Why do you think caregivers, teachers, and social workers are undervalued? Last time I checked, care facilities, classrooms, and social centers were fully staffed. On what basis can you claim that their pay is too low? Who gets to decide the right salary? You? Why?
A particular job being important in aggregate does not entitle each individual who does that job to a salary higher than people who do some other job that might be less important in aggregate.
Oxygen is very important and it's free. Certain comic books are expensive despite being of very little importance to our survival. The value of a thing is the price of one additional unit of that thing, not some statement about the moral significance of all of that thing in aggregate.
Why are people entitled to a particular set of benefits in exchange for a particular time spent doing some activity? Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why?
> Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why?
Practically speaking, voters do because we live in a democracy.
It is perfectly fine for a society to decide "a full time job should have to pay enough to cover a person's full-time living expenses", to define all those terms reasonably, and presto enforce it as law.
It is also perfectly fine for the free market to decide this. This is society too and captures relative value far more effectively and adaptably than a fixed one-time vote.
The free market considers the monetary tradeoffs in this.
Comparing it to a holistic societal value (quality of life, family time, other non-monetary factors) is a disservice, that I believe negates the (subjective) "effective and adaptable" value measurement of the free market.
Otherwise you're just distilling people's lives and communities down to a dollar value, which in many people's eyes is the dark/down side of capitalism and how we ended up here to begin with.
(PS: I did not downvote you).
People have the same rights. However, relative economic value is definitely different from person to person. Denying this is denying basic reality.
Taking an example from a parent post - caregivers do NOT have high relative economic value. Anyone over 18 can become a caregiver without even passing high school and become a certified home care aide. Enforcing a higher pay through law will is only likely to increase un-employment. The market on the other hand is self-correcting.
The federal government being the lender for loans has only lead to higher cost of loans and un-employed arts graduates who cannot get a job and cannot payback those loans. Without the federal government backing, those loans were un-likely to have been offered in the first place, unless there was current/future demand for arts graduates.
I strongly believe that most aspects of living (for people and communities as you put it) indeed need a dollar value otherwise un-realistic and un-workable economic expectations come into play.
We have seen this play out in the past with failed governments and we will continue to see this in the future.
> just distilling people's lives and communities down to a dollar value
What's wrong with that? Our resources are finite. Our attention is short. We have to prioritize society's investment. How can anyone decide on the relative priority of two things without casting them to some common unit? It's only when we describe people's lives in terms of dollars that we can make intelligent decisions about where to apply society's scarce resources.
This. All professions have relative economic value. The free market - a market without permanent subsidies, monopolies and correct application of import tax (to balance non-free foreign subsidies) is the best and most fair judge of this.
Not some social welfare activist or even some elected representative of the party in power.
A particular job being important in aggregate does not entitle each individual who does that job to a salary higher than people who do some other job that might be less important in aggregate.
Oxygen is very important and it's free. Certain comic books are expensive despite being of very little importance to our survival. The value of a thing is the price of one additional unit of that thing, not some statement about the moral significance of all of that thing in aggregate.