alt Hacker NewsIf a business can't pay a living wage, it's not really a successful business. I, too, could become fabulously wealthy selling shoes if someone just have me shoes for $1 so I could resell them for $50.
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Can we use the same argument for all of the businesses that are only surviving because of VC money?
I find it rich how many tech people are working for money losing companies, using technology from money losing companies and/or trying to start a money losing company and get funding from a VC.
Every job is not meant to support a single person living on their own raising a family.
Classically, not all jobs are considered "living wage" jobs. That whole notion is something some people made up very recently.
A teenager in his/her first job at McDonald's doesn't need a "living wage." As a result of forcing the issue, now the job doesn't exist at all in many instances... and if it does, the owner has a strong incentive to automate it away.
> If a business can't pay a living wage, it's not really a successful business.
Let's consider the implications of this. We take an existing successful business, change absolutely nothing about it, but separately and for unrelated reasons the local population increases and the government prohibits the construction of new housing.
Now real estate is more scarce and the business has to pay higher rent, so they're making even less than before and there is nothing there for them to increase wages with. Meanwhile the wages they were paying before are now "not a living wage" because housing costs went way up.
Is it this business who is morally culpable for this result, or the zoning board?