Re: Re: Paul Krugman holds forth on the future of publishing

This is why I stipulated that the person should have an 
alternate form of income. That income could be from 
government welfare, flipping hamburgers, or whatever. In the 
real world, nobody _has_ to write to make a living. There 
are always other income-producing things they could be 
doing. If they choose to write, that's great. If not, that's 
great too. But there's no reason why I should subsidise 
people who choose to write when they could be doing 
something else, any more than I should subsidise people who 
choose to play video games.

I have no problem at all with people getting paid what 
others are willing to pay them. But it irritates the heck 
out of me when 'creative' people claim special exemption 
from the laws of economics that apply to everyone else, and 
particularly when legislators back them up.

Jon.

John Landahl wrote:
> I'd have to disagree with you on this, Jon.  I'd argue that a 'fair wage' cannot, by definition, 
> be below the minimum wage.  After all, minimum wage laws (which, interestingly, 
> apparently originated in Australia and New Zealand) were enacted because any lower wage 
> is agreed to be unfair to workers.  Here in the U.S. at present, federal minimum wage is 
> $5.85 an hour, but in my state of Washington it's $8.07.  Paying your hypothetical novel 
> writer less would actually be illegal under Washington state law.  

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