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by kristjansson·5y ago·view on hn ↗
Your replies down thread indicate an extremely narrow interpretation of 'expenses' here, namely only those financial costs directly related to employment. Taking that interpretation, you're probably correct that nearly all jobs offer net-positive pay counting only the those inputs from the employee. You're right that someone with better off in immediate financial terms with basically any job than no job.

However, that's something other than the 'sustainable' wage in the GP comment, since that doesn't count costs of the labor input! Each of us has only so much labor to sell in a given month, and need to get enough in return to support, you know, continuing to live and sell our labor. Sure, being employed at wage that does not provide a basic level of dignity is less worse than being completely destitute, but it's a bit disingenuous to argue that being less-worse-off is 'sustainable'.

1 comments
I think his (gruez's) interpretation is the obviously reasonable one, and I'm not sure why he's getting bashed so severely here. Note that op made the claim that "net pay" was literally negative, which seems to comport totally with the interpretation given, and not at all with an interpretation of "sustainability" referring to a living wage.
I think quoting the unsustainable part of OP instead of the net pay part led to lots of misinterpretation. Sustainability in a pay context is IMO strongly linked to a living wage, or at least a survivable wage.