At this wage, it would be unwise to live alone in a single bedroom apartment and would be much smarter, although more difficult, to get roommates to reduce rent costs by 25-50%.
LOL this is such a typical HN reply. "Just get room mates". Come on, the solution is to pay people so they can live a decent life and have a family if they want to.
Why would it be my employers obligation to pay me what I think I need because I want luxuries (like a $1600 apartment by myself)?
The typical HN reply may be trying to help figure out a problem like “if I only have X dollars how can I maximize.”
Reality is that unskilled labor doesn’t get everything they want. Fortunately, they get everything they need. A better example would be healthcare, but I think Amazon’s fulfillment center workers have pretty good insurance.
We are not morally obligated to ensure that every single entry-level, unskilled job pays enough for a middle class lifestyle, regardless of mistakes made prior.
The solution is to not work long-term in an entry-level, unskilled job.
Would you please not take HN threads into ideological flamewar, regardless of how wrong other people are or how strongly you feel? It's off-topic and destructive here, and against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
A society absolutely does have a moral obligation to:
- provide its citizens with opportunities and freedom to move around (education, social lifts, basic safety net) and
- make sure those who could not use these opportunities for some well-justified reason (disabled people, elderly) do not die of hunger or cold
Giving everyone a lifestyle they want is not one of these obligations.
Is society providing education? Social lifts? a basic safety net? do we protect people from hunger and cold? In the United States, we don't even have a functioning political system that provides real options and opportunities. The political system has been captured by capitalists and serves their interests while disregarding the needs of the populace.
You’re quite right about a moral obligation, I agree with that. But the obligation is not to provide a middle class lifestyle. The obligation is for basic needs and opportunity.
Society does provide homes, thankfully, in the US. But we don’t provide them to individuals making $40k/year.
In the US, society does not provide homes. Nor does it provide health care. Nor does it provide access to higher education. Nor does it provide a safety net.
The US certainly does provide homes (HUD [0]) and health care (Medicaid/medicare) and higher education (state university system).
I think there’s a fair argument about the quality of the safety net, but the US does at least spend a lot of money on the basic needs you just called out. They are typically for the poor, disabled, and/or elderly.
> That is _not_ a solution, and this is an incredibly naive and classist take on why people people work in unskilled positions.
Care to elaborate? Many of us held minimum wage positions for some period of time before gathering the skills / tools / time to move on to something better.
> A society absolutely does have a moral obligation to its citizenry, otherwise what is the point of it?
A citizenry has moral obligations to its society. Demanding handouts for minimal contribution does not create a strong society.
> A man must bend his knee to the oligarchs and the state and get crumbs in return? This is what I meant by classist conspiracy theories and capitalist bootlicking. HN needs to wake the fuck up.
I can hurl insults and straw-man opposing views, too. I don't think it benefits anyone, though.
> Care to elaborate? Many of us held minimum wage positions for some period of time before gathering the skills / tools / time to move on to something better.
So did I, but I don't regard someone a failure who deserves misery if they did not 'gather necessary skills'. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not be able to move past minimum wage work in life, not all of them their fault. Even if it is and they threw away every opportunity they ever had does that mean they deserve a lifetime of hardship?
> A citizenry has moral obligations to its society. Demanding handouts for minimal contribution does not create a strong society.
Our society provides trillions to oligarchs like Bezos. If we're OK with that then we should be OK with giving more to those who need it most even if they dont work "hard enough".
> So did I, but I don't regard someone a failure who deserves misery if they did not 'gather necessary skills'.
Back to the straw-manning, I suppose. I never made those claims.
> There are a lot of reasons why someone might not be able to move past minimum wage work in life, not all of them their fault. Even if it is and they threw away every opportunity they ever had does that mean they deserve a lifetime of hardship?
Nobody deserves a lifetime of hardship, but that doesn't morally obligate others to provide a middle class lifestyle for them.
> Our society provides trillions to oligarchs like Bezos. If we're OK with that then we should be OK with giving more to those who need it most even if they dont work "hard enough".
Nobody questions your ability to give as much as you'd like. It becomes questionable when you start trying to enforce this "morality" on others, but I think you know that, and that's why you frame it the way you did.
> Back to the straw-manning, I suppose. I never made those claims.
Not overtly no. You just heavily implied that anyone working for minimum wage or even simply earning less than you are has somehow lived a life of bad decisions and moral inferiority.
> Come on, the solution is to pay people so they can live a decent life and have a family if they want to.
That's not up for a company to decide, they don't control all the prices and sentiments that determine what is and isn't "decent to live". They can decide what they can pay to hire an extra worker and make more money as a result. If they don't believe they'll make more money as a result, then there's no hire.
I’m really interested in what you think the job of market systems is. And to whom they are trying to serve.
It seems odd that capitalism would have such a duty to humanity because it’s like saying “art has failed humanity.” Or “this screwdriver has failed breakfast.”
Capitalism is a system created by humans, presumably for the benefit of humans. If it doesn't do a very good job of making the lives of humans better then it could be considered a failure.
As we're seeing now, wealth and income inequality are at terrible levels. Wage stagnation has been hurting the middle class. Housing is becoming increasingly expensive as jobs centralize on cities. Gentrification pushes out the working class.
We have climate change bearing down on us, the effects of which are already being seen through mass migration, fires, hurricanes, and other disasters. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry would have us believe there are "two sides" to this argument so that they can continue to profit instead of adapting and doing the right thing. The first to feel it certainly won't be those of us making several hundred thousand dollars per year and looking down on those living paycheck to paycheck. It'll be those living paycheck to paycheck who feel it first.
Neither artists nor bartenders have the power over humanity that capitalists do.
