Reply #21: "Should" as in "in a perfect (in your view) world" or "should"... [View All]

[Silent3]

...as in you'd seriously want to see your idea passed into law and enforced?

In the real world, I seriously doubt this idea of yours would work. I'm all for progressive taxation, more support for unions, breaking up corporate power so corporations don't have so strong a hand in negotiations with workers, better enforced work safety laws, etc. I sincerely doubt, however, having some committee decide what people should get paid based totally on social, non-commercial criteria for the "value" of various jobs, applying "life hours" criteria like yours, completely divorced from the laws of supply and demand, is at all feasible.

Further, the government has had zero results by fining employers who knowingly create dangerous workplaces. If they're forced to compensate the employees fairly, commensurate with the life hours they take, they might have some motivation to make a safer workplace.

If the political will to enforce and improve the safety laws doesn't exist, the political will certainly doesn't exist for a scheme like yours. I think it's much closer (albeit, sadly, probably not close enough) to political reality to improve the enforcement of safety laws, and raise the fines for non-compliance high enough that the fines hurt more than the costs of fixing the problems mine operations get fined for -- combined with lack of enforcement, the big problem now is the a stupidly and obviously ineffective system of having fines that are cheaper to pay than paying to fix safety problems.