Need based vs ability based economy

[Kokolums]

The modern economy is designed to benefit anyone who can successfully start their own business. it doesnt matter if you are rich or poor. It doesnt matter if you have a masters degree or are a high school dropout. If you are a good salesman and start your own business, thats all you need.

If you think the goal in this economy is to work for someone else and hopefully find a kind, caring boss to work for, youre kinda doing it wrong.

[ItachiZaku]

It's a false dichotomy.

You should be paid what the value of your labor is worth. However, and this is a big "however", the bare minimum that anyone's labor should be valued at is at a living wage.

Living wage based on what, based on just you or your household? That's where things defold rapidly.

[Daelak]

The modern economy is designed to benefit anyone who can successfully start their own business. it doesnt matter if you are rich or poor. It doesnt matter if you have a masters degree or are a high school dropout. If you are a good salesman and start your own business, thats all you need.

If you think the goal in this economy is to work for someone else and hopefully find a kind, caring boss to work for, youre kinda doing it wrong.

It's larger than that. Consumption and investment are the core tenets of the modern consumer economy. It is evident now that it doesn't really matter where the funds come from, but how many participate in the economy, and the speed in which money is being transacted.

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Living wage based on what, based on just you or your household? That's where things defold rapidly.

I think it should adjust based upon the production capacity of the country.

[Snowfunk]

You'll need to be a lot more specific for me to answer this question.

[Nihilist74]

I think everyone should have a basic livable income. I believe you should have a higher skill level to earn a more luxurious income. If it was within my power, food, housing, clothing, public transportation, law enforcement and health care would not be for profit business entities. Only luxury items would be for profit.

[melodramocracy]

Christ people get some reading comprehension, I'm tired of repeating myself.

Work on the skill of being a bit less bitchy.

There is a bare minimum value of the skills you have, based NOT on what the market needs, but on the value of the time, labor and money you spent on acquiring them.

You can set those values at whatever you wish, but that rate means nothing unless you have a customer that agrees to it.

[Fayenoor]

I think everyone should have a basic livable income. I believe you should have a higher skill level to earn a more luxurious income. If it was within my power, food, housing, clothing, public transportation, law enforcement and health care would not be for profit business entities. Only luxury items would be for profit.

If housing wasn't a profitable business, construction workers, architects and builders would be seriously out of jobs.

If Healthcare wasn't a business, you won't see research into hitherto incurable diseases in such a frantic pace. Do you know why people want to find the cure for cancer? Because they want to find that drug which the drug companies can sell for trillions all over the world. That is the reality of life sadly.

What is a basic livable income? Who determines what the lowest common denominator should be?

[Daelak]

What is a basic livable income? Who determines what the lowest common denominator should be?

A combination of the consumer price index and the median income, and pick the highest COL city and stick with that.

[I Push Buttons]

A combination of the consumer price index and the median income, and pick the highest COL city and stick with that.

How is that equitable?

I could live like a king in the suburbs of Cincinnati for what it would cost to live in the gutter in NYC.

[melodramocracy]

How is that equitable?

I could live like a king in the suburbs of Cincinnati for what it would cost to live in the gutter in NYC.

Yeah, a single average for all regions wouldn't work too well, I agree.

[Daelak]

How is that equitable?

I could live like a king in the suburbs of Cincinnati for what it would cost to live in the gutter in NYC.

Pick NYC and SF as the baseline for a comfortable life and use that for the entire US. More consumption and investment into the economy is always a good thing when the country isn't at 100% productive capacity.

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Yeah, a single average for all regions wouldn't work too well, I agree.

Then pick the highest out of all of them for the nation. It would mean more consumption and investment for the economy.

[Lenonis]

Seems to me that in an ideal scenario where we are adjusting income with the goal of removing welfare you'd have a standard where a person is expected to make enough to support 1 child. In other words you are eyeing population stability numbers wise.

If you get married your combined income then is enough to support 2 children. That is where your living wage seems to come into play, and you'd need some sort of cost of living adjustment up or down as it doesn't make sense to have someone in Manhattan make the same as someone in the middle of nowhere.

That ends up being your floor. Enough to pay the bills and put food in your mouth. Not much more than that.

After that it ends up a choice. You don't have kids and reap the rewards for having extra income. You choose to have more children and find a way to balance the budget. You work hard, get educated, and move up the ladder to higher earning incomes.

But, in my view, there is no reason why someone who works 40 hours a week shouldn't be earning enough to live on, regardless of the work done. It doesn't make sense to have people working a full time job still need government assistance.

Once that system is in place, then you toughen up the system to have people deal with their own mistakes and screwups. If you are earning basic income and choose to have 20 children, then some of those kids need to be taken away and put in a home where they can be cared for. If you buy more house than you can afford, then you lose it and have to figure out where to live until you sort it out.

There has to be a balance between personal responsibility and compassion for others. If you swing too far one way or the other you create lots of problems.

[kail]

Living wage based on what, based on just you or your household? That's where things defold rapidly.

IMO, just the individual. A married couple would then benefit more with each having a job instead of just one. Children are optional and will naturally add on to expense, which shouldn't be a constant burden on the employer. Need based can be and is currently abused.

[Total Crica]

IMO, just the individual. A married couple would then benefit more with each having a job instead of just one. Children are optional and will naturally add on to expense, which shouldn't be a constant burden on the employer. Need based can be and is currently abused.

problem is we are human and can not just watch children suffer - you have to have a safety net that ensures children dont suffer - i dont care if the law says ppl cant have children if they are poor, once a child is born it is going to have to be taken care of and will then become a need

[kail]

problem is we are human and can not just watch children suffer - you have to have a safety net that ensures children dont suffer - i dont care if the law says ppl cant have children if they are poor, once a child is born it is going to have to be taken care of and will then become a need

I wouldn't want to see kids starve, but there is adoption. If children are not seen in school, parents will be investigated. If teachers see them malnourished, investigate.

Two working adults can take care of children with smart spending and the livable minimum wage. Child support exists for single parents.

In the end, understand that children cost money.

[kail]

The state has an incentive for couples to produce future taxpayers . . . eh I mean children. And it would rather force the employer to pay for them than handle it through the budget.

Employers did not tell their staff to have kids, that is the couple's decision. Maternal and paternal leave are still mandatory IMO for the necessary care of the newborn. Even then, I wouldn't be against such leaves from using vacation time.

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I don't know, it takes an entire minimum wage to pay for diapers and baby food in many countries.

Minimum wage alone needs to be fixed, that being another matter.

[Total Crica]

I wouldn't want to see kids starve, but there is adoption. If children are not seen in school, parents will be investigated. If teachers see them malnourished, investigate.

Two working adults can take care of children with smart spending and the livable minimum wage. Child support exists for single parents.

In the end, understand that children cost money.

i was referring to the implication that poor people should not have help if they bear children - the help is for the children, not for the poor people

[Ahovv]

i was referring to the implication that poor people should not have help if they bear children - the help is for the children, not for the poor people

I'm pretty strongly libertarian on nearly all issues, but I'm not sure about people being allowed to have kids if they cannot personally afford it. So for me it isn't a matter of helping children or not, but whether or not they should even be born. Should we as a society truly encourage and allow poor families to pump out five kids on the taypayer's dime?

[Total Crica]

I'm pretty strongly libertarian on nearly all issues, but I'm not sure about people being allowed to have kids if they cannot personally afford it. So for me it isn't a matter of helping children or not, but whether or not they should even be born. Should we as a society truly encourage and allow poor families to pump out five kids on the taypayer's dime?

well, since a law is never going to prevent it from ever happening, when a child IS born to poor people, you MUST help the child regardless of any law, is my point - which is the problem i was referring to in my first post - we are human, and therefore must have a safety net in any system we decide to use, to ensure children dont suffer

[Anonymous1038853]

It's a false dichotomy.

You should be paid what the value of your labor is worth. However, and this is a big "however", the bare minimum that anyone's labor should be valued at is at a living wage. If you're a skilled laborer, you obviously should be earning even more than that living wage.

Self-improvement is a good motivator, and a means to reward those who excel, but suffering is not a good motivator, particularly not if you design your economic system to mandate a certain amount of suffering, for a certain percentage of the population.

Endus' response is spot on the mark.

I mean, our current economic system isn't even based on either. The wealthiest people are not typically the hardest workers: They're just the wealthiest people. There's a point where people start "earning" money simply by having it. Corporate shareholders, insurers, investment bankers, stock marketers, etc. You get to a point where it's not about ability or need, it's just "I'll give you some of my money, but you give it all back with more." People seem to think that hard work equals better pay, but this is very rarely the case. Let's compare three points on the spectrum. We'll compare corporate executive officers, brain surgeons, and minimum wage workers.

So the first on our list is actually a bit complicated. CEOs don't really earn money in the same way as your average worker (neurosurgeons being included in that category). They typically earn through many different sources. We'll use the U.S. for example, because that's the country I've found the most reliable data for. But even that is ridiculously convoluted, and probably not by accident. CEOs earn a baseline salary of one million dollars for any large company. But that's because this salary is tax deductible, and anything beyond a million dollars pay, removes that caveat. So for most, that million dollars is actually just a small fraction of their total cash earnings over the year. This alone should give you a pretty good idea of how absolutely screwed up this system is.

So, we start at one million dollars. Median bonus pay is $2.15 million. I also want to interject here: Some of you who are more familiar with mathematics might be scratching your head and saying "Median? That's not the default for average." And you're absolutely right. It isn't the default. Median is used because the range on these values is so fundamentally ridiculous, that a mean doesn't actually make sense. We're talking about a position of employment where the high-end earning reaches almost $100 million. The high end is literally Dr. Evil sums of money, per year. Oh, and if they spend all of this insane money on a doomsday weapon and then find themselves out of work suddenly, severance pay for the high-end is usually about a 100 million dollars or more.

So after we account for salary, bonuses, hazard pay, pensions, stocks, options, etc. All of which contribute significantly to annual earnings, we end up with an average cash compensation of of $5.3 million, and stock and option grants worth about $9 million. That gives us an average annual earning of $14 million dollars. That's effectively winning the lottery every single year. Before anyone pipes and says "You can't count stocks, that's personal investment!" It isn't. You're wrong. We're talking about stocks granted by the hiring company. Partial ownership given as compensation to encourage personal stake in the company.

Now, neurosurgeons. This one is thankfully much more straightforward. We'll strive for consistency, and stick with the U.S. for this (though earnings don't vary too significantly between commonwealth nations). The average earnings for a brain surgeon in the U.S. is about $500,000. So already, we see that a CEO earns almost thirty times that of a brain surgeon. Even the high end pay for a neurosurgeon is about $750,000. Not even touching the baseline salary for a CEO.

But it gets really crazy, once you throw minimum wage earners into the mix. Again, we'll remain consistent and stick to the U.S. even though they have pretty terrible minimum compensation. So, per year, a full-time minimum wage worker will earn about $15,000. That means that the difference between a CEO and a brain surgeon, is almost the same gap, as that between that same brain surgeon, and someone literally just entering the workforce. This doesn't even begin to touch on how inflation trends have affected these three positions (Spoiler: CEO pay has been much higher than the rate of inflation, contrasting with the other two positions).

How can any rational person look at that, and say "Yeah, that's reasonable." Do you really think that a CEO works over 900 times harder than a fresh worker? That they could possibly do the work of almost a thousand people? Are we talking about a wizard here? Someone with magical powers, such that their contribution to the labour force is literally a thousand strong? You would have to be absolutely delusional to think so. So the answer to the original query is that our economic system needs to be balanced with consideration given to both need and ability. Either focus would be far and away superior to the present state of things, which isn't ultimately about need or ability.