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Re:"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs by whimsicalism on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @02:11PM (#25141028)
> According to the market people would generally rather spend that money elsewhere

Or some people don't have the money to spend on it at all. This is the fundamental issue with using "willingness to pay" as proxy for "utility consumer gains."

Re:"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs by jacobolus on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @03:14PM (#25141833)
The appropriate way to fix that problem would be to directly give the money to the people who have trouble paying for food, instead of giving it to dairy farmers.
Re:"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs by aeternum on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @04:01PM (#25142385)
This (some kind of UBI) does seem like the best solution to give those that don't have money a say what we produce.

But this still doesn't address tail risk like war or disasters. Importing 100% of the nation's food might make sense from a market POV but is a significant risk from a strategic POV. Markets do not seem to handle low probability events very well.

Re:"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs by jacobolus on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @07:32PM (#25144722)
Subsidizing the heck out of corn and soybean production while keeping average income low has resulted in an unbelievably unhealthy diet, and incredible external costs to the environment, while centralizing and corporatizing agriculture and making a small number of people extraordinarily wealthy.

There are many better ways of accomplishing the geopolitical goal of maintaining enough food supply and production capacity to keep people going in a crisis.

Re:"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs by JAlexoid on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @04:29PM (#25142687)
Who is importing 100% of their food?

US is a net exporter of food products.

Do you know who lacks food? China!

Re:"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs by JAlexoid on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @04:28PM (#25142667)
Just because SAD has had a lot of milk in it for the last 70 years, doesn't mean that we actually need it.

Milk consumption dropped and we need to drop financial incentives for it.

Re:"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs by areyousure on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @08:28PM (#25145175)
I had never heard of this abbreviation, so in case someone else is similarly curious, it appears "SAD" in this context stands for "standard American diet": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_pattern_diet