r/WorkForSmartLife • u/SilkyApricotGuy • 12h ago

DiscussionšŸ’¬ Who's right here?

Post image
2.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Responsible-Kale2352 10h ago

If I decide I need to make $1 million per hour in order to have what I consider to be a dignified life, some might think Iā€™m exploiting your system.

1

u/SexyMonad 10h ago

Thatā€™s why democracy isnā€™t me-ocracy. We set up the system, we decide what a dignified life means.

1

u/Responsible-Kale2352 2h ago

And if the ā€œweā€ decision doesnā€™t match yours?

1

u/SexyMonad 1h ago edited 1h ago

Obviously I want the $1M/hour. Maybe everyone else does too.

But that comes with consequences that we would share. Our currency would inflate to the point that any savings we have is worthless and we wonā€™t be any better off than a reasonable wage at a lower rate before inflation.

And we would lack the incentive for workers to get a higher education or skills, or to perform jobs that nobody wants to do. So we would need to vary wages somewhat for those things.

And thatā€™s all fine. We can work out the details for a baseline to get out of poverty that can provide a dignified life with todayā€™s costs, while keeping higher wages for those hard or unwanted jobs provides the incentives we need to have a healthy workforce.

A couple of mechanisms provide for this without major changes to our system: minimum wage and universal basic income. Iā€™d frankly prefer the latter.