• xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    50$ is well into the range of middle class wages - it’d probably be easier to just shift the discussion to UBI.

    • force@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      UBI is always the star compared to increased minimum wage, since it allows a lot of decoupling of your access to basic necessities from your ability to work or find employment.

      A world with adequate UBI, or similar arrangements, and (obviously) universal healthcare and a functioning education system and all that jazz, is a world where unemployment rates don’t matter, where you don’t need to create artificial jobs to accomodate for the large amounts of people who can’t find work.

      When you think about it, the entire concept of “this policy is good and should become law because it creates paying jobs” is pretty fucked up, why are people starving as a result of job roles in society being sufficiently filled? High unemployment is often a sign of a healthy and functioning society, yet with our economic system it’s a sign of a dysfunctional society because not having paying jobs available means people can’t obtain a decent standard of living.

      And our system’s response to this issue is to abuse it by subjecting the remaining available jobs either to extremely low pay, poor working conditions, little to no protections, OR to make the job inaccessible to most people, to make the (usually financial) barrier to entry so incredibly high that it creates an artificial shortage.

      Thanks, American-style capitalism, I hate it

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Only because of 50 years of middle class wages failing to keep up with productivity gains.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Oh, definitely - but UBI is the solution to kill this problem dead forever (or better social safety nets) such a high minimum wage would likely just exacerbate wealth inequality as decades of underwhelming wage increases means that everyone but the rich would be making about the same amount of money and all that extra income would be captured by landlords and greedy corporations.

        I like increasing the minimum wage - I think sudden drastic increases just erases middle and lower class savings while letting the richest capture more wealth.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Los dos would be pretty sweet - my only concern is that this might make small savings (less than 200k) essentially worthless and widen the inequality gap.

        If this was implemented with a graduated wealth tax it’d be amazing but most of the good would be from that wealth tax.

        The thing to be cautious about with minimum wage increases is that outstanding debts and credits are minimized due to some inherent inflation - that’s great for lower income families in debt but bad for people with modest savings (people with excessive wealth will usually ride the stock market and avoid feeling any inflation)… an increase that steep would put everyone but the super rich in the same position and further the wealth gap unless other actions were taken.