Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

Re:Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About... by matthewowen on Tuesday August 02, 2016 @07:26PM (#12214223)

I feel like my earlier comment has been misconstrued as "if your work generates $1MM in profit than it should be rewarded with $0.999MM in salary". That's not what I'm attempting to say at all. Assessing value is definitely more complex than that.

Additionally, yeah, it's true, competitors might not be able to realize the same value in the same space. Competitive advantages exist. Spreads between value and salaries will exist, and some companies might have bigger spreads than others because they're more able to realize value. I agree with all of this.

All I am attempting to do is refute the claim that there's no relationship between value of work and renumeration for that work ("[t]he value someone creates has nothing to do with their salary"). I don't dispute that we can create toy examples where that doesn't happen, but they aren't effective refutations of the general point.

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Re:Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About... by bumbledraven on Tuesday August 02, 2016 @08:13PM (#12214460)

The labor theory of value has been refuted. In a market economy, prices (including the price of labor, i.e. salaries) are set by supply and demand.

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Re:Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About... by eru on Tuesday August 02, 2016 @08:46PM (#12214650)

In the short term, yes. In the longer term competition and companies/people entering/leaving the market moves demand and supply closer to something that justified by costs of production and 'value' of product.

(Economists say demand and supply are elastic, I think.)

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Re:Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About... by cmdrfred on Tuesday August 02, 2016 @08:28PM (#12214552)

I agree. Labor is just another input that a company requires in order to create its product. I would expect labor prices to be driven by similar if not the same market forces as goods. Excluding government interventions of course.

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Re:Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About... by nandemo on Tuesday August 02, 2016 @10:23PM (#12215140)

Labor theory of value claims that the value of X depends only on the amount of labor required to produce X. This theory doesn't explain how gold is more valuable than iron, or how $UNICORN is more valuable then this other startup. So it's a bad theory.

matthewowen's argument is not assuming the labor theory of value is true. It's just pointing out that, other things being equal, if the demand for X increases then the demand for X-makers' labor increases too; hence X-makers' wages increase.

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Re:Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About... by darksim905 on Tuesday August 02, 2016 @08:55PM (#12214701)

Which is bullshit, all the way around :)

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Re:Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About... by matthewowen on Tuesday August 02, 2016 @08:25PM (#12214530)

And what drives demand for labor?

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