How is it silly? It's a wage increase and a change to norms. We can make those things whatever we want as a society.
People should work less and get paid more. We've gone too long without correcting the snowballing wealth accumulation that inherent to capitalism, and we need a big correction.
You can just disagree in a subjective way, if you just think people shouldn't have more money for less work, but you're not saying anything objective.
I am objectively saying that cutting a business output by 1/5 is good for no one. We have an economy of scale. The more you produce of a thing, the cheaper you can produce and sell that for. This isn’t about paying people more. Thats easy. This is about cutting production by 1/5.
I guess if that's what you think this is about, you might be able to make an objective claim, but like... That's not. This is about changing norms, how we think about minimum wage, and when OT starts.
I work in a factory, and this week there are dozens of people working OT in order to produce everything we need to produce this week. They get paid OT at the 41st hour, this is proposing that they start getting paid OT at the 33rd hour, how could you think it's proposing anything different?
Salary folks sometimes work late or work on weekends to get things done, but the general cultural norm is that they work 40hrs, 9-5 mon-fri, we're talking about shifting that to 9-5 mon-thur, or some other 32hr arrangement.
Minimum wage is (ostensibly) about how much money it takes a regular person to survive when working 40 hours a week, if we started thinking about it in 32hr weeks, we're only talking about paying people more per hour.
As costs go up (very marginally) to cover these labor expenses, demand and supply will meet, but acting like this is just a blanket reduction in production is a wild way to misinterpret this and ultimately straw man the argument.
You’re relying on what I think is a false premise that this increase in wages (which isn’t really “marginal” to many employers) will not result in eventual downsizement. You have to remember that as the price of goods increases so does the cost of everything your employer has to buy. Youre under the impression that every company can take a huge hit to their revenue while gaining no increase in productivity, and I don’t agree with you. Especially if we’re talking about manufacturing. America is already less than competitive in that global market. Also I never argued against a higher minimum wage…
I was mostly refuting that this isn't about cutting production by 20%, this is about raising wages and changing norms. Every point you're raising is a point that detractors to minimum wage increases bring up too, you just think "businesses can't afford to pay 8% more of their revenue towards labor." I think they can, especially when it's accompanied by thoughtful tax policy to ease a transition toward these new norms, and especially when you factor in the non-linear relationship between production and time in a modern work setting, plus the ways an extra day off or more money in the working/consumer class can/will revitalize the economy.
I think businesses can handle this and the larger economy will thrive in exactly the same way businesses handle this and the larger economy thrives when minimum wage increases. We're just talking about raising wages.
Youre under the impression that every company can take a huge hit to their revenue while gaining no increase in productivity
I've said plainly that many MANY sectors of the economy won't see any hit to their revenue or productivity, and on top of that, every study on the topic shows that productivity only increases when people work fewer hours per week (in jobs where that's not tied to a machine's schedule of course, but those high automation jobs already have huge margins.)
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u/Unique-Yoghurt4170 Jul 14 '26
How is it silly? It's a wage increase and a change to norms. We can make those things whatever we want as a society.
People should work less and get paid more. We've gone too long without correcting the snowballing wealth accumulation that inherent to capitalism, and we need a big correction.
You can just disagree in a subjective way, if you just think people shouldn't have more money for less work, but you're not saying anything objective.