> Ignore the mock outrage of my sibling comment, they are uninformed.
I'd like you to point at the "mock outrage". If it's anything it's very real outrage. Real outrage that this disgusting example of a military IQ test as the decider of the worth of a person, is being perpetuated by otherwise intelligent persons. You cannot point at an IQ test and say "that proves this person is worthless" because the next step for that line of reasoning is eugenics. That's where the outrage comes from.
With that out of the way, I can address your point. A point that's much more interesting than what you're responding to. It's true that there are differences in people's abilities. Some people have mental disabilities, some people have physical disabilities. Those disabilities can affect us in different ways in different tasks. You can't neatly stack people in a gradient of ability, because tons of different tasks require different kinds and combinations of abilities. I think we agree so far.
My problem starts when you then extrapolate that into "for such people, who otherwise could not provide labor worth at least the minimum wage". Firstly you pick the symbolic "minimum wage" which abstracts away the actual value. That implies, at least to me, that you think those people would be unable to provide "labor worth the minimum wage" no matter what the minimum wage was. That obviously silly, but I'd encourage you to fix that with a number.
Secondly, and much more importantly though. I think that your argument reveals a skewed sense of value. My argument is not, and was never, that there can be no difference between what peoples abilities. My argument isn't even in this case that disabled people should be paid if they had no disability. My argument is instead that paying somebody able, less than the cost of a parking spot in New York City is ridiculous. The core of my argument is that the normal wage should be so high that the potentially reduced wage for disabled people would still be above $20/hr.
The outrage you're detecting isn't at the revelation that disabled people exist. It's that we are discussing paying real people actually working $20/hr as some sort of unreasonable expense.
I'd like you to point at the "mock outrage". If it's anything it's very real outrage. Real outrage that this disgusting example of a military IQ test as the decider of the worth of a person, is being perpetuated by otherwise intelligent persons. You cannot point at an IQ test and say "that proves this person is worthless" because the next step for that line of reasoning is eugenics. That's where the outrage comes from.
With that out of the way, I can address your point. A point that's much more interesting than what you're responding to. It's true that there are differences in people's abilities. Some people have mental disabilities, some people have physical disabilities. Those disabilities can affect us in different ways in different tasks. You can't neatly stack people in a gradient of ability, because tons of different tasks require different kinds and combinations of abilities. I think we agree so far.
My problem starts when you then extrapolate that into "for such people, who otherwise could not provide labor worth at least the minimum wage". Firstly you pick the symbolic "minimum wage" which abstracts away the actual value. That implies, at least to me, that you think those people would be unable to provide "labor worth the minimum wage" no matter what the minimum wage was. That obviously silly, but I'd encourage you to fix that with a number.
Secondly, and much more importantly though. I think that your argument reveals a skewed sense of value. My argument is not, and was never, that there can be no difference between what peoples abilities. My argument isn't even in this case that disabled people should be paid if they had no disability. My argument is instead that paying somebody able, less than the cost of a parking spot in New York City is ridiculous. The core of my argument is that the normal wage should be so high that the potentially reduced wage for disabled people would still be above $20/hr.
The outrage you're detecting isn't at the revelation that disabled people exist. It's that we are discussing paying real people actually working $20/hr as some sort of unreasonable expense.