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 whembly wrote:
Here's the thing that gets me about the living wage arguments...

Isn’t it a more equitable system, that some enforceable positive duty to provide folks with enough stuff to lead a life... that ALL OF US, together share this burdensome duty, rather than just the employer?

That is why we have the welfare system in the first place.

Why should the employer, specifically, be the one that has to bear the burden and potentially lose all this money to support the living wage model?

Furthermore, how would you and at whatever level you consider a decent living wage?

Share the burden? What are you? Some sort of Socialist?

 Easy E wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Here's the thing that gets me about the living wage arguments...

Isn’t it a more equitable system, that some enforceable positive duty to provide folks with enough stuff to lead a life... that ALL OF US, together share this burdensome duty, rather than just the employer?

That is why we have the welfare system in the first place.

Why should the employer, specifically, be the one that has to bear the burden and potentially lose all this money to support the living wage model?

Furthermore, how would you and at whatever level you consider a decent living wage?

Share the burden? What are you? Some sort of Socialist?

See? I'm not that baaaad*.

*I'm just drawn that way.

 whembly wrote:
That is why we have the welfare system in the first place.

Why should the employer, specifically, be the one that has to bear the burden and potentially lose all this money to support the living wage model?

Having wages be whatever the market pays, and then having a social security system top that up to a basic living wage is another model that could be used. It's something you see proposed from time to time (its quite common among libertarians, weirdly enough) but I've never done any reading at all in to why one model might be better or worse than the other. Honestly, I don't much care, as it seems to me that if they were properly established both models would achieve the important thing - people who work a standard working week get a living wage.

Furthermore, how would you and at whatever level you consider a decent living wage?

By its standard definition. Rent, utilities, food, health, transport plus a small amount for unforseen other events.

 whembly wrote:

Isn’t it a more equitable system, that some enforceable positive duty to provide folks with enough stuff to lead a life... that ALL OF US, together share this burdensome duty, rather than just the employer?

I believe one of the popular arguments against a "living wage" is that we do share the burden; by way of increased costs.

 whembly wrote:

That is why we have the welfare system in the first place.

Well, no. The national welfare system exists to take care of the elderly, veterans, and the legally poor.

Moreover FICA has, for a long time, required that most people to "share this burdensome duty" with employers.