being paid based on the value of the economic work you do is the same as being paid on the amount of work you do
why would anyone work hard at something with no economic value
Because even something with low economic value still needs to be done. But you missed the second part of what I said--
it's also about supply.
This comes up in a number of cases:
- Unskilled labor. If your job is basically something that can be learned in a day, there's no reason to value one employee's skills over another, so you offer as little as possible. Offer as little as it takes to fill the position, because if you can find someone who will take less, you'd rather hire them.
- Jobs where there are many more people "capable" of performing the job than jobs available. Think for example of elementary school teachers. It's not an unskilled position; far from it. And it's a position of tremendous social importance. But a high number of people are able and willing to do the job, which reduces the bargaining power of them, and so we probably are underpaying school teachers relative to their actual value, but we can get away with it because we can find enough people who will work for that amount to keep the jobs filled.
- The opposite occurs, for example, with NFL quarterbacks. The 25th-best QB in the league isn't actually generating enough economic value to be "worth" his contract, but is good enough to be a starting quarterback and the market for starting QBs is millions of dollars because there's still a big dropoff between the 25th-best QB in the league and the 50th-best QB in the league such that he's not immediately replaceable.
Low-paying jobs need to be done, and unskilled workers need to eat. But they can't demand any more than a low wage for their labor because literally anyone else pulled in off the street could replace them in a second.
as far as a living wage is concerned this is not capitalism at all in fact its closer to communism
its a way of spreading wealth
Of course. However there are multiple ways of spreading wealth that we already are doing. Food stamps, welfare, EITC, and all sorts of other things are spreading wealth. We have all sorts of transfer payment systems in this country. Heck, the minimum wage is no different than a living wage in your argument--it's just a way of spreading wealth.
The argument from living wage supporters is that employers are getting a "free lunch" by not paying their people enough and expecting the taxpayer to make up the difference.
I personally don't buy that argument. I think the actual result of a living wage would be both distorting the labor market such that we don't have as much visibility into actual value from a job, and that instead of it being "the taxpayers" paying for it to the government, it's just "the customers" paying for in higher prices--but across an entire economy it's probably a wash. I'd prefer that we try NOT to distort the labor market and if we deem it necessary to correct inequalities caused by that labor market, treat that as a separate thing as we do now with the various transfer payment schemes we have. The more we try to muck with the market, the less efficient it is, so let the market do its thing and if you have to help people based on the outcome, then help them separate from the market function.
