It's not discriminatory as long as you don't fire them for whatever protected class they are.
More evidence that the gig economy is actually making people poorer
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It's not discriminatory as long as you don't fire them for whatever protected class they are.
No you didn't word it as such and then continued the point as real into a second post.
I realized my mistake and added an addendum in a third post. Shall I post a 5th post to make up for the last 3-4 posts?
@Overnight I wouldn't call that the income inequality problem. I'd consider that a lack of wage competition ensuring fair valuation. I'd even stretch to say that fixing income inequality would fix that, since more workers would rise up out of low-skilled work to compete against the layabout.
The problems of income inequality are not about what happens between a layabout vs a hard worker, it's about the difference between a low-earning hard worker and a high-earning hard worker. If it were possible to measure, let's assume they both work equally hard in their respective fields.
I'd qualify the problem of income equality as such:
We want to make upward mobility easy, as it allows people to increase their earning/consuming potential.
As it is, however, rising out of a lower bracket requires overcoming the strong downward inertia of the cost of living and education. Compound that with "bad luck" such as injuries, layoffs, an unintended child, anything that could send them past the safety net and into complete unproductivity.
These are things high earners are negligibly affected by, since their cost-of-living comprises a smaller percentage of their income and they'll have more savings to survive bad luck.
Thus, it gets proportionally easier to make money the more money you already make.
Money then coalesces upwards, resulting in less consumption by virtue of numbers and habits, resulting in a weaker economy.
Thus, fixing income inequality involves fixing the imbalance and enabling lower earners to grow better, naturally at the expense of high earners growth ability. Supply-side/Austrians would have it that this is bad, because high earners supposedly generate productivity. I think this is negligible, because I believe high earners hit a diminishing ratio of returns on their economic productivity, anyway.
The problems of income inequality are not about what happens between a layabout vs a hard worker, it's about the difference between a low-earning hard worker and a high-earning hard worker. If it were possible to measure, let's assume they both work equally hard in their respective fields.
I'd qualify the problem of income equality as such:
We want to make upward mobility easy, as it allows people to increase their earning/consuming potential.
As it is, however, rising out of a lower bracket requires overcoming the strong downward inertia of the cost of living and education. Compound that with "bad luck" such as injuries, layoffs, an unintended child, anything that could send them past the safety net and into complete unproductivity.
These are things high earners are negligibly affected by, since their cost-of-living comprises a smaller percentage of their income and they'll have more savings to survive bad luck.
Thus, it gets proportionally easier to make money the more money you already make.
Money then coalesces upwards, resulting in less consumption by virtue of numbers and habits, resulting in a weaker economy.
Thus, fixing income inequality involves fixing the imbalance and enabling lower earners to grow better, naturally at the expense of high earners growth ability. Supply-side/Austrians would have it that this is bad, because high earners supposedly generate productivity. I think this is negligible, because I believe high earners hit a diminishing ratio of returns on their economic productivity, anyway.
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I think this discussion has devolved into abstract economic theory, rather than applied economic science. Can put this part of the thread on the shelf for now, revisit later if needed.
It's all economic science. Globalization just like interest rate needs to change direction with time.
It's a good thing no one ever lost a job and unemployment didn't exist before globalization. That whole Great Depression thing was staged just like the moon landings, wasn't it.
If you took all the money in the world or America and divided it equally, in 5 years 99% of it will return right where it started, ie the high earners will become high earners again and the poor will become poor again
It's not that people didn't recover and adapt, but I don't think it is a cut-and-dry answer compared to the past.
With the 1-2 punch of globalization and automation coming...
Is the Scale of the problem the same as previous problems?
Is the Speed of the problem the same as previous problems?
Is the Growth of the problem the same as previous problems?
How fast can we subsidize and finance the retraining of massive amounts of our population?
How much of a devaluation of our quality of life will happen over the course of it?
Sure, most will get thru this. The question is who, and at what costs?