings are a fine mix including lots of greedy selfish folks. I am all for calling out others for their failings, especially the powerful, but I know I have my own many failings too — and for those I must take responsibility.
I think that receiving unemployment benefits during a pandemic is not necessarily the same thing as “accepting charity”. There have been a lot of unusual factors in this economic downturn, including situations where it’s highly preferable for the sake of unemployed people’s own health and the health of those around them for them to stay home instead of being out in public.
There’s also the fact that a lot of childcare options are no longer available, especially for children stuck in “zoom schooling”. I don’t think that a parent who stays on unemployment benefits even though they could easily get a new job, because if they went out to work there’d be nobody looking after their kid(s), can be fairly described as “accepting charity”.
These sorts of highly disrupted long-term emergencies are what the social safety net is partly intended for. Given that the disruption’s nowhere near over at present, I think it’s too soon to start finger-wagging at benefits recipients and scolding them for being “greedy selfish folks”.
What’s “ideal” about people taking “only what they need” from the world that they contribute to? Don’t we contribute for the sake of having some unnecessary things that we want, as well as what we really need?