Sorry to make my first post on LW a political one, but I've been hearing too much about this discussion everywhere to stay out of it, here. I'll try to keep it short.
ChrisHallquist: I worry that this anti-Walmart meme could lead to an odd left-wing resistance to GBI/more lavish welfare state, since the policy would be branded as a subsidy to Walmart.
Quite honestly, I think this is a confused concern, or at least a misplaced one.
I'm a philosopher by education (again, my apologies), but an urban economist/macroeconomist by trade and hobby. I don't think I'm saying anything new or surprising in mentioning that, as industrial economic growth decline, and economic growth shifts to less labor-intensive service industries, there begins a decline the growth rate of the employment-population ratio. Assuming the typical level of population growth rate decline associate with this economic transition (i.e. Western Europe/North America fertility levels, not East Asian/European fertility levels), you end up with a large ratio of low-wage/high-wage laborers. Because people respond intuitively to the two population segments with more visibly-dispersed levels of income, by claiming that this is unjust, you start to get a popular movement for social welfare. The confusion/frivolousness should be becoming somewhat apparent.
The income dispersion which is a product of the development of the economic system which created it cannot be solved by that same system; this is what leads to calls for things like living wages and other types of income redistribution--or even just labor welfare generally--through government intervention. However, these interventions in a market built around the production of capital only serve to reduce its efficiency by introducing new inflexibilities in the market, e.g., if I'm looking to start up a restaurant, I can only do so provided I have enough money to satisfy OSHA regulations. If I don't have enough money to do so, I can't begin to produce capital through food service, which not only deprives me of profit, but deprives local workers of (theoretically) sharing in that profit. When economic growth slows and population growth doesn't, it's bad for everyone.
I'm pretty strongly socialist, but I'm willing to admit social welfare and capitalism simply don't go together...though maybe that's less surprising than it seems to me.
I suppose this just hits on the fact that I agree with what a few other people here have said: I don't think that people who are genuine libertarian capitalists can actually have conversations about socioeconomics with non-libertarian socialists. We have different consequences we're trying to reach, and knowing that, we can move on and not worry about convincing each other. Frankly, it leads me to respect libertarians totally, even if I absolutely disagree with them.
But American liberals, and most European social democrats, are inconsistent. Whether or not they know it, they believe that human welfare (whatever their preferred sources of utility are) is Good, but they refuse to use a system that produces it because they believe that system--socialism--is Bad, though in their defense, it's mostly because they misunderstand what socialism actually is (not that I'll lay claim to an absolute understanding). Because the morality they use is deontological in nature, you end up with people creating rules AND goals (the latter because humans are planning things), separately and simultaneously(ish), instead of deciding on one starting point and letting what comes naturally happen without interference.
Note: Originally posted in Discussion, edited to take comments there into account.
Yes, politics, boo hiss. In my defense, the topic of this post cuts across usual tribal affiliations (I write it as a liberal criticizing other liberals), and has a couple strong tie-ins with main LessWrong topics:
The issue is this: recently, I've seen a meme going around to the effect that companies like Walmart that have a large number of employees on government benefits are the "real welfare queens" or somesuch, and with the implied message that all companies have a moral obligation to pay their employees enough that they don't need government benefits. (I say mention Walmart because it's the most frequently mentioned villain in this meme, but others, like McDonalds, get mentioned.)
My initial awareness of this meme came from it being all over my Facebook feed, but when I went to Google to track down examples, I found it coming out of the mouths of some fairly prominent congresscritters. For example Alan Grayson:
Or Bernie Sanders:
Now here's why this is weird: consider Grayson's claim that each Walmart employee costs the taxpayers on average $1,000. In what sense is that true? If Walmart fired those employees, it wouldn't save the taxpayers money: if anything, it would increase the strain on public services. Conversely, it's unlikely that cutting benefits would force Walmart to pay higher wages: if anything, it would make people more desperate and willing to work for low wages. (Cf. this this excellent critique of the anti-Walmart meme).
Or consider Sanders' claim that it would be better to raise the minimum wage and spend less on government benefits. He emphasizes that Walmart could take a hit in profits to pay its employees more. It's unclear to what degree that's true (see again previous link), and unclear if there's a practical way for the government to force Walmart to do that, but ignore those issues, it's worth pointing out that you could also just raise taxes on rich people generally to increase benefits for low-wage workers. The idea seems to be that morally, Walmart employees should be primarily Walmart's moral responsibility, and not so much the moral responsibility of the (the more well-off segment of) the population in general.
But the idea that employing someone gives you a general responsibility for their welfare (beyond, say, not tricking them into working for less pay or under worse conditions than you initially promised) is also very odd. It suggests that if you want to be virtuous, you should avoid hiring people, so as to keep your hands clean and avoid the moral contagion that comes with employing low wage workers. Yet such a policy doesn't actually help the people who might want jobs from you. This is not to deny that, plausibly, wealthy onwers of Walmart stock have a moral responsibility to the poor. What's implausible is that non-Walmart stock owners have significantly less responsibility to the poor.
This meme also worries me because I lean towards thinking that the minimum wage isn't a terrible policy but we'd be better off replacing it with guaranteed basic income (or an otherwise more lavish welfare state). And guaranteed basic income could be a really important policy to have as more and more jobs are replaced by automation (again see gwern if that seems crazy to you). I worry that this anti-Walmart meme could lead to an odd left-wing resistance to GBI/more lavish welfare state, since the policy would be branded as a subsidy to Walmart.