The answer is most likely no. These threads tend to attract and are made by younger people who are likely struggling and have a bleak outlook on their future.
Unfortunately the answer isn’t “just pay more”. Because it causes further inflation if production doesn’t keep up with demand.
The deeper answer is looking at what is causing everything to be so damn expensive and building policy around it to create a better incentives structure. E.g. as a society, why do we value Influencers and Wall Street traders than teachers, nurses, and farmers?
Why are we powerless against lobbying and controlling our policies?
Why is our government not functional for us and is only two parties?
There’s many more questions that could help solve some of our deeper problems. Until then, even if we increase pay, our quality of life will continue to dwindle.
The flaw is that YOU aren’t the only one getting more money, YOU can do that by job hopping and getting promotions or improving your marketability through skills.
The issue starts when everyone gets a blanket pay raise across industries and communities for no reason.
Let’s say you live in an apartment building that charges $1000 month because it’s what most people can afford in the community. Now, let’s say everyone got a pay raise and production isn’t keeping up with everyone’s need for housing. Nothing is stopping that apartment from raising rent to accommodate people who have the money to pay $1400 per month. You now are getting paid more, but your quality of life is about the same with your high cost of living expenses.
A deeper question would be, why is production not keeping up?
Well paying more wage as a blanket, tanks the ability for new small businesses to start because it’s riskier and less incentivized for the owners. Why risk your life savings and work a much much harder job when you can make about the same money working a corporate job with much more financial security?
What you end up indirectly incentivizing is the mega corporation that can afford to pay more to their minimum wage workers (which most of them will know how to leverage the government to subsidize their care…like Walmart does today.) These corporations will also be able to swallow up competition who can no longer pay the increased wage and keep afloat. And, you now have disincentivized small businesses as a much riskier bet than a stable job at said mega corporation.
I appreciate your intellectualism, but this theory of yours is based mostly on conjecture. I think if pay raises were met with lowering CEO compensation and bonuses, things might just balance out
The issue starts when everyone gets a blanket pay raise across industries and communities for no reason.
And this is the failure of your theory. The raise is not “for no reason”, that’s just capitalism apologia talk. it’s because being in a community (aka: society) now costs more.
this is the thing that the HAVEs (and their apologists) won’t look at directly in the eye. When you can easily absorb rises in the COL, it doesn’t occur to you that it’s literally killing other people.
The raises in pay should mirror inflation. Period.
See, most people only have one job, so one source of payment. But they have N expenditures: health, food, electricity, transportation.
If inflation increases those general prices 20%, that’s 4 (or 5, or 6, or…) 20% increases in cost. Since currently wages are already lower than the cost of living, a raise in pay mirroring inflation would allow it to cover for one of those increases, on average, so the employee now has actually become poorer than before.
The answer is most likely no. These threads tend to attract and are made by younger people who are likely struggling and have a bleak outlook on their future.
Unfortunately the answer isn’t “just pay more”. Because it causes further inflation if production doesn’t keep up with demand.
The deeper answer is looking at what is causing everything to be so damn expensive and building policy around it to create a better incentives structure. E.g. as a society, why do we value Influencers and Wall Street traders than teachers, nurses, and farmers?
Why are we powerless against lobbying and controlling our policies?
Why is our government not functional for us and is only two parties?
There’s many more questions that could help solve some of our deeper problems. Until then, even if we increase pay, our quality of life will continue to dwindle.
I’d like to test your theory. So, if I’m correct, you’re saying if I get paid MORE money, my quality of life will go down? That’s an interesting take
The flaw is that YOU aren’t the only one getting more money, YOU can do that by job hopping and getting promotions or improving your marketability through skills.
The issue starts when everyone gets a blanket pay raise across industries and communities for no reason.
Let’s say you live in an apartment building that charges $1000 month because it’s what most people can afford in the community. Now, let’s say everyone got a pay raise and production isn’t keeping up with everyone’s need for housing. Nothing is stopping that apartment from raising rent to accommodate people who have the money to pay $1400 per month. You now are getting paid more, but your quality of life is about the same with your high cost of living expenses.
A deeper question would be, why is production not keeping up?
Well paying more wage as a blanket, tanks the ability for new small businesses to start because it’s riskier and less incentivized for the owners. Why risk your life savings and work a much much harder job when you can make about the same money working a corporate job with much more financial security?
What you end up indirectly incentivizing is the mega corporation that can afford to pay more to their minimum wage workers (which most of them will know how to leverage the government to subsidize their care…like Walmart does today.) These corporations will also be able to swallow up competition who can no longer pay the increased wage and keep afloat. And, you now have disincentivized small businesses as a much riskier bet than a stable job at said mega corporation.
I appreciate your intellectualism, but this theory of yours is based mostly on conjecture. I think if pay raises were met with lowering CEO compensation and bonuses, things might just balance out
No worries, best of luck testing the theory of waiting around for people to pay you more.
lol I pay others well because I believe in people. I run the company
And this is the failure of your theory. The raise is not “for no reason”, that’s just capitalism apologia talk. it’s because being in a community (aka: society) now costs more.
this is the thing that the HAVEs (and their apologists) won’t look at directly in the eye. When you can easily absorb rises in the COL, it doesn’t occur to you that it’s literally killing other people.
The raises in pay should mirror inflation. Period.
Actually, they should more-than-mirror inflation.
See, most people only have one job, so one source of payment. But they have N expenditures: health, food, electricity, transportation.
If inflation increases those general prices 20%, that’s 4 (or 5, or 6, or…) 20% increases in cost. Since currently wages are already lower than the cost of living, a raise in pay mirroring inflation would allow it to cover for one of those increases, on average, so the employee now has actually become poorer than before.