Wealth Distribution in the USA

I believe that there is a minimum amount of income that a person can actually survive on. I believe that no person deserves to be homeless, or to starve, or to lack medical care, due to lack of money.What if I valued your work at $2/hr? What would happen to you? What if that was the best job you could find?Do you really think that I'm advocating communism? Are you seriously going to oversimplify my statements and economics in general to the point that we either accept pure market-guided salaries with no controls at all or else full-blown communism?

If I hold a gun to your head and command you to work, are you exercising "free will" by working?If I hold your paycheck and you will starve to death without it and command you to work, are you exercising "free will" by working?An employee may have some limited ability to choose who to work for, but work is not exactly an option Percy. You know that.

Not even close.But you were pretty clear about believing that people should be paid according to their needs rather than the value of their work.--Percy

Maybe you should try reading again, Percy.

Percy, all you are doing in your arguments here is rejecting labor theories of value in favor of pure capitalist systems of valuing labor. Why is your theory of value more accurate?

Well, since you bring it up, yes, you're advocating the half of communist idealism that advocates paying people according to their needs. Again, not even close.--Percy

I agree that you should do that.

I don't agree with the label you're assigning me, but my theory is more accurate because my math works and yours doesn't. Value is determined by markets, not by politicians or bureaucrats. Of course the regulatory environment is part of the competitive landscape, but if, for example, the minimum wage rises to $20/hour, people working at jobs worth substantially less than that will no longer have jobs because employers will no longer offer those jobs. That's because value is determined by markets.--Percy

The question is whether that is how value should be determined?

That's true. The market determines that the value of a pair of sneakers is maybe a couple hundred dollars. The value of the raw materials only a few dollars. It is certainly the case that the assembler's wage is determined by the local market for his labor.But the laborer's wage is a poor proxy for the value the laborer has added to the materials.

My final paragraphs explain my comment in more detail. He was likely working elsewhere for a while, and maybe spent some time unemployed. Who knows, he's hypothetical. No, but businesses do sometimes expand into a marketplace and in the process, cause other businesses to lose market share and thus have to scale back and lose employees. Sometimes there is net growth, sometimes not. Unemployment rates have moved around, but its not a steady decline alongside rising GDP.None of which really speaks to the nature of the concept of wage slavery

If that had even an iota of a smattering of truth than diamond cutting would be one of the most lucrative occupations in the world. But the value of a diamond cutter's work (leaving aside the inevitable differences in skill) is set by the supply/demand curve for diamond cutters, not by the amount the diamond increases in value when they're done.--Percy

Are you suggesting that a diamond cutter does not add value that exceeds his wages?What I am suggesting here is the idea that only capitalists create wealth and that no laborer does is complete crap.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Your final paragraphs rebut an argument I wasn't making. If he has sufficient reality for someone to base an argument on him receiving $2-3 an hour, then he has sufficient reality for me to point out that if one removes the employer then he's worse off.It doesn't take any great sense of compassion to judge that it isn't fair when wages are too little, and I'm with everybody on this. It isn't fair that we were born in wealthy countries instead of Bangladesh or Burma. Even in our own countries, it isn't fair that some of us were born to families who could afford to send us to college and some weren't. It isn't even fair that some of us are born with inherent qualities that enable us to earn far more than others. But it is a leap of not only illogic and irrationality but even worse of really, really bad math to believe that fairness demands that a job's worth be at least equal to a person's needs.Government can play a significant and important role in remedying the inherent unfairness of the world through laws and regulations and treaties and tariffs and so forth, and I think some European countries do a very good job of this. But that doesn't change the fact that markets (which are always strongly influenced by regulatory environments) set values. Compassion doesn't demand that we forget our math skills.--Percy

No, no, of course not. I thought your statement that, "...the laborer's wage is a poor proxy for the value the laborer has added to the materials," included an implicit, "But they should be equal." I don't think anyone is suggesting this. Workers contribute value equal to their wages.--Percy