What harm do minimum wages do?

Re:What harm do minimum wages do? by rbanffy on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @06:04PM (#24217264)

> First of all a rational actor will not intentionally pay a worker the value of their production; you get no profit.

That's true for a single employee, but you don't need to make a profit out of every single employee.

If you do, your CEO will be extremely underpaid in relation to the rest of the market.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What harm do minimum wages do? by aidenn0 on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @06:17PM (#24217422)

I am willing to work as the CEO of Walmart for say $750k per year. The fact that I don't work there means that either:

1. Voting Walmart shareholders think that the having Doug McMillon for $24M/year is a better deal than having me for $750k/year

2. Voting Walmart shareholders are unaware that reasonably intelligent people with no executive experience are willing to work for a lot less than McMillon.

3. There are other forces at play; e.g. CEOs as Veblen goods or good-old-fashioned corruption. Maybe the board members are also C level employees (at different companies) and they are colluding to keep the C level compensation high.

#2 seems rather unlikely so pick one of #1 and #3.

#1 Certainly does not contradict my use of intentionally, since they believe that McMillon

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What harm do minimum wages do? by rbanffy on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @06:27PM (#24217522)

You also have to consider it's difficult to measure the exact economic value of an employee.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What harm do minimum wages do? by aidenn0 on Thursday August 20, 2020 @12:53AM (#24220018)

Of course it is. That's why I used words like "intentionally" and "believe"

[ Parent | on HN ]