Higher Minimum Wages Bring Automation and Job Losses, Study Suggests (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report via email: As of the start of the year, 19 U.S. states had raised minimum wages, dramatizing a long simmering debate: Do minimum wages kill jobs, and make the working class worse off in the end? Or do they simply make them a little richer, with little or no loss to overall employment? In a new paper, economists Grace Lordan of the London School of Economics and David Neumark of UC Irvine parse 35 years of census data and come down on the worse-off side: For lower-skill jobs like bookkeepers and assembly-line workers, they say, higher minimum wages encourage employers to automate -- according to their calculations, a $1 increase can cost tens of thousands of jobs nationally.

Comments

Tens of thousands of jobs...

[__aaclcg7560]

We know how many jobs will be lost. Do we know how many workers will benefit from a $1 per hour increase? I think that number will be larger than the number of jobs lost.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even clear that jobs are lost. They calculate -10 000 jobs for 1$ increase due to automatisation, but they're not considering the number of jobs that will be created by having 2.6 millions workers with extra money to spend.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[zifn4b]

We know how many jobs will be lost. Do we know how many workers will benefit from a $1 per hour increase? I think that number will be larger than the number of jobs lost.

I don't think that's a relevant question anymore. Your assumption is that every citizen is required to work because there is a job that needs to be done by every citizen for the benefit of society. When we start seeing things like automation what that does is it lowers the number of jobs that need to be done because some jobs are now being done by robots instead of manual labor.

I mean we knew this day was coming at some point with our ever increasing technology right? Isn't this what we wanted? Less need for manual labor so that we can make the most of our lives?

If we agree on that then the next step is to fundamentally question this wage slavery/usury economic system we have. In a world where we had a job for everyone to do, it made sense to provide some strict incentives to do manual labor for our civilization to thrive. But what about a system where we can automate manual labor to satisfy that need that has a decreasing number of jobs to be done? What do you do there? Well, I would argue one thing you don't do is adopt a policy of throwing all the people who can't find a job to do onto the street because they can't pay for mandatory financial obligations. That's absurd.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[alvinrod]

Yes, but this assumes the businesses that saved that $1 in wages aren't going to spend it on something else. Paying a higher minimum wage doesn't magically create additional money. You don't think businesses or rich people just hoard piles of money like dragons with gold do you?

All you change is where the money gets spent. If you have 10 employees a $1 raise works out to about $20,000 per year. Either the business eats the added cost from their profits or they pass the $20,000 on to customers or some combination of both. If they eat it from profits it's $20,000 less to return to shareholders or invest in some other endeavor which also means spending it on someone else's labor.

If you still can't see that it makes no difference imagine that all workers and all businesses put the amount into a savings account. 10 workers each put $2,000 in the bank or the business puts $20,000 in the bank. The same applies to if they spend all of it.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[lgw]

I don't think that's a relevant question anymore. Your assumption is that every citizen is required to work because there is a job that needs to be done by every citizen for the benefit of society. When we start seeing things like automation what that does is it lowers the number of jobs that need to be done because some jobs

Also going towards the wrong question. Everyone who can be employed (in a real, non-makework job) acts to the benefit of society, because that job represents some product or service that someone else wants or needs. So, the more people work, the better off we all are. Also, most people (and almost all men) have a psychological need to be productive in some way, and society goes to a bad place when there are no jobs for them.

So, the right question is, what kind of useful, productive work can most people do as automation replaces jobs. The focus of that question is jobs that currently require only a low IQ. That's the key question we need to solve as a society, as those are the jobs mostly likely to be automated away (repetitive tasks requiring no abstraction), and the people hardest to re-train.

There's no obvious answer, but we damn well better find the answer anyway.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[danbert8]

There is a difference. An increase of worker pay results in more tax money going to the government. There is income taxes on wages, there is not an equivalent tax deduction for corporations for worker pay.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[zifn4b]

So, the right question is, what kind of useful, productive work can most people do as automation replaces jobs.

I'm sorry that's the wrong question. Do you not agree that automation is going to increase in terms of the rate of displacement of workers? The research suggests the answer is yes.

The problem actually is we won't be able to supply enough "useful" work. We will largely be creating jobs for the sake of creating jobs that don't add any to anything. Like inspectors to inspect the inspectors using devices invented by people to help inspectors inspect inspectors. You see what I mean? That's not a valuable use of human capital.

Now let me ask you a real question, who do you think is most qualified to determine what the best use of the human capital we have is? The government? The corporations? The human capital themselves? I'm very interested in your perspective.

Also when we refer to "jobs" we are talking about paying "jobs" right? I don't think it's hard for humans to find "work" to do. The problem is finding work that can be exchanged for money to satisfy mandatory expenses and usury. The very definition of wage slavery. You see the whole concept of valuable work doesn't real have any relationship to compensation. Again, I think you're missing the point.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that rich corporations and people do NOT spend or save money the same way as everyone else, in a manner that benefits society as a whole - instead what you end up with is almost a completely separate economy just moving money round between such rich corporations and people, especially involving countries where they don't get taxed as much. To move ANY amount of that money back to within a country (such as the US/UK) to and for general citizens to spend locally, is for the better.

Situations like I describe is EXACTLY how and why the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else - by following completely different rules.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[lgw]

I think you're mostly repeating what I said, but just for clarity: jobs where someone wants or needs to consumer the good or service produced - the sort of paying jobs that exist in an ideal economy, with no makework or supports.

Money is always a distraction from real economic questions. There are lots of ways to hand people money, but that rarely solves the real problems. People need what money buys.

The real problem here is, again, what sort of useful, productive work can someone with an 80-90 IQ do when all the current jobs they do are automated away? (And for that matter, the significant number of unemployed with sub-85 IQ today, who largely have no remaining employment prospects.) We better find an answer, as the current answer (the oyx/opiate addiction epidemic) is dystopian.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[HornWumpus]

You think worker pay isn't deducted as a business expense?

We know to ignore you from now on. Seriously: 'Sometimes it is better to hold your tongue and have people think you're a fool, rather than talk and confirm it.'

Did you buy your /. UID? It implies you're old enough to know better.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[davecb]

Every time Ontario raises the minimum wage, another study comes out with new claims that the job losses will be immediate and permanent.

This is followed six months later with a report that says the first one is incorrect, the emplyment rate didn't fall as much as expected, and is back up where it was before in any case.

I suspect stupidity and a startingly short memory, or perhaps a whole new generation of study-writers, but it actually could be malice (ie, fake news)

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[ganjadude]

they are going to spend it sure, but not on anything that will create new jobs. buying a supersized meal instead of a medium isnt gonna do a thing

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[Euroranger]

While that may be a pertinent question to many, it ignores the 800lb gorilla in the room. Forget about the one guy who's better off...what do we do about the guys the employer let go? They're now unemployed. They'll file for UI. Some will get welfare. Some will say they'll shift into other jobs but unless they move to another state where the wages have not increased those jobs are in the same environment where they just lost their job. The same negative effect is happening there too. And it is precisely low wage workers that are least able to move away from that negative effect (to a state who has not ratcheted up the minimum wage). So, while the law has given some workers a slight boost, it has destroyed the jobs of others in the process...and what's worse, made some of those now unemployed workers dependent upon state benefits that are paid for by a now reduced labor pool via employment taxes. Which means, inevitably, that with the simultaneous greater demand for benefits COUPLED with the reduced taxation base...the tax rate will need to rise to cover the shortfall. And that guy who just got his $1/hr raise gets to see even less of it than he did. The over all effect is that you have fewer and fewer low wage workers, a larger and growing dependent class and a cycle where the dependent class votes in their own self interest for politicians who pander to their wants (more and larger benefits). Eventually, the unproductive classes become the political majority and those who actually produce wealth and contribute to society are now, virtually, the political enemy. This is nothing but economic logic that even a child who understands cause and effect can understand. The results of the study are entirely unsurprising. A business owner will not, out of the presumed goodness of their hearts, simply accept a lower standard of living because of a mandate by the state. They will seek to cut their costs and one way is to find a means to acquire production that does not demand wages. This isn't rocket science...it's effing logic. It is the basis of human freakin' rights: that you have the right to do with what you create as you like. Anything else is called slavery...which, ironically, has been tangentially in the news of late...people protesting others who think it wasn't so bad and march to say so.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[Evil Kerek]

You have absolutely no facts to back that up and we're hardly talking about $1 per hour.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[alvinrod]

But then you must agree that if a $1 increase in minimum wage is good, that a $2 would be better yet because you obviously believe that worker spending is better for society as a whole. At what point should we stop increasing minimum wages, because it seems that if $2, then $3 should be better still and so on. Also, I'm not sure how a worker spending $1 on a hot dog for himself is any more beneficial than a business spending $1 on staples for their own business to society as a whole. I think you really need to expand on that and illustrate the differences between how people who are working class spend differently than those who are wealthy. Also everyone spending locally means that local businesses don't get business outside of their local area and I think that ultimately creates results similar to that which you would expect from high degrees of protectionism, where you see a net reduction in wealth.

Also, based on what you've written wouldn't it also be smarter for the U.S. to drop their tax rates so that all of these rich people from around the world start moving their money here? Or do you feel as though that money wouldn't actually benefit anyone?

The rich get richer not necessarily because they follow different rules (although I'm not going to say that having wealth can't help you avoid or mitigate a whole host of problems) but rather because the economy is a game that while not zero-sum still allows for players to make moves that improve their overall standing. This tends to create a compounding effect where success makes future success even easier. If you start a business and make some money you're going to acquire business contacts that will be beneficial to future endeavors, a reputation for success which makes getting future funding easier, and a whole host of other things on top of that. Even if you have two players engaged in a type of game where both have an equal chance at winning for any one contest within the larger game, the person who starts with more is going to win over the long term because they can sustain a larger string of losses.

If it's just a case of wanting a good safety net for people, a minimum wage is an awful way to accomplish it in my opinion.

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[zifn4b]

Money is always a distraction from real economic questions.

I think you just lost all credibility there I'm sad to say. There is no such thing in the world apart from maybe a few third world countries where the exists a concept of economy that is separate from money. An example of that would be bartering. What percentage of the world does not measure economic value in terms of money? I'm not sure how we can have any type of production conversation on this topic because my understanding of reality and yours is very different obviously. I strive very much to understand the world from an objective, materialist point of view. Not everyone does that and those that don't are hard to collaborate with because they have a tendency to talk about and define problems that don't exist meanwhile there are real problems that are independent of us that have consequences of not acknowledging them and not doing something about them. It's not surprising though, that's never been a strength of the cognitive capabilities of the human race unfortunately.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[MikeKD]

Yes, but this assumes the businesses that saved that $1 in wages aren't going to spend it on something else. Paying a higher minimum wage doesn't magically create additional money. You don't think businesses or rich people just hoard piles of money like dragons with gold do you?

Actually, that is exactly what they are doing:

Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions? Jan, 2016: "This strange vogue for corporate hoarding seems to have begun around the turn of the millennium. General Motors is perhaps the most extreme: It now holds nearly half its value in cash. Apple holds more than a third. These numbers are maddening on their face. If the companies spent their savings, rather than hoarding them, the economy would instantly grow, and we would most likely see more jobs with better pay. In the 1990s, when companies saved far less of their profits, they built new factories, bought new buildings. In part because of all that corporate spending, the 1990s were a period of low unemployment and high growth. Remarkably, the United States government was able to tax all that productive corporate behavior so much that it came close to paying off all its debts for the first time in 160 years."

US companies are hoarding $2.5 trillion in cash overseas Sept, 2016: "American companies are holding $2.5 trillion abroad, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the past two years, according to the latest calculations from forecaster Capital Economics. The total is equivalent to nearly 14 percent of total U.S. gross domestic product."

Announcement: Moody's: US corporate cash pile, led by tech sector, to grow to $1.77 trillion by end of 2016: "New York, November 03, 2016 -- US non-financial companies rated by Moody's will increase their cash holdings to $1.77 trillion by the end of the year, from $1.68 trillion at the end of 2015, Moody's Investors Services says in a report."

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[CaptainDork]

You make valid points, and I especially appreciate your extrapolation of technology expectations.

I was working in the yard at Texaco refinery ca. 1975 unloading boxcars of used 55 gal. oil drums in the August heat complaining to an old man about how barbaric this shit was.

He told me two things:

- I should have been there 30 years before when they used mules to do the work while labour trod around in the mud and animal shit/piss.

- If Texaco came up with a better solution, I wouldn't have a job.

Both of his observations apply:

- We want cheap shit.

- We want money.

Here's another prediction for us to consider:

What if all this capitalistic crap collapses and we lose all the nice toys?

Then labour will be a worthwhile vocation.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[parkinglot777]

There is a difference. An increase of worker pay results in more tax money going to the government. There is income taxes on wages, there is not an equivalent tax deduction for corporations for worker pay.

And which one is higher? Corporate revenue taxes or worker individual income taxes???

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[daninaustin]

Worthwhile?... I dont know. Before all this capitalism (and oil) the world was a very harsh place. Nevermind the flat screen tvs, refrigerators, indoor plumbing,microwave ovens, cars, and other things the poor have here now, basic things like heat, ac, and food are widely available to our poor. People have no understanding of how bad things used to be.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[kenh]

Will the workers that benefit from the extra $1/hour (in this example) pay enough in increased taxes to offset the assistance and support provided by gov't to those displaced (now unemployed) workers?

That your neighbor now earns $1/hr more than they previously did is little comfort as you find yourself applying for unemployment.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[kenh]

There is income taxes on wages, there is not an equivalent tax deduction for corporations for worker pay.

A dollar increase in wages costs the employer more than a dollar - many of the deductions itemized on you pay stub are MATCHED by employer contributions, turning that $1 increase into a $1.20 cost to the employer.

SS is matched, state and federal income taxes are matched, and so on...

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[kenh]

General Motors is perhaps the most extreme: It now holds nearly half its value in cash. Apple holds more than a third. These numbers are maddening on their face. If the companies spent their savings, rather than hoarding them, the economy would instantly grow, and we would most likely see more jobs with better pay.

You apparently imagine that money is simply sitting in a drawer somewhere, instead of invested in the foreign economy.

Apple has a half billion dollars of US Treasuries, for example - that money is currently working elsewhere, being loaned out in foreign economies. Clawing that money back into the US economy comes at an equal cost to the foreign economies that money is clawed out of.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[kenh]

What jobs are lost, what jobs are created?

Losing burger-flipping jobs and replacing them with software engineers (for example) hides the impact to the burger-flipper.

The lost jobs are definitely lost, they are off-set by new, higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[davecb]

The losses and gains are in the same price range: not comparing like with like would disqualify the analysis.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[LynnwoodRooster]

At the low end of the scale, workers tend to pay nearly zero income tax (source). They pay SSI/FICA, but not income tax. And the cost of welfare/unemployment for those now-displaced workers is probably well offsets the increase in income tax of those bottom 20%. Income tax on $2,000 per year, at the bottom end of the tax brackets, is about 3.5% - meaning about $70 in extra income tax per worker, per year. Assuming $20,000 in unemployment benefits, it would take nearly 300 workers to offset the costs to support one unemployed worker.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[HornWumpus]

Only the very rich used to be able to afford _socks_.

Re: Tens of thousands of jobs...

[Gibgezr]

So you believe in the benefits of trickle-down economics?

Re:Tens of thousands of jobs...

[lgw]

If you double the amount of money everyone has and earns overnight, what happens? Does anyone's standard of living go up? The number of units of currency people have isn't the point, but the purchasing power.

What we consume is what we produce (net of trade imbalance). No shuffling of money about will change the total amount of stuff (good and services and anything else we produce) there is to go around - if we want to raise everyone's standard of living we have to collectively produce more goods and services.

Technology enables exponential growth in productivity, which is great, but when it comes at the cost of number of people working productively, it's neutral at best. Handing money to the unemployed does nothing for average standard of living, and does nothing for the psychological health of those who can find work. It's a temporary measure at best (which is great for temporary unemployment, but that's not what we're talking about).

Common Sense

[Tulsa_Time]

Why is this concept so controversial ?

Why do those advocating the $15 hamburger wage not see this ?

Re: Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say its controversal, just that there is more to the discussion..

1) Would the automation happen naturally regardless? A machine needs a 0 wage, which a human can't beat and automation will continue to get cheaper.

2) What are these jobs providing unlivable wages really worth?

Re:Common Sense

[Tailhook]

It's politically inconvenient.

Re:Common Sense

[Cajun Hell]

Who says they don't see it? Maybe everyone who advocates for minimum wage just happens to be in the robot manufacturing business.

Re:Common Sense

[Errol backfiring]

I don't know if it is controversial. More jobs is just a number, and numbers aren't holy. In "Das Kapital", Marx describes that in 19th century England machines existed to wipe chimneys, but little boys were cheaper. Common sense tells us that a too high minimum wage will make people unemployed, and a too low minimum wage will exploit them. Exploited people are still dependent on welfare and crime, thereby destabilizing society. Nothing new here.

Re:Common Sense

[ljw1004]

Why is this concept so controversial ? Why do those advocating the $15 hamburger wage not see this ?

You can see this and still advocate for the $15 minimum wage.

I think $8/hour labor is just demeaning to the workers and to society, and should be stopped for that reason.

On the one hand that means that some people will now no longer have a job. On the other hand our society as a whole is still producing just as much (actually it's producing slightly more because there's extra work in producing the robots). And a society where more is produced for less labor is a BETTER society.

Separate from that is the question about how the benefits of that society are divided. If the only mechanism you can countenance for dividing those benefits is by having lots of people work these demeaning and (apparently) unnecessary jobs - well, that's your view. I think there are better options.

Re:Common Sense

[jellomizer]

Because Macroeconomics is a complex topic.
Improvements in efficiency in general has a wide reaching improvement in the economy. While some jobs are lost new jobs are created. We can go back over a hundred years, of evidence of things said to kill the need for workers, only to have their jobs change and have the need for more people working.

Raising the minimum wage, will force some businesses to increase efficiency, however for the most part most companies including fast food places, have employees already above minimum wage. People with more money will buy more and expand businesses, causing more people to need to be hired.
So that entry job at your towns McDonald may get replaced with a kiosk, but with the community making more money chances are a Wendy's will open up near by, needing workers.

Then sometimes with improvements in technology there is often a renewal in interests in human skills. Think the Discover Commercial advertising its live customer service. The automated systems in their call center are at a point where it makes it efficient to have people back on the call centers again, because a lot of the humdrum stuff is now done by the web.

The biggest problem is the politicians don't want to measure their policies and adjust them based on their effectiveness. All this stuff I had wrote could backfire, because of other factors, such as a stagnate non-growing economy which the tradeoffs outweigh the benefits.

Re:Common Sense

[alvinrod]

I think there are a lot of people who want to make the world a better place, so for them the reasoning goes that money can be used to improve peoples' lives (true in a general sense), so if you give people more money they can use it to improve their lives and the world is a better place. They now think they've satisfied their objective so they don't feel too compelled to think beyond that point and most people in general aren't really good at sitting down and honestly dissecting all of the things that may be wrong with their thinking. Add to that a vague understanding of what money is and it becomes even more fuzzy. I suppose thhere are also people making minimum wage who would advocate for increases out of their own self-interest.

It's also not trivial to explain this as it relies on a lot of concepts that most people aren't familiar with and probably aren't terribly relevant to their daily lives so there isn't a lot of impetus to acquire that knowledge. You could probably ask people that if $15 dollar minimum wage is good, wouldn't $25 be even better and extrapolate from there. I suspect at some point their brain will start telling them that something isn't quite right, though they may not really be able to understand exactly what it is beyond an inkling that something isn't quite right. That line of reasoning does really cut to the heart of the minimum wage problem though as if you're picking any amount of money for a minimum wage and it's less ideal than some other amount, why aren't you picking the better amount? From there it becomes a question of how to figure out or calculate the best amount and I'm not sure if there's any agreed upon method of doing that. I suppose the free market crowd would generally agree that the ideal minimum wage is $0, but outside of those economic schools of thought, I suspect you'd get all kinds of different answers. Yet only one of them (at most as there is a chance no one is correct) can be correct so how do you pick which one to use?

Re:Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish my 15 year old daughter could get a part time job for $8/hr. It would teach her responsibility, she'd learn a little about business, and she would have money of her own she's earned. It would be anything but demeaning. Unfortunately those types of jobs don't exist anymore.

Re:Common Sense

[PoopJuggler]

Perhaps we don't need hamburger businesses to begin with. If the only way you can make money is by paying dogshit wages to your employees, maybe your business isn't very worthwhile.

Re: Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The automation has been progressing for over 200 years and will continue to. Slow progress to automation is good. Sudden changers to the workforce are bad. Raising the minimum wage quickly disrupts business, we'll see a lot of smaller more personal shops close down while the Amazons and Walmarts with deep pockets for automation will only benefit from less competition. It will lead to a hard push towards automation that will disrupt the workforce a lot faster and harder than it should have.

2) For people not capable of more challenging work, what do you suggest? Basic income for the masses to sit at home being useless while a small minority run society? It leaves the masses feeling disenfranchised, bored, and discontent. Check how that worked for Russia, not to mention how well the concept of a society with a huge non-working class has been explored in sci-fi.

Re: Common Sense

[Comboman]

People who "don't need of want" a living wage are free to do volunteer work if they need something to do, freeing up a paying job for those who do.

Re:Common Sense

[beelsebob]

Simple - while 10,000 jobs might go away due to this, 26 million people will be earning $1 more an hour, and as a result, $26 billion more is circulating in the economy, rather than sitting in a rich company's bank account.

That $26bn circulating in the economy creates *far* more jobs than the 10,000 lost.

That's why the economy in the states that have introduced higher minimum wages has got better, and why unemployment has gone down.

Re:Common Sense

[HornWumpus]

_Another_ thing Marx was wrong about. If a chimney cleaning machines exist, why aren't they in common use now? Chimney sweeps are well paid.

People that start their analysis with Marx puzzle me. Why?

Re:Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Different locations have different costs-of-living. Paying someone working in a burger joint in New York, NY a wage that requires a 2 hour commute twice per day is inherently unsustainable. If you want your Bigmac in New York, NY, you should expect it to cost enough that the workers can be paid a wage that allows them to live nearby. Instead, everyone expects a Bigmac to cost the same coast-to-coast.

Why is the concept of fastfood joints charging more in high cost-of-living areas so controversial? Why do those advocating the coast-to-coast same cost not see how inherently unsustainable that is?

Re: Common Sense

[Jhon]

"People who "don't need of want" a living wage are free to do volunteer work if they need something to do, freeing up a paying job for those who do."

You don't "see" it. I get that. Let me help.

A high school student doesn't NEED a living wage -- but it might need to WORK for extra money for gas, save for school, etc.

A senior citizen usually has income coming in -- maybe not ADEQUATE income so (s)he doesn't NEED a living wage -- just enough to fill the gaps.

A non-working spouse doesn't NEED a living wage, but the extra income might provide enough money to justify a few more luxuries (maybe a nicer vacation, new furniture, etc).

I worked fast-food when I was 16-17. I made less than $4/hour. I lived at home and the money was so I could go to the movies, buy comic books (I collected -- dont judge) and pay air fair and hotel bills for the few book and gaming conventions I liked. My parents couldn't afford to do that for me.

Hell -- I started when I was 10 delivering papers. $60/month + tips.

This idea that flipping burgers was a job to raise a family is stupid. Whatever minimum wage is COSTS will go up so that money buys you the same amount of "stuff" it did BEFORE the hike.

You want more bang for you working dollar? Do the following and you'll be far better off:

o finish high school
o finish college (or get a few years under your belt as a plumber or something)
o dont have kids before finishing school
o don't have kids before you are married

You do this and you are more than likely to live above the poverty line most (if not all) of your life.

Re:Common Sense

[mlw4428]

At some point I question this "common sense". My parents and my grandparents could live on minimum wage. My aunt put herself through nursing school and then law school on a minimum wage (at that time) job, had a car, could go out to eat on occasion (or to the bar), and paid for her apartment. My grandfather didn't make a lot of money - but he was able to have a house, a car, a farm, and a family which included 3 kids. Single household income. He was far from rich. What has changed? Why has it changed? There has always been a livable wage concept, it's just that Profit>People types of baby boomers have gotten to the point in society where they were able to shift that. Now you're "lazy" if you're a burger flipper. It doesn't matter if you put in 40 hours a week or 60 hours a week. You're still "lazy" and "deserve" to be poor.

No one is advocating that everyone deserves mansions and Lambos. But a roof over the head, food on the table, clothes on the back, a car if public transportation doesn't exist (or sucks) and the occasional entertainment night? That's not asking a whole lot in my opinion.

For reference my aunt made all of $2/hr wiping ass as a nurse. That was late 70s and early 80s. That's roughly about $7-$8 (average)/hr. She could afford her education, car, apartment, food, clothing, and everything else on a wage that people today balk at.

It's odd when facts don't meet fantasy and the facts are that the boomers could do this - they had living wage.

Re: Common Sense

[sexconker]

A machine needs a 0 wage, which a human can't beat and automation will continue to get cheaper.

Automation will get cheaper to setup. Run costs will be primarily fixed to power costs. Maintenance costs will gradually go up. Support contracts will go up.

Once automation is pervasive and most businesses can't function without it, it'll turn into "Pay us our quarterly licensing fee or your robots will go on strike.".
Imagine if McDonald's decided to fully automate their kitchens and gave the contract to someone like IBM or Oracle.

Re:Common Sense

[mishehu]

All over Israel the McDonald's use automated ordering kiosks instead of human beings. There's about 3-4 actual humans working in any given McDonald's branch. And I can assure you that there's no $15 equivalent minimum wage in Israel, yet this still happened, and it's what McDonald's USA has a wet dream for. It will happen, and it will happen a lot sooner than you realize, regardless of any regional or even national minimum wage.

Re:Common Sense

[dunkelfalke]

In Germany, chimneys have to be cleaned professionally by specially trained people - by law. Even though the law is long obsolete.

Re: Common Sense

[nealric]

Sure, not everyone makes wise decisions. Cold comfort for their children who had no choice in those decisions and get to live in poverty.

Re: Common Sense

[tsqr]

Raising minimum wages has the effect of raising actual wages for a significant portion of the population.

I guess you missed the post upthread from grimjester, citing the statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: "Together, these 2.2 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 2.7 percent of all hourly paid workers." Also, the the latest statistics on average hourly wages by sector showed no sector with an average hourly wage below $15/hr.

So no, not a significant portion of the population.

Re: Common Sense

[AuMatar]

A high school student working at a below living wage is doing a job that could be done by an adult at a living wage. Same for every other example. By paying these people less, you give the companies an incentive to use them instead, reducing the job pool for adults and driving down wages for everyone.

If the job isn't important enough for you to pay them a living wage for, then the job isn't important enough to society for it to be done.

Re: Common Sense

[Jhon]

"Cold comfort for their children who had no choice in those decisions and get to live in poverty."

Then they need to do a better job of it when THEY grow up and provide for their own children. That's what I did.

I was the first in my family to finish HIGH SCHOOL, let alone go to college. I paid for it myself while working and paying rent. Full time work, part time school. Started with community college then went to U. It took me almost 8 years to finish 4 years worth of school but I did it with zero debt.

Re: Common Sense

[king neckbeard]

Why not have those workers work for the hourly equivalent of a living wage, and simply work fewer hours?

Re: Common Sense

[king neckbeard]

Why not have them work for a living wage, but not work full time? They can get all of those extra things, and spend less time working for them. If they want to work more to occupy their time after that, THEN they can volunteer.

Re: Common Sense

[ranton]

A part of the population will be out of work. Welfare and taxation on the rich help to improve their lot.

But you miss out on having entry level jobs which help that part of the population gain the skills and work ethic necessary to get better jobs. I was a horrible worker when I started at the age of 15, and maybe wasn't even worth the $4.75 I was making (1996), but within a year my bosses had set me straight. It was an invaluable learning experience for me and I likely wouldn't be as hard working today with it.

Re:Common Sense

[next_ghost]

Because when you're dealing with complex feedback loops (and economics is full of those), common sense is often too lazy to finish even the first round of feedback, much less correctly solve the full recurrence.

Re:Common Sense

[CrashNBrn]

The US doesn't have student wage? Granted the difference between Canada's student wage and minimum wage (18+) is about the same it was in the 80's, $1.40 less.

Re:Common Sense

[king neckbeard]

You think imitating a simple machine teaches useful life skills? Weird...

Re:Common Sense

[Billly Gates]

Because in countries like Australia that already have $16lhr minumum wage we still see burger flips and a healthy economy. Not Venezuela and robots and order screens and non existent entry level jobs for any Australian.

The whole study is flawed as correlation != causation as another posters mentioned already. So the methodology is wages go up and automation increases in a time frame? Therefore it was the wage increase that caused automation!

Nothing to do with the introduction of PCs and inflation of course from 1980 on

Re:Common Sense

[HornWumpus]

In America chimneys are cleaned by specialists, no laws involved. If a machine existed, it would be being used.

They do have specialized tools, but so did the boys back when Marx was still spouting nonsense.

Re: Common Sense

[Billly Gates]

Yeah but those are part time jobs. Not 40 hours a week to give a little extra money.

Whether you admit or not guess which industry and only industry expanding during our last recession? SERVICE! Yes, people raising a family are taking those jobs as it is only one they can find. Yes company owners want everyone to be broke but them and race to the bottom so they can become richer.

The counter argument is in Europe and Australia you see burger flippers raising a family fine at $15 an hour and robots are not taking their jobs like slashdoters keep saying.

I use to be hard right myself until I seen evidence showing contrary. I think value a worker provides is much higher than the wage as their is a financial incentive by owners to underpay if they can

Re:Common Sense

[Errol backfiring]

People that start their analysis with Marx puzzle me. Why?

I don't know why that puzzles you.

"Das Kapital" has a few sections. The first, pompous theoretical section is all right to skip. But after that, he gives awful examples of the situation is his days, with references. Some of these references are government studies, which are now available on-line if you want to check them. This section really shows what the background was against which the book was written.

Also, the book describes the situation in the 19th century UK. Our economic theory is largely based on that situation, because it was so extreme. But that was what it really was: extreme. The reason to put goods over people in the 19th century was a simple one: the steam engine. A steam engine cannot be switched on and of at will. Yes you can stop the machine and let the steam escape, but it takes a night of burning fuel before the vast amount of water is boiling to produce the steam.

Other countries (the Netherlands, for example), were not so dependent on coal as the UK, and mainly used wind and water for their power. There is a big difference between the power sources: you can easily stop a wind- or water mill. It is not a coincidence that the steam engine was perfected in the UK.

It is the steam engine that has directly led to mass production and mass consumption. In fact, the British steam engines have disrupted world-wide markets, as the British traded (and exploited) around the globe. They had to. Their engines dictated it. It is therefore quite funny that modern economics are still preaching mass consumption and production, even though we can now use diesel power which is more powerful and again gives us the flexibility to re-introduce the human perspective again. In other words: you can easily shut down a diesel engine and call it a day, starting it again the next morning when you go to work.

Re: Common Sense

[sound vision]

Your implicit assumption is that people feel more fulfillment doing busy-work greeting people at wal-mart than they would, say, raising a family, or making music, or painting, or playing baseball. I don't buy it.

Re:Common Sense

[sjames]

I doubt there's anyone who doesn't see it. It's just that it's not the end of the story. For example, the figures from TFA demonstrate that 1% of minimum wage earners lost a job and the remaining 99% got a 15% raise. That's a massive economic win being reframed as a loss by cheap labor conservatives.

Now we just need a functional safety net.

Meanwhile, since automation is getting a little cheaper and a little better year after year, even leaving the minimum wage unlivably low won't save some of those jobs. Surely YOU can see that eventually some jobs would have to be done for ten cents an hour to make not replacing them with automation worth while.

Re: Common Sense

[sjames]

So where's your solution. If we don't do basic income and we don't do minimum wage either, that leaves a huge army of people with no legal means to support themselves. Since they are unlikely to all choose suicide, that leaves illegal means of support.

Perhaps it would be cheaper (and certainly save some lives) to hire them to not burn the society that cast them out.

Re: Common Sense

[Dorianny]

I am guessing as a High School student not needing a living wage you weren't working 40+ hour weeks. If you don't need a lving wage but want extra income you can simply work a Part Time job instead of Volunteering. Also please do realize that the government assistance to help those working 40+ hours a week and still belowe the poverty line comes out of our taxes

Re:Common Sense

[danbert8]

You think money in a back account is sitting idle? How do you think banks make money? Why do you think bank accounts earn interest? Banks don't keep much cash in the vault... It's not the same as cramming it under a mattress.

Re: Common Sense

[stdarg]

The people in those circumstances can/should rely on welfare rather than shifting the burden disproportionately to certain industries. Welfare is going to have to undergo some major reform to deal with automation. Basically if the price point of labor becomes close to $0 for many people, well, we still want people to work and contribute to society, so we need a way to give welfare to people who are working but not making money.

Personally I would love to have a yard care service for which I and others in my neighborhood pay a very reasonable $20/month, with the employees picking up an additional couple thousand bucks in benefits. Great. That's better than them getting the welfare and not providing the yard care service and me spending $20000 on a robot lawn manager.

Re:Common Sense

[sjames]

Chimney sweeps do use power tools (cleaning machines) these days rather than little boys.

Re: Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

And just like that you just eliminated 75% of all child births.

Because the jobs don't pay enough with a full third of all jobs paying less than $15,000 per year (that is full time minimum was and they pay less than that). Over half of all US jobs paying less than $30,000 per year. And over 70% of US jobs paying less than $50,000 per year.

The median personal income is only about $26,900 per year.

So regardless of their schooling and how long they put off having kids, they won't have a job that isn't poverty level statistically for the majority of people.

Telling them to not have kids till they can afford it is to tell the majority of Americans to not have kids EVER. The workers making too much isn't the problem, the lack of jobs that pay living wages is and it is getting worse. Their are alternatives to fix this like a Universal Basic Income or as some have stated a Negative Income tax (don't know much about that) or even the suggestion that the governments of the world force companies to lower their hours to count as full time and raise their wages to force them to hire more people but would still encourage automation and require it to be pushed further.

But eventually, something will have to be done because the automation is coming regardless of wages. Foxconn alone automated away over 60,000 jobs at a single plant and the jobs only paid between $1.80 and $2.20 an hour and it was still cheaper to just get rid of it. The sooner we accept that automation is replace jobs regardless of wage and adjust to that reality instead of fighting it, the better we can become trying to prepared and adjust to what is actually coming. Instead of making things worse ignoring the future as it gets closer and by many accounts is already here.

Re: Common Sense

[Jason1729]

Well I'm not paid $30 million a year by the government as a consultant to come up with solutions, but here's one off the top of my head...

Rather than force private sector businesses to subsidize employee lifestyles beyond what their work is worth, allow the employer to pay a reasonable wage for the work (say $10/hour, again I'm pulling numbers out of the air here). Then, use the money you'd otherwise waste on a UBI and welfare to top up the amount paid by the employer to a reasonable living wage (say $15/hour). There you go....reasonable expenses for the employers, reasonable income for the employee, and you don't have the majority of your population sitting on theirs assess doing nothing and living pathetic wasted lives.

As far as getting people's incomes beyond that $15, anything the employer pays beyond $10, you decrease the subsidy by half. If the employer pays $12/hours, decrease the subsidy to $4 and the person makes $16. If the employer pays $18, the worker takes home $19. That way you don't have a situation where employers are unable to pay between $10 and $15 and giving the person a $1/hour raise would cost the employer $6.

Re:Common Sense

[lgw]

Mussolini was a fascist. Hitler was a fascist. Stalin was a Fascist. Saddam Hussein was a Fascist.

You don't understand what "fascist" means. There are many kinds of totalitarians. Hitler was a fascist; Stalin was a communist; Saddam was an old-school dictator.

Everything you say above is true generally of totalitarians, not specific to fascists. It's an important distinction, because it reminds us that there is both a totalitarian left and a totalitarian right.

Re:Common Sense

[lgw]

I think $8/hour labor is just demeaning to the workers and to society, and should be stopped for that reason.

I hear this a lot. I seriously doubt that anyone saying it has teenage children. When you do, the value of that low-paying first job will be self-evident.

Re:Common Sense

[HornWumpus]

Even in Marx's day, chimneys were too small to actually send boys down. They used tools.

Re: Common Sense

[tgrigsby]

...don't judge...

Right back atcha. Wow.

Re: Common Sense

[tgrigsby]

I think what Jhon is trying to say is, "Make a mistake, pay for it for the rest of your scumbag little life, you loser. And your loser little kids, too." Because nothing says America like magnifying the sins of the parents so they affect the kids as much as possible.

Sure, the "stay in school and don't get pregnant" advice is great for kids coming up, but there's no need to assume they deserve abject poverty if they don't follow it perfectly. That's just being a dick.

Re: Common Sense

[Jhon]

"By paying these people less, you give the companies an incentive to use them instead, reducing the job pool for adults and driving down wages for everyone."

By paying these people more you are giving people incentives to skip school, have kids they can't afford and flooding the no-skill job market which USED to be for people entering employment for the first time. Then there's the entire inflation problem as all costs will rise and you have the same issue again.

Re: Common Sense

[Jhon]

"How much was that movie you went to see when you made $4/ hr? I'm guessing about or under $4"

$1.25. Movie prices have exploded insanely. The best entertainment equivalent for today would be Red Box or other rental service. About the same.

Re: Common Sense

[Jhon]

Yes... that's exactly what I'm trying to say.

Or maybe you should get your hand out of my ass and stop trying to use me like a puppet. By the way, you'll want to clean that sucker off well -- I've got a stomach bug.

There are solutions that don't involve hosing the economy or raising taxes on those paying them.

Example:

"Sure, the "stay in school and don't get pregnant" advice is great for kids coming up, but there's no need to assume they deserve abject poverty if they don't follow it perfectly. That's just being a dick."

Solutions:
o abortion
o adoption

Being a 'dick' is forcing the rest of the world (including your kids) to pay for that mistake. Want your kids to have a better life? Give them to someone in a better position to raise them.

Help should be available to those who fall on hard times. Help families with kids who end up without work. Families who lost a parent due to illness or death. Dont provide it as a life choice. Kids aren't toys!

Re:Common Sense

[sjames]

I'll bet they didn't use ELECTRIC drills.

Re: Common Sense

[Drethon]

A high school student working at a below living wage is doing a job that could be done by an adult at a living wage. Same for every other example. By paying these people less, you give the companies an incentive to use them instead, reducing the job pool for adults and driving down wages for everyone.

If the job isn't important enough for you to pay them a living wage for, then the job isn't important enough to society for it to be done.

So no such thing as an entry job meant for people to learn how to work so they can move onto real jobs? And we seem to have convinced businesses hat if the job isn't important enough to pay a living wage, it isn't important enough to hire a human.

Re: Common Sense

[Jhon]

"Why not have them work for a living wage, but not work full time?"

The argument was minimum wage isn't supposed to be a "living wage". That argument included examples of folks who dont need a living wage. The response to THAT was "let them volunteer for free". My response what what you posted.

You've actually contributed nothing to what was being discussed... You missed the entire point of what the minimum wage has been.

Re: Common Sense

[Jhon]

"Also please do realize that the government assistance to help those working 40+ hours a week and still belowe the poverty line comes out of our taxes"

Ayup. Very aware of it.

What's the solution? Creating more people who are unemployed making nothing because they were replaced by automation?

Re:Common Sense

[HornWumpus]

So what? Someone still had to go up on the roof. Someone still has to do the work. There are still no machines to 'wipe chimneys' as the OP/Marx claimed.

Re: Common Sense

[Evil Kerek]

Excellent post.
I've always said: Flipping burgers is NOT a career choice.

Re: Common Sense

[sjames]

That does tend to create a moral hazard though where we are subsidizing some of the wealthiest corporations in the world by covering a fair portion of their payroll for them.

But I will grant that it would be better than the current mess at least.

Re:Common Sense

[VocationalZero]

They do, but they are now called internships, and you don't get paid anything. Still better than working at the Taco shack because learning how to work a non-dead-end job is more valuable than minimum wage at that age.

Have her volunteer for the Special Olympics or something, then she will gain experience in a variety of useful business-related activities, instead of learning how to fold a burrito.

Re:Common Sense

[sjames]

So if someone has to turn the machine on, will you still deny that there are machines to do the work?

We also have changed chimney design significantly since the 19th century such that more elaborate machines and/or climbing boys are no longer necessary.BTW, sending boys up chimneys to clean them was actually a thing until banned in 1875 (just 8 years before Marx died).

Perhaps Dick Van Dyke has overly affected your idea about what chimneys and their sweeping were like when Marx was actively writing.

Re: Common Sense

[king neckbeard]

The argument was minimum wage isn't supposed to be a "living wage".

No, I get your point. it's typically GOP/Libertarian ignorant bullshit talking points.

Your fundamental claim is that not all jobs need to provide a living wage. I agree. That doesn't mean that the minimum wage shouldn't be a living wage, though. If people need extra income that is less than the cost of living wage, there are two ways to accomplish that:
1) Work full time for less than a living wage.
2) Work part time for a hourly rate equivalent to a living wage.

If we go with 2), then everybody who is working full time CAN support a family, or at least themselves, and people who need extra income can get said income, while having more free time. The only people that lose are business owners that can't afford to pay a living wage. and they DESERVE to go out of business.

You are cheapskate moron. Even if I was a millionaire or billionaire, I'd care far more about not having so many urchins, addicts, and crooks in the street than an inconsequential difference in my net worth that has no real effect on my standard of living, and probably not even the standard of living of my children or grandchildren.

Re: Common Sense

[CaptainDork]

What are these jobs providing unlivable wages really worth?

Apparently, some think they are worth taxing.

San Francisco Politician Jane Kim Is Exploring a Tax On Robots

Re: Common Sense

[Dorianny]

There is no easy solutions however one must realize that simply subsidizing wages indefinitely to prevent automation is a complete folly. At some point it becomes cheaper to simply increase the minimum wage, save on no longer needing to subsidize the retained workers, collect taxes on the newly created high-skill jobs and refocus that money to retrain and help those laid off to find new jobs.

Re:Common Sense

[JesseMcDonald]

Banks don't keep much cash in the vault... It's not the same as cramming it under a mattress.

And even if it were, so what? At least it isn't in the market bidding up prices on consumer goods. Locking cash up in a vault is basically the same as investing in the broadest possible market fund—the currency itself. Each remaining unit of currency becomes slightly more valuable for as long as the cash remains "hoarded". In a growing economy with a more-or-less fixed money supply, the return for setting your money aside and not spending it on either consumer goods or more specific investments is identical to the market's average rate of return, i.e. the rate of deflation.

The only ones harmed when you choose to neither spend nor invest—in the absence of any investments offering a solid return above the rate of deflation—are the tax-collectors, who take a cut every time money changes hands. Naturally they would promote a narrative which claims higher "velocity of money" as a public good, since increased "velocity" means more transactions and thus more tax revenues. Economically, however, investing money in below-average ventures is nothing but a waste of perfectly good resources which could have been put aside in hopes of better future opportunities.

Re: Common Sense

[daninaustin]

There are no wages for the automation but you do need to amortize the cost of the machine & service.

Re: Common Sense

[Ogive17]

Higher education isn't for everyone. I wish everyone had to finish school but that's not how it is.

Now we can either accept the fact that as a society we'll have to support certain people who cannot make a living wage or we'll have to ensure anyone who works 30+ hours per week earns a living wage where they reside.

Minimum wage has lagged so far behind inflation and it's no surprise the wealth gap of the country continues to increase.

Re: Common Sense

[HeckRuler]

this notion of any job requiring to provide a living wage is absolute garbage, there are MILLIONS of teens, seniors, spouses and people who want to work, who will work, for much less than $10/hr if given the chance, who OMG, DON'T NEED OR WANT A LIVING WAGE, and this economic activity is KILLED by minimum wage laws.

Just millions? Like 2? Because that 0.6% of the populace can kiss the ass of the 14.5% of America that live below the poverty line. That's 45 million. Did you pull that vague number out of your ass or are you going to cite a source?

Furthermore, do you have any idea how many companies and places of employment are exempt from minimum wage law? It's really just a shackle on big businesses. Small businesses are exempt. Unless you've got hundreds of teens you want to stuff in the coal mine or on a factory line, this law doesn't apply to you. And if it does, you really should reconsider trying to build your empire on the backs of children. If you're a business that did whatever work and employed kids and your business is growing, congrats. That's great news. It really is. But at some point you should probably start paying your workers like real people. And that limit is Half a Million Dollars.

Re:Common Sense

[HeckRuler]

Small businesses are exempt. If you don't care about what she's paid (ha, good luck learning about business other than the lesson is that those in power are screwing her over) then I guarantee that you could find somewhere willing to take on an "intern" doing it for the experience.

If you can't find that job, it's not the fault of minimum wage laws.

Re:Common Sense

[HeckRuler]

Of course there are exemptions, but good luck arguing that to the idiots who still don't understand the difference between a tax bracket, a marginal tax rate, and an effective tax rate. They'll SWEAR that their friend or co-worker got a raise which made them lose money due to taxes.

Re:Common Sense

[Actually, I do RTFA]

In general, if a business could afford fewer people, it would have fired them already. Demand is going to go up, not down, as consumers have more money (usually). So, they'll need at least that many people.

Now, there is a point where jobs turn to automation - and raising salaries does change one area of that. But automation has decreased by orders of magnitude more than prices went up to compensate.

Fun story, over the time period they studied, the actual minimum wage went down, once adjusted for inflation.

Re:Common Sense

[HornWumpus]

Big old industrial chimneys perhaps. A flue big enough for kid to go up would suck all the heat out of the house. You realize that most chimneys have multiple flues? Have you ever actually looked at one? That was even more true in Marx's day, when coal and wood heat was the standard.

The boy would also fuck up the flue lining climbing it. Chimney brushes are still mostly hand operated. I'll take your word that electric ones exist, but none of the chimney sweeps I've known would use them as, again the flue linings are relatively fragile. I bet the electric ones are liabilities.

Turn the machine on? I don't even know where to start with a statement so clueless. The work starts by sealing the fireplace, to prevent carpet cleaning bills in excess of the chimney cleaning fee. The work moves onto climbing to the top of the chimney, removing the cap, pushing brushes down the flues and inspecting. Spinning the brush isn't 'the work'.

Re: Common Sense

[Skuld-Chan]

Machines don't need zero wages. They still need maintenance and often rely on skilled technicians to operate.

Re:Common Sense

[sjames]

Actually, I installed chimneys and fireplaces as a summer job many years ago. NONE of them had multiple flues. Some do, but certainly not most. The chase was rectangularr and large enough to contain an old style flue, the actual flue was a double walled aluminum pipe secured with straps and firebreaks in the chase. No lining. No turns greater than 45 degrees no slope less than 45 degrees. But that's the modern form. There are also clay and ceramic flues out there, but those are also modern.

See here for a view of things as Marx would have known them. How do you reconcile that with your entirely inaccurate claims? It seems Marx wasn't so off base with his comments on chimney sweeping after all. If you read through the United States section, you'll even see a reference to one of the machines Marx was referring to. Read the references for more mention of the cleaning machines.

So, in this matter it looks like Marx was right and you are wrong. The answer to your question is that due to changes in the way we make chimneys these days, those machines are no longer needed. It's cheaper to pay a sweep well to do it with brushes, cloths, and often big vacuums than it would be to bring in and set up a machine. Doing the job without the machine no longer involves forcing children into dirty and dangerous labor.

Re: Common Sense

[LynnwoodRooster]

What is a living wage? What is a living wage in San Francisco, or Manhattan, or McAllen, TX? How do you set a national "living wage" that makes sense? Even the cost of living within a few hour drive can be dramatic, Making $50,000 in San Francisco is the same as making $20,000 in Fresno, just a 3 hour drive away. So how do you set a living wage?

Re: Common Sense

[HornWumpus]

That might affect the bustling San Francisco manufacturing scene.

Re: Common Sense

[king neckbeard]

You set a living minimum wage at the national level, and cities and states with higher costs of living raise their minimum wages accordingly.

Re:Common Sense

[jellomizer]

In a fast food restaurant they are multiple entry level jobs. Automation may take some of them, but others will still need to be filled by a human. So you may not be working the register, but you may be socking the garage.
 

Re: Common Sense

[LynnwoodRooster]

So the national level would be about $10 per hour because that's the living wage for Kennewick, WA. (there may be, in fact, even lower). So why the call for $15 hour nationally? Why even set a national level? Why not let each State and municipality decide to set the levels themselves, since the national level effectively does nothing?

Re: Common Sense

[dethmetaljeff]

So no such thing as an entry job meant for people to learn how to work so they can move onto real jobs? And we seem to have convinced businesses hat if the job isn't important enough to pay a living wage, it isn't important enough to hire a human.

This is my biggest problem with raising the minimum wage. Entry level jobs are just that...they're for kids who just got their working papers and want to put gas in their 15 year old Civic. The problem isn't minimum wage being too low, it's people wanting to do the bare minimum amount of work to support their family.

Re: Common Sense

[king neckbeard]

That source skews very conservative in what it costs to live. I've lived in one of the cheaper places in the country, and $15 is hardly more than it takes to not subsist largely on inferior goods. Of course, those estimates also assume someone single (presumably a monk), and some people have children. Plus, people in areas with low costs of living are less subject to exploitation if they can reasonably afford to move somewhere else.

Why not let each State and municipality decide to set the levels themselves, since the national level effectively does nothing?

Because this country is infected with selfish bastards that buy off politicians. These are often more effective at the state level. A decent national minimum wage sets a wage floor, so people aren't trapped. The reason states and municipalities would set their own wage is because their cost of living is drastically higher than the country.

Re:Common Sense

[Rolgar]

No, there is a minimum wage, which is why there is so much fighting about how minimum wage isn't a living wage, because the one wage is for everybody except commission sales people and some other exempt work. The minimum wage is largely for students, people with less than a high school degree, and people with no skills, including people with families trying to live at the poverty line. So, if you read the right stuff, people who don't want minimum wage increases say that it will price young workers out of the market, etc. Of course, if you set the student wage at 7 and a living wage at 10, you'll have people complaining that kids are taking the jobs of somebody who could be earning the extra $3.

Well, duh...

[QuietLagoon]

If the cost of human labor rises, then other types of labor may become more cost effective.

.
They had to look through 35 years of data to come up with that conclusion?

Re:Well, duh...

[dunkelfalke]

Not as duh as you think it is.
Just a few years ago Germany had no minimum wage at all. No jobs were lost since it was introduced even though many conservative politicians and heads of German industry prophesied doom and destruction.

Re:Well, duh...

[Anonymous Coward]

A few questions here since you left this so open ended as to warrant speculation...

How many years ago?
What was the average wage of a worker at that time?
How many people were making less than the minimum wage at the time this was implemented?
What was the initial minimum wage then?
What is it today?
What's the percentage of workers making minimum wage compared to your potential employment base?
What has the trend in unemployment in Germany been since this has taken place?

Aside from the obvious market and cultural difference between the US and Germany, I think you've also over simplified the "solution."

Re:Well, duh...

[HornWumpus]

Data to show 'No jobs were lost'...I call bullshit, there is no way to know. Anybody claiming to know with certainty, is just repeating derp.

You could disprove your claim by finding one small business where the owner chose to clean his own toilets.

Re:Well, duh...

[QuietLagoon]

Not as duh as you think it is.

It is exactly as "duh" as I think it is. If the cost of human labor rises, other types of labor may become more cost effective. That is what I said, and it still holds true. Where you went off the rails is to extrapolate my comment with your opinion that less cost effective human labor results in the loss of human jobs.

Re:Well, duh...

[dunkelfalke]

The unemployment in Germany is at its lowest for the past 20 years or so.

Re:Well, duh...

[next_ghost]

It is so crazy to see people advocate for trickle down economics when it comes to minimum wage.

Says the guy who just advocated for the real trickle down economics.

The turning point where increasing minimum wage stops creating jobs is when minimum wage workers stop immediately spending the extra money and start saving it instead. U.S. economy has workers with full-time jobs who need food stamps to survive. You're way below the turning point.

Re:Well, duh...

[magarity]

OK, then let's be like Germany, where higher education is FREE.

??? University professors in Germany make 75K+ salaries.

Re:Well, duh...

[HornWumpus]

Doesn't prove your proposition. Doesn't even address it directly.

Re:Well, duh...

[swillden]

Not as duh as you think it is. Just a few years ago Germany had no minimum wage at all. No jobs were lost since it was introduced even though many conservative politicians and heads of German industry prophesied doom and destruction.

It depends where you set the minimum wage. At one extreme, if you set it below what the lowest-paid workers are already making, then it clearly costs no one their job. At the other extreme, if you set it ridiculously high, it will drive massive automation, outsourcing and anything else that can be done to reduce labor costs... or it will drive companies out of business entirely, or out of the affected jurisdiction, at least.

In between is, in between. Economists have studied this question a lot, and the common view is that many economies have some amount of "slack" in their wage structures, and minimum wage hikes that just take up that slack don't generate increased unemployment, though they make other structural changes in the economy, such as excluding certain classes of very low-value workers (disabled, mentally handicapped, etc.) from being able to work at all, because their labor is simply no longer worth what it costs (Aside, my Downs' Syndrome aunt went through cycles of this over decades; she worked part time for a few years, then the minimum wage was raised and she became unemployable, then inflation pushed the real minimum wage down far enough she could work, repeat).

But... the amount of slack that is available is dependent on many factors, and one of them is the state of automation. As automation becomes capable of potentially taking over more and more tasks, the cost of automating a task falls and the benefit of automating it rises. The stituation we're in right now is that the cost of automating many jobs is still high, but falling. At the point where the cost of human labor exceeds the cost of machine labor by a margin large enough to cover the transition costs, the human will lose.

Arbitrarily increasing the cost of human labor will cause that line to be crossed sooner, for more people. The faster we cross that line, the more people we're going to have struggling to find a new place in a changed world. Automation is good; it makes all humanity richer, on average. But it's better if it comes a little slower, to give people more time to adapt.

Re:Well, duh...

[Major Blud]

Considering that modern Germany only goes back 27 years, I'd be hesitant to use that as an example.

How is this even controversial?

[ErikTheRed]

The laws of supply and demand have been well-understood for generations. Both ends of the political spectrum regularly enact legislation based on them (sin taxes, etc.). For some reason certain people feel that this one area "needs" to be exempt from what is basically a law of nature, because it's politically inconvenient to them. Ironically, it's the folks that tend to go around insisting that they are a "reality-based community." The pseudointellectual contortions required to do this are pretty funny to watch, even though they're wrecking the portion of the economy most important to the most financially vulnerable. Maybe the whole "Fight for $15" thing is just a world-class troll by the 0.1%.

Re:How is this even controversial?

[Comboman]

The laws of supply and demand have been well-understood for generations.

So has the economic concept of Externalities. If someone is willing to work for less than they need to survive, then they are obviously being subsidized somehow (living in parents basement, government food stamps & welfare, shoplifting from employer, etc). Minimum wage is a way to level the playing field and eliminate the need for these subsidies so the employer pays the true cost of labor.

Re:How is this even controversial?

[phantomfive]

It's not controversial among economists. Economists largely oppose it, and agree that it will especially increase unemployment among the youth.

The only real question (from a scientific perspective, not from a political perspective) is whether there will be enough other things in the economy to offset the negative effects.

Re:How is this even controversial?

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone is willing to work for less than they need to survive, then they are obviously being subsidized somehow (living in parents basement, government food stamps & welfare, shoplifting from employer, etc).

Or they're just plain desperate and/or have no other options.

Someone who just got out of prison is not going to tell a McDonalds hiring manager "Part time, minimum wage is too low! I want $15/hour, full time!"

Re:How is this even controversial?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the problems in the minimum wage discussion is that it's usually obvious what happens if you raise the minimum wage "a lot" and what happen if you raise the minimum wage "a little", but it's very difficult to agree on numbers there.

Specifically on increased automation, there are reasons to automate other than saving the amount of the wage that would be paid to the human doing the job. Automated processes are more reliable, can work 24/7, are more easily scaled up (e.g. if I replace a human service person with an app/web site, then many more people can be served at one time), among other benefits. From this, it seems safe to assume that some of the increase in automation can be explained by reasons other than the minimum wage being too high. What's unclear (and may be difficult to determine) is how much. Furthermore, automation tends to decrease in price over time, so if it's going to happen, it will happen eventually anyway; changing the minimum wage may have limited effect on when it happens.

Re:How is this even controversial?

[oic0]

Because they scream it will cost jobs, well we are already having to subsidize those workers with government aid to keep them alive and under a roof. Those companies shouldn't get to ride that subsidization train like that.

Re:How is this even controversial?

[rhazz]

It's not controversial among economists.

It actually is easy to find opposing viewpoints from economists, if you put the tiniest effort into searching. I would also note that the site you linked to has an obvious agenda against minimum wage. And while they didn't perform the study themselves, they did dictate the specific economists to send the survey to. Hmm.

Re:How is this even controversial?

[phantomfive]

It actually is easy to find opposing viewpoints from economists, if you put the tiniest effort into searching.

Of course. It is a political topic, so politicians will find economists who agree with them.

Whereas I linked to an actual survey, not random news stories (which frequently misrepresent science anyway).

Re:How is this even controversial?

[rhazz]

Of course. It is a political topic, so politicians will find economists who agree with them.

And companies with an agenda will produce survey results that agree with their agenda, like your source appears to have done.

Whereas I linked to an actual survey, not random news stories (which frequently misrepresent science anyway).

A random set of news stories carries as much weight as an unscientific survey given to a biased population sample. If you want actual surveys, there's a 2013 study on the Wikipedia entry for minimum wage showing 43% of economists agreeing minimum wage benefits outweigh the negatives (versus 11% disagreeing). Which leads me back to my original statement - it actually is easy to find opposing viewpoints from economists.

Automation is AWESOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that encourages labor automation is a net benefit to the world. That tech is the only thing that has the potential to fundamentally alter how the economy works.

And a fundamental alteration is exactly what we need, because the status quo is "a tiny group of wealthy at the top, sitting on top of a smallish group of workers living comfortable lives, sitting on top of an enormous mountain (80% of the human population) of people who suffer in abject poverty for their entire lives."

No amount of law, religion, or charity has made this balance budge, and never will. Labor automation is a game-changer. Sure, there is risk that it might make things worse....but it is a risk well worth taking given how shitty things already are.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[Tablizer]

Anything that encourages labor automation is a net benefit to the world.

"could be" instead of "is". The problem is that the benefits of automation are not trickling down in practice (other than cheap widgets and lawn-chairs). The benefits go mostly to the owners of the machines: it's becoming a winner-take-all economy.

I'm not a "commie", but this is just the kind of problem Karl Marx ranted about. I don't necessarily agree with his proposed solutions, but if some other solution is not found, then rioting etc. could lead to Marxism/communism, along with its down sides. Better to solve it smartly rather than let angry mobs "solve" it for us.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[MightyMartian]

It's called Universal Basic Income, because in a few decades it won't just be unskilled workers, automation and AI will be eating in to the more skilled professions as well.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[HornWumpus]

At some point the purpose of unskilled losers is to serve as a warning to the next generation. Don't make the decisions they made...

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[mishehu]

Not everybody is capable of being a skilled laborer or skilled professional.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[apoc.famine]

I've spent a couple of years supporting UBI here and elsewhere, but recently I've stated to rethink my position. We've got chronic unemployment for african-american men aged 18-25 around here. Something like 50%. No surprise, but that's the population that ends up with enough free time and desperation to resort to crime. However, we also have chronic unemployment for teens and young, non-college-bound adults in general. And not even the well-off, suburban white kids are immune from getting into trouble. Theirs isn't due to poverty and trying to claw their way out - theirs is boredom, pure and simple. Vandalism, arson, petty crime, drugs. Anything to break the monotony of everyday life. Giving people with this idle time and need for excitement more money but nothing to do doesn't seem to fix the problem.
 
Looking at the unemployed young folks in my community, it seems that lack of something to do might cause more problems than poverty itself. You don't generally get into a a fist-fight outside of a bar at closing time at 2am on a Tuesday when you need to be getting up to go to work at 6am. When 3 out of 4 of your friends are at work, you're potentially less likely to light the rubber chips on a playground on fire by yourself.
 
So while I still support the idea of UBI, I'm really starting to think that it's going to need to be make-work projects, rather than true UBI. That, or we need to pair UBI with a real culture shift where free time is directed at community and self-improvement, and come up with ways to compel this. The alternate is too many people bored out of their minds, who decide to make life interesting for themselves and others.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[HornWumpus]

A tiny percent is truly disabled.

Everybody else is capable of being a 'skilled laborer' etc. It's not hard. You show up, you 'slop paint' for eight hours, you go home. I was doing that before I finished HS. (I'll grant that the ones that can put down plaster flat as glass are truly skilled, that's a tiny %.)

The problem is a % of the population that only put forth effort until they find an excuse not to.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[HornWumpus]

Never answer false premises.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[MyNameIsJohn]

Your thought is correct in that bored people can get up to mischief if their energy is not directed towards something constructive or at least not destructive. This is a problem with people not knowing how to spend their time in a way that benefits or at least does not harm their own society, not necessarily the concept of UBI. The problem will be more prevalent with UBI, but so will other problems and some problems will disappear.

UBI's winning case is right here with the current practice of the benefits of increase efficiencies and increased profits being hoarded at the top. This will continue until forced redistribution of wealth is put into place. It is already in place in the form of taxes (to some degree), but as pointed out in many threads, taxes can be gamed and if not outright rigged or eliminated, so that those that are benefiting the most from a civilized nation and productive populace are those paying the least to maintain it. Something else will need to be put into place else the balance will skew and we will end up on a scale that teeters to one extreme then the other... never finding a good balance.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[apoc.famine]

I think where UBI shines most is in the inability to really game the system. Everyone gets the same amount, the same way. Paying for it, as you noted, gets tripped up by the same gaming of the tax system that has always gone on. It's looking like that is the only real hurdle to caring for society as a whole. Find the solution to taxation, and we then have the resources to fix everything else.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[MightyMartian]

In practical terms there aren't enough public works projects to make such a scheme viable. And why do you assume peoplenwould be lazy? I'd be doing lots of things if I didn't work, many of which wouldn't produce income, but allmof which would keep me busy.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[lgw]

In order to support UBI the taxation will need to be increased significantly. This means the rich need to pay more and business need to stop hiding profits with tax shelters. We may need to move to a system were business revenue instead of profit is taxed.

Ah, so a sales tax? Definitely a familiar and well-understood model. And, as a VAT rather than a sales tax, it's been shown to work at scale. Pity it's both regressive and unconstitutional in the US.

Re: Automation is AWESOME

[sound vision]

I've scoped this idea too, the comparison to health insurance in the US is incredibly apt. When you use capital as an intermediary, instead of directly providing the needs (healthcare, housing, whatever) that opens up an avenue for useless middlemen to start taking their cut (insurance companies, landlords). To me, thats fraud, waste, and abuse of benefits that were supposed to help the needy. That's the biggest problem I see with UBI, is that it still operates within that capitalist framework, with all its attendant inefficiencies. It would need to be coupled with extreme price controls for bare necessities like housing... But it would be simpler, and more politically feasible, for the government to just provide the housing directly.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Capitalism is breaking down. Not in the way Marx expected.

Capitalism is a feedback loop. The wage outputs become the purchase inputs. We also have people trying to lessen the wages, which would reduce the resulting inputs, which would cause it to fail. Up until now, we "fixed" that by having growth that exceeded the loss of the wage destruction. A sort of virtuous cycle.

But now, where is the growth going to come from? We had a big boost from globalization, but even China is becoming saturated. The earth can't take exponential population growth forever. This current papering over of the problem is "have people accept getting less, and blame them for getting less". You're lazy unless you drive for Uber where they don't even give you benefits. But even this will run out. Your auto-driving Uber will send money to Cali, but it will not buy from your local hardware store. Your McD ordering kiosk will displace a cashier but will not buy from Barnes and Noble (if they even exist then). We think we're being clever by cutting the outputs, but we're also reducing inputs. I have no idea where that will come from. We're not even asking the right questions. We're just "disrupt disrupt disrupt". what if we're discussing the foundations of capitalism itself? No one wants to answer that. Prisonner's dilemma and all that.

Re:Automation is AWESOME

[bingoUV]

Angry mobs are powerless today, and will be completely useless by the time the automation dystopia materializes. In any war, information about the enemy's movements, plans, positions , strengths is of utmost importance. The would be "angry mobs" are providing the corporations (Facebook, Google etc.) real time information about themselves, and equipping themselves with self-sponsored surveillance devices.

Already the governments-corporations monster has access to more powerful weaponry. The only strength in angry mobs could have been the unpredictability - which is vanishing very fast.

Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Lowering or eliminating income tax for those who make less than 25K would provide more than $1 an hour. Of course people would shout about losing income for the government. I think that the government needs to shrink anyways.

Re:Taxes

[Tailhook]

Lowering or eliminating income tax for those who make less than 25K would provide more than $1 an hour.

That's long been done. People earning that little have long since been effectively exempted from Federal income tax and most state income tax. 45% of US households pay no income tax despite the fact that half of those do have taxable income. And it doesn't stop at zero; with "earned income" tax credits tax liability goes negative; you tax the government. To go further you have to go after FICA, but that's difficult because the political fiction that SS and medicare aren't welfare programs is very important to statists.

Re:Taxes

[king neckbeard]

Okay, that's a bullshit metric. What you are really saying is that half of US households get income tax returns because too much is taken out for withholding.

Re:Taxes

[HornWumpus]

That's not what he's saying.

Those with low incomes get all their income taxes back at the end of the year, unless they claim extra dependants to prevent the withholding in the first place. Those with low incomes and kids get what they paid in taxes and SS contributions (FICA) back. (earned income tax credit, SS is theoretically 'not a tax'...because they say so.)

Unions also love min wage

[llZENll]

In a free market, demand is always a function of price: the higher the price, the lower the demand. What may surprise most politicians is that these rules apply equally to both prices and wages. When employers evaluate their labor and capital needs, cost is a primary factor. When the cost of hiring low-skilled workers moves higher, jobs are lost. Despite this, minimum wage hikes, like the one set to take effect later this month, are always seen as an act of governmental benevolence. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When confronted with a clogged drain, most of us will call several plumbers and hire the one who quotes us the lowest price. If all the quotes are too high, most of us will grab some Drano and a wrench, and have at it. Labor markets work the same way. Before bringing on another worker, an employer must be convinced that the added productivity will exceed the added cost (this includes not just wages, but all payroll taxes and other benefits.) So if an unskilled worker is capable of delivering only $6 per hour of increased productivity, such an individual is legally unemployable with a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

Low-skilled workers must compete for employers’ dollars with both skilled workers and capital. For example, if a skilled worker can do a job for $14 per hour that two unskilled workers can do for $6.50 per hour each, then it makes economic sense for the employer to go with the unskilled labor. Increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour and the unskilled workers are priced out of their jobs. This dynamic is precisely why labor unions are such big supporters of minimum wage laws. Even though none of their members earn the minimum wage, the law helps protect their members from having to compete with lower-skilled workers.

Employers also have the choice of whether to employ people or machines. For example, an employer can hire a receptionist or invest in an automated answering system. The next time you are screaming obscenities into the phone as you try to have a conversation with a computer, you know what to blame for your frustration.

There are numerous other examples of employers substituting capital for labor simply because the minimum wage has made low-skilled workers uncompetitive. For example, handcarts have replaced skycaps at airports. The main reason fast-food restaurants use paper plates and plastic utensils is to avoid having to hire dishwashers.

As a result, many low-skilled jobs that used to be the first rung on the employment ladder have been priced out of the market. Can you remember the last time an usher showed you to your seat in a dark movie theater? When was the last time someone other than the cashier not only bagged your groceries, but also loaded them into your car? By the way, it won’t be long before the cashiers themselves are priced out of the market, replaced by automated scanners, leaving you to bag your purchases with no help whatsoever.

The disappearance of these jobs has broader economic and societal consequences. First jobs are a means to improve skills so that low skilled workers can offer greater productivity to current or future employers. As their skills grow, so does their ability to earn higher wages. However, remove the bottom rung from the employment ladder and many never have a chance to climb it.

So the next time you are pumping your own gas in the rain, do not just think about the teenager who could have been pumping it for you, think about the auto mechanic he could have become – had the minimum wage not denied him a job. Many auto mechanics used to learn their trade while working as pump jockeys. Between fill-ups, checking tire pressure, and washing windows, they would spend a lot of time helping – and learning from – the mechanics.

Because the minimum wage prevents so many young people (including a disproportionate number of minorities) from getting entry-level jobs, they never develop the skills necessary to command higher paying jobs. As a result, many turn to crime,

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me until this:

The only way to increase wages is to increase worker productivity

Higher productivity creates a greater supply of labor, lowering wages in the process. The only ways to increase wages is generate demand for labor, or to lower the supply of labor. For example: one way to lower the labor supply would be to simply get rid of overtime exceptions.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Dorianny]

%30 of the entire labor market is low-wage service jobs. The idea that these entry-level jobs are just stepping stones to higher level positions is a complete Conservative delusion. There is just not enough jobs up the ladder for them. The vast majority will be stuck at the bottom their entire working life

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of crap. That rant makes very little sense and it shows who ever you cut and paste it from has never employed anyone.

The main premise that is missed is that there are both quantitative and qualitative measures for hiring someone. People are not robots. People have personalities and the ability to think in situations that automation cannot. The story of the phone automation system is one that businesses generally debate. Some businesses it makes perfect sense and there is no reason to not have an IVR. These businesses are generally 50+ employees. Those that debate it look at the cost of the IVR and say, wow, this is included in my pbx and has no net cost. I could hire a receptionist at $8 to $20 an hour unburdened and get personal service for people answering the phone. So it is not always driven by a salary.

A little more than 20 years ago I gave a speech to 500 people in the printing industry. I came from the computer business side. My opening statement was, "The computer industry is the Borg. We come into an industry and find where we can automate and give more benefits. Resistance is futile." Did people lose jobs because of the computer industry coming in and automating jobs? Yes they did. Some employees repurposed themselves and some went into different fields. Notice how I didn't mention whether they were low skilled or high skilled or minimum wage or higher wage employees? Because that is the other issue with your rant. Automation is like a disease. It does not know color, race, religion, age, mental capacity, earning capacity, education level.

Minimum wage when I was a kid went from 3.15 to 3.35 an hour. Just to think it has barely doubled in 35 years. It has not even kept up with inflation. What people are arguing is that it should have kept up with inflation.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Smidge204]

In a free market, demand is always a function of price: the higher the price, the lower the demand.

Labor does not, and has never, followed the principles of supply and demand. You wasted a lot of time typing out a thesis based on a demonstrably false premise.

That said, I'll skip right to the end:

The only way to increase wages is to increase worker productivity.

Worker productivity has increased steadily while wages have not. There is virtually no link between them any more. Part of the argument for increasing minimum wage is to correct this divergence.
=Smidge=

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Kjella]

So the next time you are pumping your own gas in the rain, do not just think about the teenager who could have been pumping it for you, think about the auto mechanic he could have become - had the minimum wage not denied him a job. Many auto mechanics used to learn their trade while working as pump jockeys. Between fill-ups, checking tire pressure, and washing windows, they would spend a lot of time helping - and learning from - the mechanics.

Sounds like you're thinking of a different era, I only know gas stations as gas pumps + basics like windshield wiper fluid + overpriced kiosk wares + hot dogs/burgers and maybe a car wash. At best maybe they have a spare windshield wiper and an emergency tire. Cars don't break down as often as they used to and you need so much special tools, equipment and parts to repair them there's maybe one auto repair shop for every 50th gas station. And either you go there with an appointment or you get transported there by road assistance, it doesn't have any synergy with a gas station. Even if you can find an exception I'd say in 99% of the cases you'll learn just as much about repairing cars at Starbucks/McDonald's, which is to say nothing at all.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[apoc.famine]

AKA the bootstrap and temporarily displaced millionaire delusion.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. And there are some plain stupid (not smart) people out there, not everyone is cut out to be CEO and that applies all the way down. Some people really realistically won't ever be able to do much more than stock shelves or serve burgers and some are actually quite content to do so. They still deserve to have a place to live and to eat.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[crafoo]

If a company cannot pay a livable wage to produce its goods and services it should cease to exist.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed about productivity - for decades it has increased while wages haven't. This is perhaps the biggest reason for the squeeze that workers feel today - inflation has continued to increase, very dramatically for some things (e.g. college tuition), while wages are largely stagnant. Higher costs with the same amount of money make it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the same standard of living.

I do understand the argument that increasing the minimum wage could very well lead to some companies replacing workers with machines that (sort of) cost less to operate. I say 'sort of' because today's electronics and computers are artificially cheap - they are made overseas in different labor markets where labor and environmental standards are much lower. If the electronics used to replace American workers also had to be made in America, there would be much less risk of job loss due to automation because the cost of the electronics would be much greater (and we'd also have the nice side-effect of more American jobs).

Over America's history it has instituted a minimum wage and increased that wage time and time again, and we have been able to do so while maintaining a vibrant economy. The reason that increasing the wage threatens jobs more so now than in the past is precisely due to what I've described above; free trade agreements force American workers to compete with cheap goods from low-standard labor markets elsewhere. If Americans hope to maintain decent environmental and labor standards, they will find themselves constantly thwarted by free trade agreements.

This is one of the few areas where Trump is right - let's renegotiate our trade agreements to impose tariffs on goods from other countries proportional to how much lower the labor/environmental standards are in those countries. That would spur the creation of new companies and manufacturing of new products in America. However, said tariffs should be phased in over time to allow the economy to adjust to it smoothly, else they would cause too much disruption.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[roman_mir]

Labor does not, and has never, followed the principles of supply and demand.

- labour follows the principles of supply and demand. I hire people in more than one country actually, I do that specifically because of supply and demand. I hire people in cheaper locations for a number of reasons, primarily because the taxes are lower in cheaper places and because there are fewer opportunities so people naturally do not expect the same level of compensation as in more expensive places. Thus my demand follows the supply - there is a higher supply of cheaper workers where I hire them and I pay significantly less for them than if I hired in USA for example. So you are simply wrong and you do not even bother explaining yourself.

You wasted a lot of time typing out a thesis based on a demonstrably false premise.

- you are also wrong on this, he didn't type it, he copied it from Peter Schiff's Europac site.

What is amusing is how your comment gained a +3 rating so far even though you have posted 2 totally false claims.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[HornWumpus]

About 2.5% of workers in the USA make minimum. You have to be a special kind of stupid to stay there.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[emaname]

Minimum wage when I was a kid went from 3.15 to 3.35 an hour. Just to think it has barely doubled in 35 years. It has not even kept up with inflation. What people are arguing is that it should have kept up with inflation.

Spot on!!!

Re:Unions also love min wage

[Stinky Cheese Man]

You're right. https://www.bls.gov/opub/repor...

The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 3.3 percent in 2015 to 2.7 percent in 2016. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.

I am surprised to learn that it is so low.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[HornWumpus]

And that's a misleading number. The 'or less' people are tipped employees, many of who take home very nice, largely tax free incomes.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[HornWumpus]

You're supposed to declare them, but in practice they declare the tips on credit cards and pocket the cash.

Re:Unions also love min wage

[HornWumpus]

Prove it. They don't declare zero cash tips, just very low.

Audits are shit at finding cash. Prove it.

That's exactly what the leftist leadership wants.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the surface, leftists say they support minimum wage increases because it supposedly makes low-end workers better off financially. The majority of leftists actually believe this to be true.

The leftist leadership, however, are not as short-sighted. They know that there are long-term consequences to economic distortions like minimum wages. They know that such distortions will cause other economic distortions, such as unemployment and an increase in automation.

That's exactly what the leftist leadership wants and needs! They need a large angry mob of economically-disadvantaged people to control. They want people who see themselves as victims. That's where the real power in leftism likes: pulling the puppet strings of large, economically crushed populaces.

Leftism can't succeed when the economy is strong. When there's a robust economy then individuals are empowered, self-sufficient, and can't legitimately pretend to be victims. That's exactly why leftists push so hard to distort and destroy economies. A strong economy with many independent and successful players is a toxic environment to leftism.

As long as there is something resembling a real economy present, we'll continually see leftists try to destroy it. As long as an economy is present, leftists don't have real power. Leftist ideology can't survive in times of stability, peace and prosperity.

More fascist news

[Suiggy]

Great, just great. Someone just got killed nazis over the weekend, and now we have the fascists coming out trying to scare us away from asking for a living wage so we can survive because it supposedly causes "job losses" and "automation". This is exactly what these nazis want us to think. We need to start removing these people from our societies permanently.

Higher wages drive innovation

[evilRhino]

Right now, the taxpayer is subsidizing these low paying jobs with welfare. If raising the minimum wage encourages companies to automate, society will be better off because it makes the inefficient jobs obsolete.

London School of Economics = alt-right

[Anonymous Coward]

The London School of Economics is just a mouthpiece for the blithering, tory, racist alt-right that want to see women and minorities kept poor and dependent. Their "study" omits inconvenient data to arrived at the desired conclusion.

I'm honestly a little shocked that the University of California system would even allow one of their professors to spend time with them on anything.

People are going to get paid either way

[FunkSoulBrother]

Either pay people a livable wage, or they will take it via legislation or angry mob.

Be careful of that calculation

[Okian Warrior]

We know how many jobs will be lost. Do we know how many workers will benefit from a $1 per hour increase? I think that number will be larger than the number of jobs lost.

Be careful of that calculation.

The justification behind Chinese off-shoring was that the benefits of reduced prices outweigh the domestic loss of wages. For example, the damage from losing one worker at $50K is more than compensated if 10 million people spend $1 less on some product. That frees up $10 million to be spent on other things, and the economy gets stronger.

The problem is that the benefits are not linear. You can easily see that by going to the limits of the policy - when all manufacturing is done in China and all workers are out of a job, for instance.

If you assume a fixed or shrinking pool of available jobs, then you quickly come to the point where there are more job-seekers than there are jobs. In this case the economic benefits can still be argued, but the cost of doing so is the loss of the $50K job and the extra burden of having an unemployed person in the labor pool.

It's not a linear function, and you can't rely on past economic studies that were done based on a previous historical situation.

So... be careful with that calculation.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[PopeRatzo]

Be careful of that calculation.

That's for sure. If you read the article (I know, right?) you will learn the methodology that these "economists" used:

1. Take a period of time when the minimum wage went up from $6.77 to $7.77, specifically 1980 to 2015.

2. See how many low-skill jobs were lost to automation in that time.

3. Assume that the automation was implemented purely to avoid paying the extra buck an hour to those greedy people making $7.77/hr and had nothing do with, I don't know, technological advances in automation.

4. Conclude that companies won't implement automation if we can just keep wages low enough, and that people would be better off if they just accepted their lot in life. Just think of how many jobs would be created if workers stopped expecting to be paid altogether!

If you think I'm kidding, read the article (and the linked "research" by these "economists")

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Anonymous Coward]

the "justification" for moving jobs overseas has nothing to do with it being "better" for *US* or the 'economy' as a whole than a wage increase.. it had everything to do with just being *cheaper*, period. companies are evil. they're greedy as fuck. they will choose the cheaper option 999 times of 1000 without any other considerations.

automation is coming, *regardless* of what the minimum wage is. because for many, many jobs, it is *cheaper* than people doing the same thing.. even at the lowest possible wages in the u.s. the companies don't give a shit about lost jobs if they can do or make more with less money, their bean counters are happy.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Rob Y.]

This. Squared. And as evidenced by the utter failure of many outsourcing efforts in tech, they'll even do it to the point where they destroy their companies.

If you don't factor in the short-range benefits to executives of the brief improvement to the bottom line - before the actual failure of the actual work starts affecting cash flow - you miss the true evil behind it. It's not even a matter of "business will do what's best for the bottom line - and no point trying to stop that". It's a matter of greedy individuals with no stake in anything but themselves being given more or less free reign to do their self-serving best.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Archangel Michael]

The rate at which automation eliminates jobs is not at all tied to increases in minimum wage, but rather in efficiencies gained by automation.

If I can automate a process, and save (eliminate jobs) labor costs, then that is what will happen. The wages are just function of that formula (as are other costs).

This is why you're seeing cashiers removed and kiosks being setup for things like ... burger joints. Raising the min wage just speeds up the process of automation, by making the break even point easier to reach.

Basic Economics isn't hard. What makes it hard are all the non-economic value judgement we place on things like ... employment. It is really hard to remove the emotional element.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[rahvin112]

Almost all these studies are gamed, it wouldn't be statistical evaluation if the authors aren't gaming the numbers by careful selection of data to eliminate data that doesn't go with the already written conclusion. The recent study on Washington eliminated 40% of minimum wage jobs by failing to count multi-location businesses for exactly this purpose.

How these studies are prepared is the author writes the conclusion, then goes to find supporting data. This is the antithesis of science where authors try to eliminate their own bias and duplicatable and verifiable results are a requirement. What you get out of these social science studies is what the author wanted, nothing more, nothing less. This is because social science isn't science regardless if it tries to call it such. Economics is the high anti-science of social science where studies involve more voodoo than science.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[GLMDesigns]

companies are evil. they're greedy as fuck. they will choose the cheaper option 999 times of 1000 without any other considerations.

AND

government officials always have the betterment of humanity in mind and are always good and wonderful and chose the best option 999 out of a 1000.

Just come to Venezuela and see Great Government in Action.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[danbert8]

I can recall from my school days that is exactly what "science fair" projects mostly teach. Come up with a "hypotheses" and then find or manufacture data to support your conclusion. Do you have any idea how many science fair projects I have seen where ethanol had more energy density (BTUs/gallon) than gasoline? That's what the kids believe based on the green energy marketing and that's what teachers should be verifying... But no, these projects routinely get evaluated well for whatever reason and end up at the state level where some judges actually know what they are talking about and ask simple questions about background research into the subject matter.

Even worse, pretty much every science fair project has to have a conclusion to get anywhere. Teachers don't let kids run an experiment where the conclusion is that the test didn't have any findings that support accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. That is not only a perfectly acceptable result in science, but a very good one to find. I encouraged this behavior in projects where kids "concluded" something invalid by running statistical analysis they didn't understand. Excel will give you a trend line even if there is no trend. It's hard to tell a kid their science project found nothing, but in science, that's how most experiments should end up.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[GLMDesigns]

Oh really. That tripe again?

Was the US like Somalia in the 1790s? Were Madison and Jefferson anarchists?

You can have rule of law; courts a government empowered to do some things (but not all things at whim) and not have anarchy.

Somalia has no rule of law; no agreed upon Constitution. You need to get out more: read the US Constitution; the Federalist Papers; the Anti-Federalist Papers; de tocqueville and others. A constitutionally limited government is not anarchy.

Keep battling that straw man brother it makes you stronger.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[alvinrod]

And as evidenced by the utter failure of many outsourcing efforts in tech, they'll even do it to the point where they destroy their companies.

But that's just the market at work. If outsourcing worked, we wouldn't have all of our tech jobs in the U.S. any more. Just because a particular company fails doesn't mean that the jobs are completely and permanently lost. Obviously that company existed to fill some need in the market to begin with or they wouldn't have existed long enough to even try outsourcing, so those workers will go to other companies or some might even form their own because that demand still exists.

If you think the problem exists on a meta-level where it's individuals tanking businesses for their own short-term game, then eventually companies will start to figure this out and adapt to prevent this from happening. That might take a little time, but everyone else invested in the business is also greedy to some extend and obviously don't want to see their value being destroyed for the sole benefit of one person. There's also reputation to consider as I don't think you can go around intentionally tanking companies for your own sole benefit for too long before people wise up to it.

Or to think of it another way, if you think all of these companies are just acting for short-term gains, why not try to identify the pattern and invest your own money in them so that you can capitalize off of those gains? Then you can use all of that money that you're acquiring to spend on whatever you like to make the world a better place or at least one that is more aligned to your moral belief system.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[ewibble]

There is a difference between automation and moving jobs offshore, one you have to pay the other country and you become reliant on there product, the same amount effort is expended just by a different workforce. The other you are becoming more efficient, you producing the same with less work. The issue then is more of income distribution, it may still be a problem but the solution is political one not a technical one.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[alvinrod]

People are greedy as fuck. How often do you pay more for goods or services than you think you need to or make a selection of one that's more expensive when you don't perceive any difference in quality between two choices? Similarly, I doubt you'll go to work for an employer that offers you less money if all other factors (e.g. cost of living, distance to work, etc.) are equal. I'm guessing that 999 out of 1000 times you don't do either of those (or other similar) actions because you're greedy as well just like pretty much everyone else on the planet to some degree. Since companies are just entities composed of several greedy people, why should you expect them to act any other way?

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[tbannist]

the "justification" for moving jobs overseas has nothing to do with it being "better" for *US* or the 'economy' as a whole than a wage increase.. it had everything to do with just being *cheaper*, period. companies are evil. they're greedy as fuck. they will choose the cheaper option 999 times of 1000 without any other considerations.

Actually companies are inherently amoral, not evil. For example, most companies wouldn't direct their employees to go out of their way to harm innocent bystanders. Companies generally exist for one purpose, to create profits for the owner(s). Companies can be good if the owner(s) or the customers wish it to, and they can be evil because the owner(s) wish it and the customers can't stop it (for example, in monopoly or oligopoly situations). Most of the time they are neither explicitly evil nor explicitly good, most of the time they're simply doing what their employees think will make them the most money.

automation is coming, *regardless* of what the minimum wage is. because for many, many jobs, it is *cheaper* than people doing the same thing.. even at the lowest possible wages in the u.s. the companies don't give a shit about lost jobs if they can do or make more with less money, their bean counters are happy.

Quite true.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[rgbatduke]

Even worse, pretty much every science fair project has to have a conclusion to get anywhere. Teachers don't let kids run an experiment where the conclusion is that the test didn't have any findings that support accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. That is not only a perfectly acceptable result in science, but a very good one to find.

Hear hear! I'm giving up a chance to mod you up because that isn't sufficient. This is all by itself one thing that is wrong with STEM training from the beginning. One cannot just build a telescope or Tesla coil -- both pretty ambitious, amazing projects for any science fair -- you have to have a HYPOTHESIS and you have to PROVE IT because, I dunno, null results are so boring and indistinguished that they will never win. Kids learn at Science Fairs that if they don't prove their hypothesis no one will look twice at their work no matter how nifty and then we wonder why twenty years later they are falsifying data or engaging in data dredging or cherrypicking to get publications to get tenure or keep a grant. We also wonder why we get a steady string of crappy papers on things nobody really cares about -- but which have clear targets likely of success -- instead of a few bold papers where the researchers took risks at finding nothing equal or greater to the chance of finding something. Those big, risky topics are career killers unless you are fortunate enough to have nearly independent "means" as research support.

Don't get me wrong -- evidence is key to directed Bayesian beliefs, and science should teach the importance of evidence. But the entire Enlightenment wasn't driven by hypotheses eventually supported by evidence. It was driven by bold, amazing new instrumentation -- for example, microscopes and telescopes -- that opened up a Universe of new data at the macrocosmic and microcosmic levels Pure observation based on these new instruments eventually LED to hypotheses, and as time passed the successful hypotheses were woven into an ever tighter tapestry of evidence supported beliefs connected to other evidence supported beliefs and the scientific worldview. This was equally so for most of the initial work done with electricity and magnetism -- people built nifty generators and studied the effects of electrical currents and then, eventually, built a mathematically rich explanation of the collective set of observations.

Can you imagine having to formulate Maxwell's Equations as a hypothesis ALL AT ONCE and then going into a laboratory to try to verify them? Or even something simpler, like Coulomb's Law? Hell no! Coulomb may or may not have suspected that electrostatics were going to be "like" gravitation (although Newton had no compelling reason to choose 1/r^2 for gravitation in the first place, lacking Gauss's Law or any equivalent thereof) but the evidence in favor of it was compelling and immediate.

Cutting edge real science has observations leading hypotheses -- as, if you think about it, it usually should -- more often than not. But high school science teachers and the founders of the whole idea of "science fairs" have completely lost track of this in their eagerness to teach The Scientific Method as religion instead of a practical methodology that -- eventually -- needs to be satisfied.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[ewibble]

Companies are evil because the system forces them to be evil. An individual can forgo money in order to do the moral thing, a company cannot.

Lets assume some body asks you for money on the street, you can say yes or no, its your money you can do it as you will. If the it was someone elses money you could not say yes the best you could do is ask them if you could give the money.

This is what situation a company CEO is in only worse, since the company may be owned by other companies or investment trust which cannot ask the true owners anything. The CEO of a company is obliged make the company as much money as possible, that includes paying the minimum amount of tax as possible, convincing the government to change as many laws as possible.

The fact that people are very short sighted and generally go for immediate gratification over long term gain is a different physiological problem

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[turbidostato]

"If you think the problem exists on a meta-level where it's individuals tanking businesses for their own short-term game, then eventually companies will start to figure this out and adapt to prevent this from happening."

Except companies do not think and do not figure anything out. People do. Executives do. And can do it -and will do it, all across the board.

"if you think all of these companies are just acting for short-term gains, why not try to identify the pattern and invest your own money"

Because he has no money. The execs and their partners do, and they do benefit from this behaviour. Imagine the worst has already happened and USA is finally a devastated territory with 100% unemployment, not a single company producing anything and not a single dime on its citizens' starved pockets (except for half a dozen of them that amass trillions). So what? They still can go to the (foreign) market to live la vida loca with their profits.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[tbannist]

Oh really. That tripe again?

What's the problem? You don't like examples of places where this is no government?

Was the US like Somalia in the 1790s? Were Madison and Jefferson anarchists?

Are you claiming that the U.S. had no functioning government in the 1790s? Is it your position that therefore Congress didn't exist and couldn't have passed a series of laws that came to be known as the Alien and Sedition Acts and therefore they didn't arrest and imprison people accused of sedition including a Congressman and newspaper editors?

You can have rule of law; courts a government empowered to do some things (but not all things at whim) and not have anarchy.

Sure you can, and next time you should lead with that. Skip the petulant child act and say forthrightly what you believe.

Somalia has no rule of law; no agreed upon Constitution. You need to get out more: read the US Constitution; the Federalist Papers; the Anti-Federalist Papers; de tocqueville and others. A constitutionally limited government is not anarchy.

Certainly true, but not actually germane to the discussion yet.

Keep battling that straw man brother it makes you stronger.

You ought to know, right? By the way that wasn't actually a strawman because you had yet to put forth an actual argument.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[bws111]

companies are evil. they're greedy as fuck. they will choose the cheaper option 999 times of 1000 without any other considerations.

Companies? How about consumers?

Companies used to manufacture in the US. When asian imports became available consumers flocked to them because they were CHEAP. Two particular glaring examples of this were consumer electronics and textiles. The US manufacturers had a choice: become as cheap as the imports, or die. Some went the outsourcing method and survived. Most just died.

I have an acquaintance who is losing her job at a retailer. Naturally, this is all the greedy retailers fault. When I pointed out to her that she buys damn near everything on Amazon, her response was 'well it is cheaper.' Remind me again who will choose the cheaper option without any other considerations.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[bn-7bc]

Hmm so school are not teaching, rhat a non conlution is a valid reasult, sounds like they are educating people that are easy to msnioukate, and allways expect a clear cut conckution, I wonder who that benifirs ... oh yes politicians, oh it sll mskes sence now, the are educating the next wave of voters, not the next generation of centrists

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Solandri]

The problem is that the benefits are not linear. You can easily see that by going to the limits of the policy - when all manufacturing is done in China and all workers are out of a job, for instance.

That's not what happens. The only way U.S. companies could move all manufacturing to China is if they're able to import and sell all those manufactured goods back here in the U.S. So in that scenario, the U.S. has no more manufacturing jobs, but has sufficient design, service, and other jobs to sustain the consumption of all those manufactured goods.

For the "all workers are out of a job" scenario you outline to be true, there would also have to be no manufacturing for U.S. companies to move to China. If that were to actually happen, we'd have a reversal - lots of idle potential workers in the U.S. means manufacturing wages here would drop below that of China. And manufacturing jobs would move from China back to the U.S. So the "all workers are out of a job" scenario can't really happen. Unless of course you implement a minimum wage high enough to guarantee that it's always cheaper to manufacture in China.

The economy isn't trying to "punish" U.S. workers. All it sees is a geographic wage disparity (lower wages in China than in the U.S.). It tries to correct this by moving jobs from the high-wage region to the low-wage region. This results in wages in the low-wage region increasing as the people's productivity there increases. The end-state is both China and the U.S. having high wages. Whether wages in the U.S. end up higher or lower depends on whether earlier wages were based on actual productivity (end-state wages are higher because of stronger trade partners), or based on the U.S. exploiting foreign countries (end-state wages are lower because the U.S. can no longer exploit foreign countries).

My argument against offshoring wouldn't be that it's bad. It's actually good (I don't believe the U.S. is primarily exploitative, so I think the end-state for the U.S. is an improvement over the current state). My argument against it would be that it's happening too quickly. Offshoring is fine, but it needs to be done slowly enough to give laid-off workers time to retrain and find non-manufacturing jobs. That would allow the economy to keep humming along despite the loss of manufacturing jobs. Not too slowly though, or you end up with what happened between the 1980s and 1990s - unions thwarted factory automation in order to preserve manual labor manufacturing jobs. So when cheap Chinese labor became available, the manufacturing jobs and factories moved to China. If U.S. factories had been allowed to automate in the 1980s, perhaps the overall cost of manufacturing in automated factories in the U.S. would've remained lower than manufacturing with manual labor in China, and at least we'd still have factories employing Americans overseeing the robots.

It's not a linear function

Correct.

• If you go to one extreme (no minimum wage), you end up with widespread worker exploitation. (Based on historical evidence.) And overall productivity suffers. (Evidenced by Ford's business booming when he set his wages much higher than the prevailing wage. Indicative that low wages were hurting overall economic productivity, and raising them increased productivity.)
• If you go to the other extreme (minimum wage higher than the average wage), you break the economy. (Based on Greece. Actually the economy will just devalue your currency until your fixed minimum wage equals the actual productivity of the people at that wage. So this can't really happen unless people keep trying to increase the minimum wage. Or in Greece's case, because their currency's value was fixed based on other countries' economies. OTOH if you try to fix prices to prevent this, then the economy grinds to a halt - nobody is going to sell stuff for less than what it cost them

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[DontBeAMoran]

For example, the damage from losing one worker at $50K is more than compensated if 10 million people spend $1 less on some product. That frees up $10 million to be spent on other things, and the economy gets stronger.

Then give that out-of-job-worker his annual $50K and you still have an economy that's $9.95 million stronger.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Jason1729]

Even worse, pretty much every science fair project has to have a conclusion to get anywhere. Teachers don't let kids run an experiment where the conclusion is that the test didn't have any findings that support accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. That is not only a perfectly acceptable result in science, but a very good one to find. I encouraged this behavior in projects where kids "concluded" something invalid by running statistical analysis they didn't understand. Excel will give you a trend line even if there is no trend. It's hard to tell a kid their science project found nothing, but in science, that's how most experiments should end up.

Not sure where you went to school, but it wasn't a very good school/district. In my science fairs (in Ontario) the teachers encouraged reporting unexpected or inconclusive results, as long as you investigate what actually happened, it's the best learning opportunity. My grade 11 Bio teacher wouldn't ever give full marks if nothing went wrong. My project was on starch content and distribution in plant leaves under different conditions, and I accidentally picked a type of plant where the leaves had a very glossy skin which made it hard to measure and get a conclusive result (after 3 months of growing the plants in different conditions). The teacher loved the fact that I couldn't offer a conclusion and I just had a detailed writeup of where I went wrong.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[d0rp]

Ironically, the title in the url (study-higher-minimum-wages-hasten-automation-job-losses) is more accurate than the actual title on the page (Study: Higher minimum wages bring automation and job losses). It seems reasonable to conclude that increasing the minimum wage will hasten job loses due to automation, but that's going to happen anyway.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[Anonymous Coward]

A large part of why that emotional element is hard to remove is people have been indoctrinated to believe their work is all they're good for. Many people lose sight of their identity and fall into depression without work.

Just as businesses need to adapt their policies to account for automation, so too should our culture. Is it really a worker's fault if a machine can do the job better? Culture has never kept speed with technology, but it doesn't mean we can't try to shed this idea that productivity is all humanity's good for. It sets people up for disappointment and failure. They put trust into a system that claims they'll always have a decent job if they work hard. That statement is becoming less and less true as automation rises, and people feel misled by society when they can't find work despite 'doing all the right things'.

I fear we've brought this on ourselves and the fallout won't be pretty.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[d0rp]

Even worse, pretty much every science fair project has to have a conclusion to get anywhere

While I agree with everything you said in regard to science fair projects, when I was in school it was a science and engineering fair. I built robots. I don't remember having to have a hypothesis, basically just a goal: I was trying to build something with certain capabilities.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[GLMDesigns]

You seem to think that an all powerful government is good and that corporations are by design bad.

Being for small government does not mean that one is for Somalia type anarchy - that is what I meant by straw man argument.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[CaptainDork]

Help out and leave.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[CaptainDork]

Agree, and I would extend the remarks to include shareholders.

Unfortunately, that's you and me.

We want asymptotic revenue over a time period of nanoseconds.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Rick Schumann]

people would be better off if they just accepted their lot in life

That's always real easy for someone to say when they're not going to be directly affected by it.

Let them eat cake!

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[TemporalBeing]

The rate at which automation eliminates jobs is not at all tied to increases in minimum wage, but rather in efficiencies gained by automation.

Well...not quite. The push for the $15/hr minimum wage has put a lot of pressure on certain industries, and some - the fast food industry - have come out and blatantly said they're replacing workers with automated terminals because of it since the terminals are cheaper, more efficient, etc. Yes, they've been evaluating the terminals for years, but they never had a major pressure to actually implement their usage until the minimum wage was pushed high enough that they couldn't afford not to move to the terminals.

Now that's not always true. There are plenty of Bank Tellers still working in conjunction with ATM terminal usage - ATMs didn't really put anyone of a job, just slowed down hiring. This is the more typical case, but when minimum wage is artificially inflated - as it has been with the push for $15/hr - it changes the valuation in favor of technology over workers.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[alvinrod]

Except companies do not think and do not figure anything out.

Then why do some companies go out of business, while others succeed? A company obviously can't be successful if it doesn't have intelligent people in charge making good decisions, but it's still useful to talk about this collection as a whole.

Because he has no money.

What nonsense. The fact that he's posting on a tech forum on the internet suggests he probably personally makes above the median U.S. household income or not much below it. He may not have millions of dollars, but if you have a strategy whereby you can always get the best return, he'll soon outstrip anyone else. Individual corporate raiders can't perpetually destroy companies for their own short-term gains because eventually their reputation for such will catch up with them. You can still argue that it happens, simply with new players who use the tactics, but assuming he can identify them he'll soon have more money than all of them because he can ride the short-term gains from that strategy indefinitely while the people actually doing it have a limited number of times they can do it.

Imagine the worst has already happened and USA is finally a devastated territory with 100% unemployment, not a single company producing anything and not a single dime on its citizens' starved pockets

I don't think this will happen in the U.S. as people are generally free to find new enterprises to engage in and ways to create wealth. You only see this starvation in places like Venezuela where failed socialist policies have punished success or taken away the means of production from the successful people that had a hand in their creation and maintenance. If free markets and businesses are so short-sighted and awful, why are they producing the best societal outcomes? It defies logic to look at the world and think that way.

But stop to think about it for a minute. If 100% of the U.S. is out of work and starving and willing to work for anything at all, wouldn't it be far cheaper for this rich people who have supposedly taken all of the wealth for themselves to pay people in the U.S. to fill the same roles that they would be paying other people in foreign markets to fill? It would obviously be cheaper and these people are clearly motivated by greed. Once again, this scenario you've constructed just doesn't make any sense or hold logically.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Rob Y.]

...because he has no money

How about because he's not interested in money for its own sake - and got involved in tech because he enjoyed the work and the challenges - before his bosses threw the baby out with the bathwater to 'improve' the bottom line prior to selling the company. And now he's too old to feel like starting over - since his job hasn't been completely eliminated (though the offshore team has).

But he still responds to posts like this, because he feels like the industry has become too inundated by money-managers and young turks who think they'll always be in demand and are too young to believe otherwise - despite ample evidence. He was quite in demand in his day - and still has a decent job and life. But the thinks he industry is in serious trouble - like the rest of our winner-take-all economy...

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[bondsbw]

Similarly, verifying results of other research is another necessary part of the scientific process, but it too is boring and rarely happens.

And of course that is the case. The interesting hypothesis is that a paper contains mistakes or falsified results. But if it were properly peer reviewed, this would be unlikely and the result wouldn't be worth much in today's scientific atmosphere.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Rob Y.]

You guys that think the market always works its magic eventually - and suggest stuff like 'If you know so much, why not try beating them at their own game' - always seem to miss the obvious point that there's more to life than money and winning. And The Market is a grubby little psychopath that we might not want to emulate in our personal lives...

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[daninaustin]

Increased minimum wage in one region will likely increase automation in areas that do not increase the minimum wage since it will accelerate technology related to automation.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[JesseMcDonald]

I would hypothesize that this point occurs when the minimum wage is just very slightly below the actual productivity of the people receiving that wage. Unfortunately, minimum useful productivity levels differ across different industries. ... So I don't think we can ever really achieve this unless every possible job in every possible location has a different minimum wage. ... Instead, for the sake of simplicity we implement one minimum wage.

That's a good start, but there is a rather good approximation at hand for "the actual productivity of the people receiving that wage": the pay the employee is able to negotiate in a free market. If you use that approximation, of course, then the ideal "minimum wage" as you defined it would always be slightly below the wage the employee is actually receiving, and would thus have no effect and might as well not exist at all.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[CrimsonAvenger]

The rate at which automation eliminates jobs is not at all tied to increases in minimum wage, but rather in efficiencies gained by automation.

True enough.

When cost of a worker increases, and cost of automation decreases, at some point the lines cross, and the automation is cheaper than the worker.

Buh-bye to the worker then.

What's happening now is that automation is reaching the point of "good enough", and the cost of workers is increasing as a matter of law.

As time passes, more and more jobs are going to be obsoleted by automation (not a new thing - once upon a time, things were moved in wagons, requiring one driver per, then the trains came along and 500 wagons were replaced by one train.). And, at the same time, jobs that we never conceived of will appear (who would have suspected, looking at the Wright Flyer on its first flight, the Air Traffic Controllers Union?)....

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[kenh]

Enron employees by and large invested the vast majority of their retirement funds in their employer's stock. That's a mistake. Your retirement savings are a cushion for when you are no longer employed, be it retirement or unemployment.

Florida and Arizona (and a few other states) are full of happy retirees cashing pension checks from their former employers.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Uberbah]

Companies? How about consumers?

What about them.

When asian imports became available consumers flocked to them because they were CHEAP.

And because Wal-Mart would throw your American ass out the door if your product was a nickle more than the Chinese import.

Remind me again who will choose the cheaper option without any other considerations.

Remind me again when consumers developed a hive mind, and can change market forces through sheer force of will. If your friend works retail, it means your friend doesn't make much money. Expecting people without much money to sacrifice out of some airs of moral superiority you've pushed on to them is snobby elitism.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Uberbah]

You'll tell us they didn't do Socialism correctly. Somehow with all the price controls, nationalizing industries, taking over private property, goon squads intimidating the population, that toilet paper, gasoline (even with gigantic natural resources to produce it), and bread are in short supply causing a miserable existence for the starving population (excepting those in the government elite of course).

Oh, blow it out your ass, capitalist gaslighter. There are overt regime change efforts from the State Department and covert efforts from the CIA. And Venezuela's economy is better on all fronts after Chavez than it was before it.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[Uberbah]

You seem to think that an all powerful government is good and that corporations are by design bad.

You seem to be a fan of straw men.

Being for small government does not mean that one is for Somalia type anarchy

Depends on what you mean by "small". Typically, that means that the government does exactly what selfish, self-centered, shortsighted Libertarians think it should do for them, and not one iota more.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[LynnwoodRooster]

China didn't automate for a LONG time because wages were cheaper than robots. Vietnam has not automated because labor is cheaper than robots - or labor in China. If there's no economic pressure on wages, there's precious little reason to automate many jobs. Cheaper to hire 30 people instead of buying 3 robots. Literally.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[LynnwoodRooster]

Hmmm... Zimbabwe fell apart after Mugabe nationalized much of the economy. Pinochet created the Miracle of Chile when he specifically privated most of the nation-owned industries and implemented the free market concepts of Friedman and others, Mexico is highly communist (much like China, in that the State owns the biggest industries). Seems that the failures are all in line with Venezuela - when the Government ends up dictating and controlling the economy - it pretty much stumbles and falls.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[gordguide]

Be careful of that calculation.

That's for sure. If you read the article (I know, right?) you will learn the methodology that these "economists" used:

1. Take a period of time when the minimum wage went up from $6.77 to $7.77, specifically 1980 to 2015.

2. See how many low-skill jobs were lost to automation in that time.

3. Assume that the automation was implemented purely to avoid paying the extra buck an hour to those greedy people making $7.77/hr and had nothing do with, I don't know, technological advances in automation.

4. Conclude that companies won't implement automation if we can just keep wages low enough, and that people would be better off if they just accepted their lot in life. Just think of how many jobs would be created if workers stopped expecting to be paid altogether!

If you think I'm kidding, read the article (and the linked "research" by these "economists")

You've got the salient point.

Automation has been going on pretty much consistently for a while now, and when you automate a plant, you replace x number of low-skilled workers with fewer, higher skilled workers.

What is missed, or what is blamed on minimum wage increases, is that the road to future manufacturing jobs is through automation. If businesses avoid automation, they will find they cannot compete and will disappear, they no longer will be viable enterprises.

Employees and employers must embrace automation, accept that this means fewer workers in a given enterprise, and work to increase the number of manufacturers, not to attempt to maintain the same number of manufacturers and the same number of staff at the plant. Failure to do so will kill the manufacturing sector, not maintain it.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[fluffernutter]

I'm not as greedy as fuck. If I found a bag in the street containing a million dollars and I knew it was totally anonymous, I would still try to get it to the correct owner. So please don't include me in your broad brush stroking.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[HornWumpus]

It's not quite that simple. At this point, most 'robots' are things like CNC milling machines/Lathes/EDMs/surface grinders/laser cutters/part placers etc.

In most cases you still have to locate a good manual machine for each worker to use vs. one CNC that runs almost 24x7 and doesn't fuck up nearly as much. Of course when they do fuckup, they wreck parts until they trip a failsafe or somebody notices.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[fluffernutter]

The retailer is the only one making a conscientious decision here. A million detached consumers can't be making any kind of decision collectively.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[HornWumpus]

Funny, your definition of 'small government' is exactly the definition of 'bloated government'. Except replace 'libertarian' with 'socialist'.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[HornWumpus]

When are you moving?

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[KGIII]

You've never been there, have you? Somalia is full of government. Just because you don't recognize them as legitimate doesn't mean the people aren't governed. They have an excess of government. You might know them as warlords.

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[GLMDesigns]

Unlike what the wonderful altruistic, forward-thinking Socialists have done in Venezuela?

Oh. Right. That wasn't TRUE socialism. Gotcha.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[LynnwoodRooster]

I'm thinking things as simple as coil winders. Any electric motor (and I've seen just about every possible motor purposed for that) can be used for manual winders. Sorting tables. Shaker tables to align small components - instead of doing it by hand. Speaker assembly used to be exclusively hand-built, now automation is creeping in not because of quality but because of cost. At least that's been my experience dealing with Chinese manufacturing over the last 18 years (not to mention living in China for 6 of those years).

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[PopeRatzo]

The minimum wage was NOT 6.77 in 1980.

Hey, you're right! The actual minimum wage in 1980, adjusted for inflation, was $8.79.

https://splicer.com/2013/12/10...

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[bws111]

They don't have to be making a 'decision'. But their collective actions certainly influence what happens to the retailer, to a much greater extent than the retailers own decisions do.

Of course some people find it much easier to assign blame to someone else rather than look in the mirror.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Uberbah]

Education, poverty, unemployment, health care are all better after Chavez nationalized the oil industry and used its profits to improve the lives of the common people instead of the pocketbooks of the ultrarich

Facts are stubborn things.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[Uberbah]

When are you moving?

Maybe after the CIA gives up on formenting violent unrest as a pretext for regime change. When are you?

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[samwichse]

I mean, you realize your reply consists of two sentences: One setting up your own straw man, and the other complaining that the parent is setting up a straw man.

LOL

Re: Be careful of that calculation

[GLMDesigns]

Did you (or the OP) not say that corporations were evil. Did you not write that I should be in favor of places with NO government such as Somalia?

That is what I replied to: Being for small, constitutionally limited government does not mean that one is for Somalia type anarchy.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[turbidostato]

"Except companies do not think and do not figure anything out.

Then why do some companies go out of business, while others succeed?"

What are you implying? that turtles or sharks think? Because, you see, they have been around much, really much longer than any company.

"A company obviously can't be successful if it doesn't have intelligent people in charge"

Are you sure? Why the same can't be said about turtles and sharks, then? And then again, what does it mean "intelligent" within this context and, if these people are so intelligent, whose interest are they supposed to put in front?

"Because he has no money.

What nonsense. The fact that he's posting on a tech forum on the internet suggests he probably personally makes above the median U.S. household income"

That's "no money" for the context of this conversation. That's why entrepeneurs require VC money -because they don't have it. And depending on VC means you are to make happy VC owners, not consumers. Heck, look at all those companies valued in the billions: how many of them are making hard cash? -even Amazon is making about a meagre 1%, and that's after billions have been sunk on it.

"I don't think this will happen in the U.S. as people are generally free to find new enterprises to engage in and ways to create wealth. You only see this starvation in places like Venezuela where failed socialist policies have punished success"

Now I see where you are coming.

"If 100% of the U.S. is out of work and starving and willing to work for anything at all, wouldn't it be far cheaper for this rich people who have supposedly taken all of the wealth for themselves to pay people in the U.S. to fill the same roles that they would be paying other people in foreign markets to fill?"

Yes. For that to happen USA would just need to be liminary above current average China levels (or not even that: South America and, specially, Africa come before). And the 0.001% trillionaires (or even less, remember, right now just 8, like in E-I-G-H-T, persons amass as much wealth as the bottom 50%; thats like 1 against 400.000.000) would be so much happy.

Re:Be careful of that calculation

[fluffernutter]

It's worse to blame the people who have no power to change anything.

Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Because management never considered automation before talk about hiking the minimum wage started.....

Automation is going to happen regardless.

Raising minimum wage doesnt help

[night_flyer]

I'm old enough to remember living on minimum wage. and living through two hikes in the 90s

the first hike we lost health insurance, the second hike we lost other benefits

At the same time prices did go up, so it didn't help those on minimum wage, they stayed about even. The "rich" were not adversely affected by the increase, but the middle class were hurt because of the increased prices on almost everything, they didn't get an automagic raise.

Re:Raising minimum wage doesnt help

[fodder69]

Bullshit. You 100% did not get health insurance at you 4.35 an hour job. And what other benefits did you lose?

Re:Raising minimum wage doesnt help

[HornWumpus]

I bet monthly birth control costs were lower than the insurance co-pay.

Unlivable

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't supposed to be providing a living wage. They are entry-level jobs. They are *supposed* to be filled by college students and people just getting started in the work force.

Once you increase the cost of those jobs, the value proposition changes, and they aren't "entry level" anymore. Most employers won't think twice about hiring someone at $4 to clean up a restaurant. If you have to pay them $15/hour, then they are going to need more value out of them. They are probably going to have the waiters and line cooks start cleaning up during their shift, and eliminate the position of cleaning person. Or they are going to hire a company to come in and clean up at night for $20 instead of paying someone $15 an hour all day.

Know who is going to get hurt the worst? Lousy employees making minimum wage. When it takes ten minutes for someone at McDonald's to get me an iced tea, that person isn't going to have a job at $15/hour. It might be worth it to hire them at $8/hour, but nobody is going to hire someone who performs at that level for $15/hour.

In Canada already happening

[evolutionary]

We are about to increased our minimum wage from $11.40 to $15. Restaurants are openly declaring significant layoffs. McDonald's is using Kiosks, and supermarkets in Toronto has started using a lot of self-serve checkout booths. in Ontario, we may also have universal minimal income doing as well (being discussed). It's going to be an interesting shift.

Apparently the magic number is around $30-40k/year salary when managers start considering replacing those employees with robots and/or AI. People in this salary area are most likely to be replaced by automation, or possibly an AI. We'll see how this pans out, but I'm a little worried the AI (not quite working in self-driving cars yet. :D)

Amazon is certainly driving the robotic force forward. I saw a sign near Chicago announcing they are hiring for the new Amazon warehouse there, but that is probably just to get started with transition team, and after the robot force is in full force. I'm guessing 12-18 months before a portion of the new hires are out of work due to increased automation.( A guess, but hey why now).

And this is news because ??

[nomad63]

Simple economic principle. If two entities are doing the same exact thing with the same quality, use the one which costs you less. Automation is going cheaper and more accurate everyday, while the states like mine, i.e. California, think that flipping burgers at MickeyD's should be treated as careers and raise the pay rates for jobs, which were supposed to be summer jobs for kids on vacation. If you are 30 and working at a burger joint for minimum wage, regardless how good that minimum wage rate is, you need to re-evaluate your life and see how you can improve yourself, instead of relying on others to foot the bill for your poor choices. Sorry for you, but it is the truth.

Re:And this is news because ??

[Tablizer]

If you are 30 and working at a burger joint for minimum wage, regardless how good that minimum wage rate is, you need to re-evaluate your life and see how you can improve yourself

I'm not sure that solution scales. As a thought experiment, suppose a sexy genie blinked her eyes and everybody had a PhD education. That still wouldn't mean there's enough openings for advanced jobs. You'd end up with PhD's mopping the floors. (Maybe all the PhD's together would eventually invent true AI, but that's a whole other chapter.)

It reminds me of the joke that I don't have to outrun the bear to survive, only outrun the person next to me.

Re:And this is news because ??

[HornWumpus]

At least half of PhDs are unqualified for anything but teaching the subject they got a PhD in. They're already pushing mops. Even technical PhDs often end up slinging code.

I'd ask the sexy genie to give them all a work ethic instead.

I advocate ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live, $15/hour is still too low to live hear. (A one bedroom shit apartment is over a $1,100 a month) What folks do is commute an hour or more one way from the poor areas. So, two hours a day is just traveling to and from the job. Plus work the 8+ hours and try to do the things that one has to do to live.

That's a shitty life. But they do it because there's just Walmart as an employer and some small businesses that have no job openings.

Yeah yeah yeah, they made "poor life choices" - they should have went to medical school.

See, the trouble with our society is that a person's worth is based upon their economic value. Can't make a living with the intelligence you are stuck with? Well, you're stuck as a poor slob eeking out enough to eat - just a like a Third World country,

Re:I advocate ....

[HornWumpus]

Your Mama thinks you are worth more than your 'economic value', but I bet Dad knows better.

Re:I advocate ....

[Anonymous Coward]

You are suggesting people with money have it because they won the intelligence/parents lottery. What about hard work? Maybe not everyone can go to medical school, but I believe anyone that doesn't have a severe mental disability can find a way to make more than minimum wage if they work hard.

Re:I advocate ....

[magarity]

the trouble with our society is that a person's worth is based upon their economic value

A common misconception I see all the time. If this were true there would be no social assistance or public services of any kind. But this is not the case because all people have personal worth. It's each person's economic contribution and therefor their economic worth that varies wildly.

Re:I advocate ....

[Bob the Super Hamste]

A lot of it is poor life choices but not how you are portraying it. Take 3 of my wife's cousins who are all siblings. One is an artist, one is a fitness trainer and does self help books/programs, and the other is a motivational speaker. On the surface one would expect that the fitness trainer would be doing reasonably well, the motivational speaker exceptionally well (why else would you hire them), and the artist eating ramen for 89 meals each month. This is just with the knowledge of their chosen professions. Add in that the artist does not have a college degree while the other 2 do in something that was related to their professions and it really seems like that should be the case.

However the one that is successful in that group is the one who is the artist. Up until a couple of years ago the artist exclusively supported them self by painting, that is until purchasing (outright bought with money saved from painting) a building and turning it into a gallery to sell their works as well as others and is now doing very well. The other 2 cousins are living in section 8 housing and on as much assistance as they can get to survive. The biggest difference is that the artist actually works hard and will always put in at least a 40 hour work week unlike the other 2 who are lucky to crack 10. Even on vacation the artist works, just not as much and what is created is mostly studies to be used for creating finished pieces when vacation is done. Also the other 2 have bounced between things and half assed it each time thinking it would be a path to easy riches and not putting in the hard work.

Re:I advocate ....

[Serge_Tomiko]

Because intelligence is hereditary. Hard work has nothing to do with it.

The side not addressed

[dirk]

I think there is at least some truth to this study. It does make sense that businesses will automate whatever they can and raising the minimum wage may hasten that. But the thing not talked about is that as time goes on these technologies will come down in price and be cheaper than the current minimum wage and businesses will automate then anyway. So yes, it may hasten it a little bit, it certainly isn't the reason businesses are automating. So the choice is basically to keep the minimum wage where it is and have these jobs for an extra couple years while people still make less than they need to live or to raise the minimum wage and hasten the loss of these jobs but get everyone else closer to a wage they can survive on. If we wait, businesses will still save money with automation and will save money by continuing to pay wages people can't live on.

What needs to be addressed is how to help everyone who is pushed out of their job via automation. There needs to be some type of job training or something to help people adjust to the new economy, but that isn't happening. No matter what we do, people are going to lose their job to automation, it is just a matter of when. I think we should at least make sure that the people who don't lose their job to automation make enough money to live on.

Re:The side not addressed

[PoopJuggler]

You're absolutely right, but the problem is that the Republicans don't want to train or educate because they need unskilled workers to exploit to keep themselves rich. Instead of investing in coal and manufacturing, we should be investing in education, science and technology, because those are the things that drive a country forward, not coal mining. Automation is clearly the future, so we should be training roboticists, machinists and engineers otherwise some other enterprising country is going to take the initiative and do it, then they'll be leading the pack and we'll just be obsolete.

Re:The side not addressed

[avandesande]

Half of the population have an IQ of less than 100. What are you going to train these people to do that can't be automated?

Re:The side not addressed

[apoc.famine]

Go to open mic nights in coffee shops and perform slam poetry and crappy indie rock? Hot chili eating contests? How about the Red Bull thing where they jump off a pier into the ocean riding ridiculous things?
 
There are a lot of things that can't be automated in the world!
 
Or were you asking about profitable things that benefit society? If that's what you were asking about, I've got nothing, really. Best I can come up with is make-work projects involving community beautification, child care, education, art, etc. Nothing that can turn a profit and be self-funding, but things that could benefit society, provided they were government funded.

Re:The side not addressed

[alvinrod]

First of all half of the population will always have an IQ less than 100 because of how IQ is defined and calculated, but that doesn't mean that an IQ of 100 today will be the same as an IQ of 100 in 20 years. The Flynn effect is something that's been known about for a while now. There are a lot of possible explanations for this, but I suspect that one of the causes is that society is selecting for it as a trait. People who are incapable of any job are likely to be less reproductively successful than those who can get some kind of job so the genetic components of intelligence that don't favor higher IQs aren't going to be passed on to the next generation.

If we really get to a point where automation is replacing huge amounts of the population and they can't work, I suspect the government will start to step in and just requiring as a part of welfare payments that these people not have more than one child, or that we'll have some type of GATACCA type situation where no matter what the parents are like, that we'll be able to create offspring that are highly intelligent.

Minimum wage should adjust for inflation

[davidwr]

We should decide what minimum wage should be in today's dollars, then peg it to "inflation" so it doesn't "decrease automatically" like it does now.

Whether we use "consumer inflation" (set aside the argument that it's not "accurate" for most consumers) or some measure of inflation more targeted towards low-wage workers (i.e. heavily weighted for things poor people tend to buy) is another factor society must decide on.

If we do this, there will still be calls to adjust it every generation or two, but at least it will only be every generation or two, not every 5-10 years when inflation reduces the buying power of what-was-reasonable-years-ago to arguably-too-low-to-be-useful-today.

Big Effing Deal

[EndlessNameless]

Automation is going to supplant a lot of jobs. The only questions are: "Which ones?" and "How fast?"

Higher wages will accelerate the process, but we need to decide what happens as automation takes over regardless of changes to the minimum wage.

The whole article is a bit of a red herring. Whatever we decide for workers displaced by automation, we ought to do with these people. I'm not going to pretend I have a 100% fair solution, and no one seems to agree. So let's focus on the fundamental problem instead of fussing over a bunch of poorly-paid jobs that no one wants, including most of the people who have them.

Because on the whole, I think everyone is perfectly happy to let machines do more work. So we need to figure out how to make it work without FUD about losing jobs.

Re:Big Effing Deal

[stdarg]

I think it's good for people to do work, both from a consumer perspective (I'd rather tell a person than a machine what I want to eat, if only for the interaction) and from a human perspective (I think work grants some measure of dignity, so even if a machine is equivalent or cheaper, it's still worth it to give people productive jobs).

Robot Jobs

[Presence Eternal]

I think the automation of crap jobs is the first real sign that a post scarcity society is possible. Unfortunately it's looking certain we'll navigate the changes to labor about as horribly as the historical Luddites and their opponents did. At least we have free porn now.

A living wage

[Rick Schumann]

If the only job someone can get doesn't make them enough to pay rent, utilities, and buy them sufficient food to eat, then there's a problem. Saying "Well, those people should go find a better job", or "Well, those people should go back to school and get a better education so they can get a better job", and similar comments, just are not helpful at all. Saying "Well, that's why we need Universal Basic Income" is even less helpful, because it just plain won't work on the scale of a country with 300,000,000 people in it, and even if it's only 10% (i.e. 30,000,000 people) who need a big handout from the government in order to actually sustain their lives, the other 90% are going to scream about it being unfair -- and I don't totally blame them. I think the real problem is capitalism; it can work if managed properly, but in it's current state capitalism is totally out of control, and it's creating an ever-widening gap between the poor and rich, destroying the middle class in the process. Whether it's out of control by chance or by design is a matter that should be investigated, but just like the problem of homelessness, this isn't going to go away just by ignoring it. You can't just throw people away, not and continue to call yourself a human being. We're supposed to be better than that.

Re:A living wage

[king neckbeard]

Except the structure of a UBI is that everyone gets it, it's more efficient than welfare, and lacks the perverse incentives of welfare where earning more can result in having less. Plus, SO MANY people will be more happy and productive, because they can actually choose their career. The uber-rich will complain, but that's just because they're spoiled brats.

Re:A living wage

[Rick Schumann]

I am not getting into a debate over UBI with you or anyone else because I do not believe it's feasible except on a VERY SMALL SCALE and would BANKRUPT the United States in nothing flat, so don't even bother.

Re:A living wage

[king neckbeard]

Congratulations. You are more economically right-wing than Milton Friedman, or you just don't understand proposed models of UBI.

Re:A living wage

[stdarg]

Plus, SO MANY people will be more happy and productive, because they can actually choose their career.

Well there's the flaw. We need to target this to the low productivity jobs that are being automated, not just people in general. Otherwise it's going to cause a real problem, because we can't automate every job yet. What do you do if on day one, 95% of garbage collectors quit because they can get their UBI check and become pro gamers, singers, etc... but there are no fully automated garbage trucks out there, and cities don't have the budget to replace their entire fleet all at once anyway?

Re:A living wage

[king neckbeard]

No, that's not a flaw, that's a bugfix. Shitty jobs that can't be automated, even unskilled ones, should pay more. The reason they don't is because of the gross imbalance between supply and demand of labor, particularly that people are screwed without a job. UBI fixes that, and allows the labor market to correct itself.

Re:A living wage

[king neckbeard]

You can still have other forms of social welfare, along with UBI. Although, if we also have universal health care, the cancer patient and the disabled person can at least afford the basics, and the perfectly healthy person will roughly break even between the tax increase and the UBI funds. So, you've failed to provide a scenario where UBI doesn't work for someone at least as well as the current system. And of course that's the case, it's much more efficient than welfare.

Re:A living wage

[Pfhorrest]

Explain how something like a universal tax credit of 25% the mean income funded by a 25% flat tax -- which is, by definition, revenue-neutral, because that's how averages work, and which would provide a guaranteed income of over $1000/mo to everyone -- would "bankrupt the United States in nothing flat".

Wait, wait, you're going to get caught up on that "25% tax!?!?!" bit and calculate how much money that is and show how it dwarfs every other already-large expenditure, so let me rephrase that in an equivalent but hopefully clearer way:

Have every taxpayer trade 25% of their income for 25% of the mean income. For people near the mean, that means almost nothing happens; what they pay and what they get is almost exactly the same. For the whole country's tax accounting, on average, that means exactly nothing happens; exactly as much money is spent as raised. So there's no tax apocalypse there.

But for people with zero income, that adds up to over $1000/mo to live off of. And for over 75% of the country, that adds up to some net benefit, however small, and no cost. For most of the remaining population, it adds up to only a small cost, because they're mostly still not far above the mean. And yeah, the tiny handful of people who make way, way above the mean bear the cost of those who see the benefits, but they can afford it.

People Need to Eat

[mx b]

Why do those advocating the $15 hamburger wage not see this ?

Because you're making a detached economic argument in favor of business interests, and they're making a "I need enough food to survive" argument in favor of community interests and human rights.

In most areas of the country, especially near big cities, the cost of living is approximately $15 if not much higher (I've seen estimates of more like $20-25 in New York City, for example). This is the cost of basic rent, basic utilities like electric and water, food, transportation to a job (whether by owning a small used car or taking the bus - what you think buses are free?), and replacement clothing (nothing fancy, just new pair of jeans every once in a while as old one rips). Basically, inflation is increase in cost of goods and services, and if you took the minimum wage of the '60s and '70s and adjusted it for inflation, it really should be something like $15 per hour now. With the productivity gains of the average American worker due to increased education and technology, it should probably be even higher, but almost all of the profit gains have gone to top executives rather than increased the salaries of those that actually do the work.

So what does this mean? It means any job paying less than approximately $15 per hour is NOT LIVABLE. You will starve, or end up homeless, or some sort of big problem. It's not sustainable. What I don't understand is why people make the argument of the don't "deserve" $15. Who says? Who decided some arbitrary number is the cap? The REAL issue is: does every person deserve enough to meet basic needs in modern society? I think the answer is unequivocally YES. Every American deserves the dignity of basic needs met, especially when they're willing to work full time to do so. No matter what the work is, if it takes up a full week of work, then they deserve to have basic bills covered, end of story. Full time work is opportunity cost -- if you're working full time, it means you don't have free time to take other jobs, attend school or training, etc. IT HAS TO BE WORTHWHILE. It has to be enough to survive.

Having "more jobs" that pay starvation wages is not really an improvement. It makes job numbers reports and corporate profits look better, but those aren't the only metrics of the success of a society. In fact, I think they're bad metrics; a much better one is: do we ensure every American that works hard can take care of themselves, and has opportunity to improve their lives? By that metric we are failing disastrously.

In my view, businesses that cannot budget for and pay living wages are FAILING BUSINESSES. A business that requires its workers to starve for its owner to make a profit is a FAILING BUSINESS and deserves no sympathy or respect. They should have to drastically change their business strategy or go out of business and be replaced in the free market by business owners that DO pay a living wage.

As far as automation goes, do you think they'll ever decide "Nah, I don't need more profit!"?. At best, low wages slightly delay automation, but make no mistake: it's coming. It's the story of the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age, big business grew larger and larger until it controlled the economy and could automate or improve efficiency, and laid off many many workers once they were unneeded. The poverty and starvation was great, which is what lead to so many of our labor reforms and formation of unions. We have to start putting human interests first over corporate interests. Don't fall for their propaganda. Every American that works hard deserves to live without fear of where the next meal will come from or how to pay rent this month.

And really, we should be taking advantage of automation to work LESS. Lower the amount of hours for full time work. Give everyone more time to raise their families, get involved in the community and local politics, take classes and improve education, volunteer, etc. There's more to life than wage labor. We can make that happen if we stop obsessing with letting big business take more, more, more for themselves.

Re:People Need to Eat

[swillden]

Why do those advocating the $15 hamburger wage not see this ?

Because you're making a detached economic argument in favor of business interests, and they're making a "I need enough food to survive" argument in favor of community interests and human rights.

But the "I need to eat" argument favors keeping wages low to slow the progress of automation.

Re:People Need to Eat

[crafoo]

Excellent comment, especially the point about failing businesses: if a business cannot pay it workers enough to survive, what value is that business to society? None. It shouldn't exist.

The reality is, wages are being depressed through inflation hiding the transition to automation. People are cheaper (worth less) now than 1970s people. There are more of us. Capitalists have retained (some would say stolen) all of the value from gains in efficiency the last 50 years. Automation has been staved off due to the devaluation of humans. But it's just hiding it, slightly delaying it. If we paid people a living wage Right Now automation would happen. We have no political solution to this so instead we will slowly starve everyone.

Re:People Need to Eat

[apoc.famine]

Did you miss the entire argument you are replying to? The argument was that the current low wages are not sufficient to meet the "I need to eat" criteria. Thus that is no longer an argument for low wages.

Re:People Need to Eat

[DallasTruaxxx]

The true minimum wage is, and has always been zero dollars. Minimum wage sets an absolute bottom to the amount for which an individual can trade his own labor. A thing, (by the way) that can only be owned by the individual. (People proposing to control what can only be owned by the individual propose to be masters of slaves) And if his labor is not worth that arbitrary amount, then the law forces him to be unemployed, or work 'under the table'. And if the employer can not afford to pay that lawful amount, then, the business fails, (in many cases) and then, not only is there one jobless individual, but several. All because someone thought they knew what was best for other people, and thought it so strongly that they were willing to hire someone with a gun to go make sure that their will was implemented to the letter. And if not, then someone would have their stuff taken away, they would be locked in a cage, or, in the worst cases, they would be killed for resisting this tyranny. I will start with the assumption that I don't know what is best for other people. That they are the only ones who even CAN know what is best for them. If someone agrees to work for some amount, I'm going to assume that they know what is best for themselves. And, assuming there is no coercion, everyone involved in the transaction is getting what they want.

Re:People Need to Eat

[mesterha]

Assume our main goal is that everyone gets a living wage.

First assume we don't have minimum wage laws. Therefore the government needs to make up the difference. (This is a bit how it is now with subsidized housing and food stamps.) This seems like a reasonable system. If we did have a minimum wage then it might be too high for full employment and the government would have to fully pay for this living wage. Therefore the companies are offsetting this cost. Of course, with this system, what incentive do these workers have to get a job. If this was a free market then a company would need to pay above the cost of living to get people to work, probably a lot above since getting a few extra bucks is not going to entice someone to work 8 hours a day. Of course, if the company couldn't afford the cost of living, it can't afford more, so these jobs don't exist. Therefore, this system doesn't help.

Next assume, we do have minimum wage laws that are somehow pegged at cost of living. Is this much different? Not really. Still there is little incentive for people at this wage to work. Perhaps we have minimum wage at something like twice the cost of living. This is less clear. A business might not be profitable at the higher wage and people might be willing to accept the lower wage. (The only upside is we would be making it harder for companies to not share the wealth and perhaps decrease inequality for some at the potential cost of pushing some people back to cost of living and increasing their inequality. Assuming reducing inequality was a goal, the details could be decided based on employment data.)

Last assume, we have universal basic income. (Tying it cost of living is an interesting problem.) This looks like a good solution. There is no wall to cross for entry level jobs. Any money a job offers you is money in your pocket. One can think of this as a way to redistribute wealth. Image a closed system where everyone got an equal share of 10% of the pie and the rest was distributed based on value added to the economy. To me this seems like a reasonable trade-off.

Re:People Need to Eat

[Evil Kerek]

Minimum wage jobs were never meant to be the end of your career.

Re:People Need to Eat

[swillden]

Did you miss the entire argument you are replying to? The argument was that the current low wages are not sufficient to meet the "I need to eat" criteria. Thus that is no longer an argument for low wages.

Low > 0. It's hard to eat on low; it's impossible to eat on 0.

A Little Bit of Digging

[DaMattster]

Something seems a bit dubious about this research, almost like it is calculated to counter efforts at raising the minimum wage to a livable standard. And sure enough, there are some ties to a fiscally conservative think tank called, The Employment Policies Institute. The Employment Policies Institute is very pro-employer and pro-Privatized Health Insurance. This research study is simply meant to lobby elected officials to not raise the minimum wage. There is no credible, peer-reviewed research to suggest that raising the minimum wage accelerates automation. If raising the minimum wage had accelerated automation, we would have had FAR fewer jobs by now.

Well yes... but...

[mark-t]

In general, the people that do lose their jobs on account of automation will eventually find alternative employment, and at an overall higher pay than what they were making before... so it's fairly clear that despite the immediate job losses, there are longer term net benefits to society that can be easily overlooked if you only focus on the here and now, as long as the minimum wage increases are kept within tolerances for the rate at which the cost of living has increased (which is historically is not typically a problem because minimum wage hikes usually lag several years behind the continual cost of living increases anyways).

Flip Side

[king neckbeard]

It's all about framing. Imagine this headline:
Low wages slow technological growth and reduce leisure time.

It's essentially stating the same thing, but without the worship of jobs, which are a means to an end.

Actual data shows only in red states

[WillAffleckUW]

There are literally thousands of help wanted signs in Seattle at restaurants right now.

There didn't used to be hardly any.

And we have a $15/hour minimum wage.

Re:Actual data shows only in red states

[bussdriver]

Tip jobs are still stuck at about $3 per hour.

Even slave labor gets replaced with a cotton gin. We can't free the slaves; it'll force us into automation and cost jobs! We also can't support the unemployed by taxing the owners of automation! The lazy unemployed need to pick themselves up by their own boot straps like... Trump.

Federal minimum, 2,2 million

[grimJester]

According to the bureau of labor statistics,

Together, these 2.2 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 2.7 percent of all hourly paid workers.

So, around 1% would lose their jobs and the rest will have have a 15% rise in pay. Spending that should create some jobs, obv.

Re: Federal minimum, 2,2 million

[kenh]

That 15% raise had to come from somewhere - it didn't increase the size of the economy, it simply shifted money from one part of the economy to another.

You can simplify this quite easily:

[bravecanadian]

Automation causes job losses.

If automation was already on the cusp of automating jobs at minimum wage, then those jobs would have been automated soon, anyways.

Re:You can simplify this quite easily:

[swillden]

If automation was already on the cusp of automating jobs at minimum wage, then those jobs would have been automated soon, anyways.

Sure, in a few years those jobs are gone regardless and the people in them will be trying to figure out what to do.

Do you want to accelerate that process? Or keep it slow, to give us some hope of managing it?

I Like Cherries, But...

[CanHasDIY]

From TFS:

For lower-skill jobs like bookkeepers and assembly-line workers,

OK, so you cherry-pick medium-skill jobs that typically pay above-minimum-wages and have already lost tons of ground to automation (in the case of factory workers, the job losses stretch back 40 years) as an admonition against raising the minimum wage?

Lesson learned, that's a fine way to run a flawed study.

Isn't this a good thing?

[Gravis Zero]

I don't know about you but when a job can be automated then I think it should be automated because it saves a human from doing an unfulfilling job. This may put a bunch of people out of work but is a separate issue that should be addressed on it's own. Not having to work is an ideal, not a curse.

Isn't that theft?

[rsilvergun]

I'll play devil's advocate here. What right do you have to take money from somebody and give it to somebody else? That's essentially what you're doing. If somebody who has money wants to give it away shouldn't that be up to them?

I actually support UBI, but those are the kinds of things you'll have to have an answer for. And "But it's only fair" doesn't really fly. An appeal to fairness falls on deaf ears since taking money from me and giving it to somebody who doesn't work never 'feels' fair.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[MightyMartian]

The right stems from the very notion of "no taxation without representation". Even the Founding Fathers understood a government needs taxes. The right is inherent in the very nature of society. Libertarian fantasies about taxation as "theft" is just that, fantastical thinking that has absolutely no relation to how a real society could ever function.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

its not a matter of fairness. past a certain point the rise in productivity will result in unemployment so vast that, as a society or a state, there will be no choice but to implement basic income to prevent vast social unrest. I know it may be hard to imagine, but at some point that will be the cheapest, most immediate and actionable thing to do. because the alternative is making up useless jobs for people to do or culling the population. automation of labour, taken far enough, is so traumatic to the way the way a wage-labour economy functions that the two become mutually exclusive. and this is a good thing because, as someone above noted, the status quo is utterly shit.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[Just Some Guy]

I'll play devil's advocate here. What right do you have to take money from somebody and give it to somebody else?

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That's actually irrelevant. Enlightened self interest says that wealthy people receive an enormous personal benefit in shoveling sufficient money at the starving classes that they don't rise up and revolt. I'm not wealthy, but I still don't want to be on the receiving end of the French Revolution so I support spending my taxes on basic life support for my neighbors.

You can be a complete sociopath and still support basic universal income for your own selfish reasons.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

The right stems from the very notion of "no taxation without representation"

Which part of that statement do you disagree with? Are you saying there should be taxation without representation?

You are correct - the *government* needs tax revenue to function. Nobody disputes that. Does that tax revenue necessarily have to come directly from the citizens? No. The Federal government miraculously managed to function without income taxes for the first 137 or so years of its existence - until the 16th Amendment was ratified. The left loves to portray the tax question as a choice between "all your income are belong to us" and Somalia, with no options in between. If I disagree with the current level of taxation, then clearly I want to live in Somalia, right?

Either way, that argument has nothing to do with UBI. The government can function just fine without needing to take money from person A to give to person B.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[MightyMartian]

With the 16th amendment, the Constitution gave Congress very wide berth to tax as it saw fit. What it "should" do can be debated, but income taxes are legal, so at that point, your right as a voter is to decide whether you'll vote for a party that personally taxes you or not. But the reality is that the Federal government will continue to tax, and as social dislocation becomes more severe over the coming decades due to automation in both blue and white collar occupations, it's going to mean someone is going to have to pay to support a society where full time work all but disappears, and that's going to mean the wealthy, or more likely, the corporations themselves, seeing as they are the beneficiaries of automation.

"Should" is a useful theoretical question, but at the end of the day when the rubber hits the road, taxes have to support what the citizens' elected representatives decide is necessary.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[alvinrod]

Personally I don't think it's fair in the sense that you've touched upon, but I'm also in favor of one. Not necessary because I believe that people deserve a UBI or that it's morally good to provide one, but I think that for pragmatic reasons that it's more expensive not to have one.

People are going to try to survive and if they can't find a job (in part because someone has mandated that all jobs must be paid a minimum amount and that person is not capable of doing anything worth that minimum amount) they're going to invariably turn to crime like theft or will engage in black market enterprises (e.g. dealing drugs) where there is no minimum wage and they can sell their labor for what it's worth. Putting aside black-market enterprises, an increase in theft necessitates and increase in police forces, the court system, in prisons, and a lot of other things. Those aren't free, so what I might save in taxes by having a UBI, I end up paying in taxes for an increase in the size of government.

I think that providing a UBI while eliminating the minimum wage would go a long way towards reducing the size of the welfare state while providing a safety net for people to fall back on or subsist on while transitioning between jobs, etc. I don't think a UBI should be a living income either, rather just one that you could subsist on. $6,000 yearly would probably be a good starting point at the federal level. Different states and cities could be free to provide additional amounts on top of that if they like.

To me, the case for a UBI comes down to being pragmatic and very little else. You're never going to get any kind of system where you don't have to spend some of your money. Even the extreme libertarians that advocate non-government schemes where corporations are established to guarantee people's rights (I forgot what the exact name for the scheme was, but I watched a video explaining the concept some time ago) still results in you spending some of your money, with the only real difference being that under their scheme it's entirely voluntary on your part as an individual instead of coercive action on the part of government. You could argue that free choice is always better, but at the same time I'm not going to advocate throwing out the current system that accomplishes the same result until you've tried this experiment in the real world somewhere and shown that it works in practice.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[UnknownSoldier]

Animals have lived for millions of years without any money.

And yet somehow humans are the only stupid animal who can't figure this shit out.

> The right is inherent in the very nature of society

[[Citation]] because you are talking about only _one_ government and assuming that there is nothing better.

> real society

Define "real society".

Taxation IS theft. PERIOD. It is fantastical thinking has absolutely no relation to how a advanced society could ever function.

Your entire concept of money is based in a flawed premise -- there is never enough -- so we are going to create artificial scarcity to give it some "perceived" value -- and then take it from you without your permission.

As one alien said : "You mean you have to PAY to live on the planet you were born on???"

If people could dictate what X% of their taxes went towards education vs the genocide (military) far less people would have a problem with the complete and total mis-management of it. What other company do you know that is allowed to run decades with TRILLIONS of debt -- yet somehow it is magically OK when the government does it ??? WTF!!!

2001 $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

2004
http://blog.visual.ly/wp-conte...

2008
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs1...

2009
http://www.infohow.org/wp-cont...

2011
http://www.coolinfographics.co...

2012
http://chiefmartec.com/post_im...

* A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just 1 is online
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Lastly, the problem is not the taxes per say. Instead of having over 2,600 pages of BULLSHIT you could summarize the ENTIRE tax law with one sentence -- but since everyone is too fucking stupid to do anything about it we are stuck with a broken, in-debt, slave system.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[Kjella]

The right stems from the very notion of "no taxation without representation". Even the Founding Fathers understood a government needs taxes. The right is inherent in the very nature of society. Libertarian fantasies about taxation as "theft" is just that, fantastical thinking that has absolutely no relation to how a real society could ever function.

It's quite a jump from "society needs taxes" to "any and all taxes are okay, even those where two poor people and a rich guy decides where to eat and how to split the bill". I mean if the government was more of a service provider that gave you an itemized bill like "Rule of law (police, courts, public defenders etc.) $1537/person", "Defense of the nation (army, navy, air force etc.) $876/person", "Public education $763/person" and so on I think a lot of the critics would have no problem with taxes. But that's not how taxes work, it's more like how deep are your pockets because the more you have the more the government will take.

That is not a "we" where you pay your share of a common society. Not even those things that are insurance-like, if you had been born mentally or physically handicapped or was the victim of an accident or crime you'd be taken care of. That's de facto socialism where you take money from some people and give it to other people through benefits and services. Would you think it was okay if I walked up to Bill Gates and said "You have lots of money. I have much less money. So, give me some of your money or else..."? Probably not, particularly not the "or else" bit. But that's essentially what we're doing through taxes, the iron first is just wrapped in a velvet glove. It's okay to steal from the rich because... they're rich. They can afford it.

I know this post is borderline trolling, but I feel like I'm on both sides of the fence depending on the situation. Sometimes I'm like "you're skimming tons of money off our well-functioning society, you should pay more" and other times I'm like "seriously, you're going to take my tax money to use it on that?" which I'm about 99% sure only happens because they're using other people's money, nobody in their right mind would spend their own hard earned cash on it. Not that I'd have anything against anyone who did, as long as it's their own money. But when they take mine to do it, it sure feels like legalized theft. There's not much left of freedom if you don't have any right to keep your earnings.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[psycho12345]

"The Federal government miraculously managed to function without income taxes for the first 137 or so years of its existence - until the 16th Amendment was ratified."

Correct, but nearly all the methods that were used to finance the government during that period are either exhausted or now recognized to be more destructive then income taxes.

1) Sale of land. The government routinely funded itself through the sale of western land for development as people pushed farther west. This is now gone, or highly limited.

2) Duties and Tariffs. Now known to cause more problems then it solves, overall lowers wealth by restricting trade. The last half century has been dominated by countries removing these as much as possible (see all the free trade deals).

3) Federal government had lesser responsibilities, and also was much weaker, thus had less costs

4) Fees. Some parts of the government went off fees to finance themselves. For some entities, this worked just fine. Others this provided perverse incentives and led to corruption/bribery. The largest issue with this is it entirely relies on Congress, because Congress alone has the power to set the fees demanded, and can choose not to give any freedom to the entity in question to set those rates. It makes corporate bean counting look like a paradigm of efficiency in comparison.

I would argue we can drop the income tax in exchange for universal property tax. But that is unlikely to go over well, since property taxes are hated for being beyond your control. I can choose for my income to go up or down (within reason). I can't control my property going up 200% in value over 5 years and now pricing me right out of said property.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Cool! So only taxpayers get the right to vote! I'm cool with that. Unless your 1040 shows an actual paid income tax - you do not get the right to vote. Great idea, MM!

Re:Isn't that theft?

[HornWumpus]

I suggest UBI or the vote. Citizen's choice, but only made once, perhaps at 18.

Re:Isn't that theft?

[HornWumpus]

The 98% of farmers that are no longer on the land working should be rioting right now...

Re:Isn't that theft?

[bingoUV]

Animals have lived for millions of years without any money.

Taxation IS theft. PERIOD

Animals have been thieving for millions of years. So decide whether you want to emulate animal morals or delegitimize theft.

You mean you have to PAY to live on the planet you were born on??

Animals have to pay too. Smaller fish have to pay the barracuda their own bodies. Barracuda has to pay with increased heavy metal concentration in its own body. All have to pay with constant vigilance, chasing and being chased - payment with labour is also a payment. In fact, the major currency when there is no "money".

Re:Isn't that theft?

[LynnwoodRooster]

That would work for me. Especially considering those who vote will, effectively, get to determine the size of the UBI monthly grant...

Re:Isn't that theft?

[UnknownSoldier]

You seem to be confusing "money" with "life." The _entire_ purpose of animals existing is to support the food chain above and below. Animals do NOT use _tokens_ to trade with one another. So no, animals don't use "money".

Furthermore, money _also_ means time, skill, and labor. I don't have the skills, time, or labor to build a house but I can pay someone to do it.

You don't really seem to grasp this "concept" of money. Maybe you should go back to living with your monkey ancestors?

Re:Isn't that theft?

[bingoUV]

The _entire_ purpose ? Strong words. Any evidence of that ? How do you even determine the purpose of something other than yourself ?

Re:We should decrease the minimum wage to $1 per h

[ShanghaiBill]

Norway has no minimum wage, and has higher incomes and less inequality than America. Other countries with no minimum wage: Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland.

Screw Democrats, screw Republicans

[werepants]

Go UBI. The possible downsides of minimum wage are obvious - and although it might work in some instances, in our current situation it will only accelerate automation. It's also not tenable to just allow wages to erode without recourse - the bargaining power of the working class is rapidly approaching zero, and it will end up requiring three jobs to make ends meet for unskilled workers.

UBI puts all the incentives in the right place, it's fair, and it's humane. It allows a true market price to be established for labor, with laborers that aren't desperate and powerless. It's easily affordable too with pretty minor restructuring of the tax code, especially since it would streamline so much bureaucracy and allow us to get rid of welfare, etc, which puts all the incentives in the wrong direction.

Oh, and before you ask, no, I wouldn't personally benefit from UBI because of my tax bracket, and yes, I WOULD vote for it even though my taxes would likely go up somewhat. This isn't freeloading - it's humane and economically beneficial social policy.

I doubt that

[gweihir]

Those that will automatize are not driven by minimum wages, they will do it anyways. And for the others, unless minimum wage is raised significantly, it will not make them go to automation. I think this is a pretext.

That said, a _lot_ of jobs will be lost to automation in the next decades. It will not be possible to keep society functioning, unless alternate means of getting money to people are used. The problem is that while automation is dumb, it can be dumb very fast and with a lot of predefined knowledge and unfortunately, many human jobs do not actually require intelligence for most of what they do.

Obvious Solution

[jimmifett]

Since we are all told daily there is a patriarchy keeping women down by only paying them 77 on the dollar, the obvious solution is to hire only women for minimum wage at $11.55/hr, bc a man would naturally earn the full 15/hr. That 23% savings will go an awfully long way!!

Oh wait, that oft repeated statistic has been debunked time and time again as an utter bullshit fallacy of the left. There are already laws in place that would prevent that. Darn, guess the patriarchy will have to find another marginalized group to exploit.

It's still legal to pay illegal aliens under the table for meager work right? I mean, who opposes short shrifting them and not paying payroll taxes for them...
Oh, wait, that's illegal too? Darn!

Guess we'll just have to use machines bc there is no way i'm paying someone $15/hr flip burgers or get my order wrong. /sarcasm

Re:Obvious Solution

[jcr]

There are already laws in place that would prevent that.

And those laws are pointless, because economic laws already apply: if it really were possible to get the same work done by women for 77% of the cost of hiring men, women would be fully employed first, and men would have to take lower wages to compete with the women.

-jcr

By contrast, doing nothing causes...

[rbrander]

...automation and job loss. Lack of a minimum wage for farming did not stop those plucky "automators" from reducing farm jobs by about 97% in a century flat. Nor were Luddite concerns related to 19th-century English minimum wage policies.

The automatiion/wage situation was really nailed to the wall by this fine journalism in The Atlantic five years back:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

We are taken to hang-ten on the dividing line between automation and human-work in the case of Maddie Parlier, auto-parts worker who was next up for replacement. The nearly-empty auto-parts factory in which she works automates a job when the machine to do it falls in price below two years' salary. She makes $13/hour, or about $25K/year - and the machine that could replace her exists, but costs $100,000 so her job is "safe" - for a few years.

So this is really about your societal standards. "We don't work for less than $13 an hour" is no different conceptually from "We don't work full time before age 16" and "We don't let employers work people more than 16 hours at a time" and "We don't let our employers work people with no safety equipment" even though safety equipment costs money and therefore, mandating it costs jobs.

These societal rules of COURSE have prices: "forbidding child labour" caused 100% job loss for the affected kids, and serious financial hardship for their families, I'm sure there was a lot of smirking at the time about how much harm had been done by Good Intentions.

If you hate the minimum wage, consider reading "Utopia for Realists" by Rutger Bregman. One of the cases for Universal Basic Income is that the moral argument about minimum wage vanishes: with the minimum already taken care of, $1/hour for a job you enjoy might make perfect sense.

Re:By contrast, doing nothing causes...

[duke_cheetah2003]

One of the cases for Universal Basic Income is that the moral argument about minimum wage vanishes: with the minimum already taken care of, $1/hour for a job you enjoy might make perfect sense.

Can you imagine a society where everyone actually enjoys the work they do? They work because they want to, not because it's necessary for survival. Can you imagine how much better customer service is going to get?

All that right there is enough for me to say UBI already!

I read somewhere

[rsilvergun]

that if minimum wage had kept pace with productivity it'd be $23/hr.

No so fast

[s.petry]

OK, then let's be like Germany, where higher education is FREE.

Higher Education is "Free" from financial responsibility _IF_ you meed a stringent set of criteria. Primarily a high GPA for the duration of your education, but other factors can be included. You can still go to higher education _AT_COST_ if you don't have the requirements, but "FREE" certainly is a dishonest presentation.

Re:We should decrease the minimum wage to $1 per h

[Anonymous Coward]

As your link points out, though, they also have unions, which that author believes is responsible for those higher incomes. When the U.S. enacted a federal minimum wage in 1938, union membership was over 28% of the workforce. Now that it's below 11%, I'm not sure you can point to those countries as reasons the U.S. shouldn't have a minimum wage.

Sure, we could try to undo decades of right-wing assaults on organizing and collective bargaining, hoping that we eventually might reach a point where there was sufficient union membership to make a minimum wage unnecessary.... You know, waiting for bad judges to die, changing a ton of anti-union legislation both at the state and federal level as if conservatives wouldn't fight each and every modification tooth-and-nail, or we could just pass a simple single increase in the minimum wage and index it to inflation, right now. I think the choice is obvious, particularly given the low likelihood of success in boosting union membership.

Re:We should decrease the minimum wage to $1 per h

[sjames]

Even the link you posted points out they have no government set minimum wage primarily because strong unions already took care of that and with nearly 100% membership, they have practically the force of law anyway.

The problem is half truths

[s.petry]

The conclusion that companies won't implement automation if labor is cheap enough has some validity. The problem with the conclusion is that the cost of labor is only one of at least a dozen factors to consider.

There is a similar problem when discussing minimum wages in general, let alone increases in minimum wage. If profit margins are too low businesses lay off people, which often reduces their overall business. Consider a Grocery store that can't hire enough people and customers end up leaving before making a purchase, often leaving items in carts. Already short labor is needed to restock items and customer service goes down further, resulting in permanent lost of customers over a short time.

The alternative is to raise prices so that all consumers end up paying more, which results less disposable income in the economy to go toward other businesses. People purchase less clothes, less music, fewer cars, etc.. etc... (FWIW I grew up in poverty so know what you skip out on or get by questionable means when money is not available)

Contrary to what certain political figures want you to believe, it's not like the majority of businesses and business owners are like Scrooge McDuck rolling in the dough laughing at the peons. In fact those companies are an extreme minority.

We suffer with a lack of consideration and dialogue because of half truths.

Re:The problem is half truths

[marcgvky]

This entire hairball can be summed up, by one statement: "government should not be dictating, how to price labor." Socialism and control (yes, even semi-controlled) markets inevitably FAIL to achieve the desired objective. However, that's never stopped a progressive from trying again and again and again... of course, expecting a different result.

Re:The problem is half truths

[PopeRatzo]

This entire hairball can be summed up, by one statement: "government should not be dictating, how to price labor."

And yet, you believe government should protect your job by stopping H1-B visas.

Re:The problem is half truths

[s.petry]

So you believe anyone from any country should be able to walk into your place of employment and apply for your job at any time? (Nothing like conflating two distinctly separate issues to make a stupid point...)

Re:The problem is half truths

[parkinglot777]

This entire hairball can be summed up, by one statement: "government should not be dictating, how to price labor." Socialism and control (yes, even semi-controlled) markets inevitably FAIL to achieve the desired objective. However, that's never stopped a progressive from trying again and again and again... of course, expecting a different result.

Err... I don't know how could the post from GP turns into politic as this post. Anyway, no you have one directional vision toward the problem. Your statement is true only on one direction as your vision. You completely forgot human nature which is abusing of opportunity. If government does not have any involvement at all (not dictate at least a certain degree of minimum wage) in the market, eventually the market (business owners) will abuse the freedom and will cause those who are laborers to have worse conditions. On the other hand, heavily involvement of government (increase the minimum wage to an outrageous wage) would be the opposite problem as you stated.

Please try to look at any problem from both sides, not just one or you would just get only half understanding of the issue.

Re:The problem is half truths

[PopeRatzo]

So you believe anyone from any country should be able to walk into your place of employment and apply for your job at any time?

If you want to discuss free markets being bad, we can have that discussion.

Re: The problem is half truths

[kenh]

And yet, you believe government should protect your job by stopping H1-B visas.

H1-B visas are an exception to current immigration rules... yes, they should be eliminated.

Re: The problem is half truths

[PopeRatzo]

H1-B visas are an exception to current immigration rules... yes, they should be eliminated.

OK, we need to have a little talk about the meaning of the word, "exception".

H1-B visas are enabled under the United States Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101(a)(17)(H). It's actually written into the law. If it's a codified part of the enacted law, how can it be an "exception" to the rules? IT'S PART OF THE RULES, YOU BONEHEAD.

If you need further explanation, I'm here for you. I've cleared my schedule.

Re: The problem is half truths

[kenh]

Your cushy job wouldn't exist without lobbying from unions to establish baseline workplace conditions.

Really? EVERY 'cushy' job owes it's existence to unions?

Uh, no.

Capitalists would rather work people to death than treat them with any sense of respect

Where do you live, in one-dimensional cartoon land? Most small business owners I've met value their employees and put their needs before their own. Ever watch a struggling small business owner scramble to make payroll? Of course not.

even though they are who make the business what it is.

Workers deliver on vision of the business owner, financed by the owner - without the owner, risking their own money, businesses don't get created. No matter how many 'workers' you have, until someone comes along and finds them, they don't have a business.

Executives are a dime a dozen.

So are warehouse workers, burger flippers, etc.

Re:The problem is half truths

[dgatwood]

The conclusion that companies won't implement automation if labor is cheap enough has some validity. The problem with the conclusion is that the cost of labor is only one of at least a dozen factors to consider.

And arguably the least important. The most important is the cost of automation relative to the cost of the workers, which is primarily dictated not by the cost of the workers, but rather by the cost of automation itself. As technology gets more and more advanced, the cost of automating things makes it more and more effective to automate them regardless of how cheap the labor cost is. The only thing that reducing wages does is stretch out that timeline very slightly. By contrast, the plummeting cost of advanced automation and the accelerating speed at which automation is able to solve various tasks are the main limitations that principally govern the automation timeline.

Contrary to what certain political figures want you to believe, it's not like the majority of businesses and business owners are like Scrooge McDuck rolling in the dough laughing at the peons. In fact those companies are an extreme minority.

The thing is, while true, that ignores another fundamental truth, which is that most consumers won't pay any more than they have to which means that businesses can't raise wages unless everyone does so. So raising the minimum wage forces businesses to raise wages and raise prices across the board, which (ignoring the relatively tiny impact that such changes have on the value proposition for automation) means more money for workers, paid for at least in part by people who can afford to pay more for those goods and services.

Click Bait

[oh_my_080980980]

Axios...enough said. Love the choice of words: "Reich also quibbles with the paper's focus "

Quibbles not Critical or Criticizes.

News site back by JP Morgan & Chase Co., PhRma, Boeing, BP, Bank of America, Koch Industries, S&P Global, United Health Group, Walmart, PepsiCo and Cooley LLP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Yeah they don't have an ax to grind about raising the minimum wage.

Re:Trickle-Down

[Tablizer]

Making it less expensive is mostly moot if people cannot afford to buy most of it. Just because machines are capable of making something does not mean the owners actually will tell machine to do it, such as if there are not enough buyers (who can afford it).

I fully agree with the potential, but making it work in practice in a socioeconomic sense may be the real bottleneck.

McDonald's, but it's amazing that you can walk into a restaurant that is fairly ubiquitous and, for a dollar or two, you can get a decent amount of protein and calories

If one can cook, then buying sacks of grains such as wheat, rice, and oats is probably far cheaper. It may not be tasty, but it's nutritious. Mix in a little meat and spices to improve it. A side issue anyhow.

Its a complex issue

[lusid1]

The government isn't actually concerned with minimum wage workers or with the job losses. The actual goal is to increase revenues from income taxes, so as long as there is a net gain from income taxes minimum wage increases will continue.

It's at best a short term remedy even if minimum wage workers still have jobs after the hike. Just because you pay workers more doesn't increase the value of their services. If they can't be replaced with automation, they become an inflationary pressure as the economy adjusts. At the same time some jobs that were higher than minimum wage suddenly become minimum wage, and devalue the progress that next rung of folks have made in their career. Those folks get to start over.

I'm in a region with aggressive wage hike legislation. It has had an observable impact. Now I place my fast food orders at an automated kiosk, my banks have fancy ATMs placed in front of what used to be teller windows just a year ago, and the stores I go to all have started converting checkout isles to self-checkout.

Automation can't be stopped. Eventually we're going to have to figure out what to do with all these extra humans. The civilization that solves that problem will win in the end.

obvous solution

[roc97007]

> higher minimum wages encourage employers to automate

The obvious solution, then, is to make it illegal to automate. Labor intensive jobs must remain labor intensive.

That's not necessarily true

[rsilvergun]

If I lose one $50k worker and save $10 million a year then yes, there's $10 million in the economy. But now that worker is out a job and is desperate to get one. Our complete lack of a social safety net and/or a dole means the cost of that worker doesn't fall on society at large, but on the workforce (in the form of lower wages as labor supply climbs).

In practice you're $50k worker takes a pay cut, which depresses everyone's wages. That $1 dollar doesn't make it into the economy at large because of wage suppression. Instead it's pocketed by the owner class and we take another step towards wealth inequality & oligarchy. This has been going on since the cold war ended and folks started feeling comfortable with moving factories overseas again. Marx predicted all this, but all anyone can remember about him is that a couple of right wing dictators used his books for rabble rousing rhetoric...

tl;dr; you can't compete with slave labor. That's why you have tariffs.

Re: That's not necessarily true

[kenh]

If I lose one $50k worker and save $10 million a year then yes, there's $10 million in the economy.

That $10M was in the economy before you cut the $50K employee, once you cut the $50K employee that $10M was shifted from the greater economy to your personal economy. You may choose to reduce the cost of your goods and return some of that $10M to the general economy, but you haven't increased the size of the economy.

Accept the shit sandwhich or we'll make it worse.

[TheInternet01]

Same old story of bullies. Rich people going I'm not giving you anything but a shit sandwhich, and if you fight to get better than that shit sandwhich, we'll make it taste extra like shit. The money is there, the raw resources are there, the products are there, the food is there, but you can't have any of it. People talk about money like it's a finite thing. It's not, it's made up and infinite, and they use it to control what you have to do to have some things. In North America there is enough food, cars, luxury items even that people don't need to go without. If the economy was more balanced, it would be better (except for the people at the top). More freedom, more fun, more choices, less suffering. Like who do they think they are threatening? They want to charge North American prices and take north american money but pay china wages. Well, if no one has jobs or money here, no one buys your products, either. So it's just as bad for them to have no one employed. There isn't going to be automated machines who earn money and buy your products. Increasing prices to line their products good, they have more profit than ever before, but somehow wages will destroy everything if they even remotely follow the increases. I'm not buying it. (Get it? see what I did there?)

It is not only about the horuly rate!

[oldgraybeard]

Many here do not understand the cost of hiring an employee.
- Yes, you have the per hour pay rate.
- But you also have the fed and fica. The federal government charges an additional 7.62% of the wage paid, to the employer on top of the wages.
- And there is also, added Workers Comp. Ins. charges which are based on the number of employees and the size of the payroll.
- Equal Opportunity Employment laws.
- And there is health care, if you have 50 employees, the ACA requires you to provide health care. There are 27,000 pages of reg's in the ACA alone.
- Finally, there are numerous reports that are required by the feds, states, etc. when a business has employees that also add to the cost of choosing to hire. Making the choice to hire is a real balancing act for small businesses.
I think the basic formula is base pay rate plus 50%+ is a real estimated cost to the employer.
FYI I am not saying any of this is wrong, but there is a lot more cost for each employee than just the base pay rate. And in order to understand anything one should have all the facts.

Re:It is not only about the horuly rate!

[jcr]

ou also have the fed and fica.

It's worth pointing out that any money an employer has to pay for labor that doesn't end up in the worker's pocket, is a tax on the worker. Pretending that it's an "employer contribution" is a cynical propaganda ploy.

-jcr

Re:It is not only about the horuly rate!

[oldgraybeard]

FYI
- There is the 7.62% fed and fica that comes out of the employees pay check.
- The employer pays an additional 7.62% percent in addition to what comes out of the employees check.
- Total fed and fica is 15.3 percent.

Re:It is not only about the horuly rate!

[thejynxed]

Pre-ACA the cost of hiring an average employee was between $3,000-$5,000 considering all other factors, and had been at that cost range for about twenty-five years. Post ACA it has blossomed to a range of $8,000-$16,000, and in some rare cases $24,000 per employee hired.

That's a rather strong incentive to hire less frequently, reduce your workforce, and automate as quickly as possible, disregarding anything else.

partially correct

[aepervius]

if you took the minimum wage of the '60s and '70s and adjusted it for inflation

Partially correct, the minimum wage adjusted for inflation would be $6.65 from 1960, and it is $7 today. http://www.stateofworkingameri... the problem is not the minimum wage, but that some stuff did increase vastly above the inflation. A 2 bedroom in 1980 in San Francisco was $500 / $600, but now it vastly increase to $4000 in some extreme cases. Inflation adjusted rent should be around $1400. https://medium.com/@mccannatro... For all practical intent and purpose, due to housing speculation (which is still frankly going on) and some ancillaries effect which do not help but increase the problem (e.g. airbnb , rent apartment converted to quasi hotel rooms), rent has become nearly 50% or 60% of the monthly cost of people if they stay in city center, so they are relegated far away from their work, which decrease their likelihood of entertainment or self education (it is hard to go to a side course when you spend 4 hours on travel during the day) and increase stress. Basically I agree with you it is jsut that your data is not 100% correct.

Obvious?

[duke_cheetah2003]

Shouldn't this be obvious? Make workers more expensive produces the expected result of companies seeking alternatives to expensive workers?

Well, I see a good thing of it.. get the race to automation into higher gear. Once that automation really starts to make a dent, we'll revisit the immense unemployment it's created.

Re:Accept the shit sandwhich or we'll make it wors

[duke_cheetah2003]

There isn't going to be automated machines who earn money and buy your products.

See this is your flaw. Automated machines will most definitely be earning money, for their owners. They will be much more efficient at making money than their human counterparts ever were. They'll never call in sick, hell, they don't even need to go home. They can work 24/7. They don't complain, they don't form unions. How could anyone *NOT* make money with these?

Second point: Actually, it is speculated that automation will have some job-creating effects. There will still be a need for people to maintain those bots. And buy replacement parts.

So yeah, automations will definitely be making money, and they'll definitely be employing their caretakers and buying replacement parts.

We should automate all jobs

[Khashishi]

We should automate all jobs and eliminate work. There seems to be some puritan idea of work being good for the character or something. No, work is a terrible waste of the gift of life, and the sooner we are rid of it, the better.

Same old shit

[AutodidactLabrat]

From the same old people
National Bureau of Economic Research also known as theCorporate Whores who sold pricing studies to keep Big Tobacco in business
You really need better sources for economic SPECULATION!!
These guys are good enough as record keepers for recessions, but not much else.

Living Wage

[mesterha]

Here is an interesting thought experiment. Assume our main goal is that everyone gets a living wage.

First assume we don't have minimum wage laws. Therefore the government needs to make up the difference. (This is a bit how it is now with subsidized housing and food stamps.) This seems like a reasonable system. If we did have a minimum wage then it might be too high for full employment and the government would have to fully pay for this living wage. Therefore the companies are offsetting this cost. Of course, with this system, what incentive do these workers have to get a job. If this was a free market then a company would need to pay above the cost of living to get people to work, probably a lot above since getting a few extra bucks is not going to entice someone to work 8 hours a day. Of course, if the company couldn't afford the cost of living, it can't afford more, so these jobs don't exist. Therefore, this system doesn't help.

Next assume, we do have minimum wage laws that are somehow pegged at cost of living. Is this much different? Not really. Still there is little incentive for people at this wage to work. Perhaps we have minimum wage at something like twice the cost of living. This is less clear. A business might not be profitable at the higher wage and people might be willing to accept the lower wage. (The only upside is we would be making it harder for companies to not share the wealth and perhaps decrease inequality for some at the potential cost of pushing some people back to cost of living and increasing their inequality. Assuming reducing inequality was a goal, the details could be decided based on employment data.)

Last assume, we have universal basic income. (Tying it cost of living is an interesting problem.) This looks like a good solution. There is no wall to cross for entry level jobs. Any money a job offers you is money in your pocket. One can think of this as a way to redistribute wealth. Image a closed system where everyone got an equal share of 10% of the pie and the rest was distributed based on value added to the economy. To me this seems like a reasonable trade-off.

Re:Living Wage

[PopeRatzo]

What you are suggesting is basically what Milton Friedman suggested decades ago.

There is no getting around the fact that increased automation will eventually require universal basic income. The alternative is to vastly increase the size of the welfare system. Interestingly, as Friedman points out, the universal basic income would actually shrink the welfare system.

.

Re:Living Wage

[sxpert]

universal basic income is an implementation of a welfare system...

Re: Living Wage

[kenh]

There is no getting around the fact that increased automation will eventually require universal basic income. The alternative is to vastly increase the size of the welfare system. Interestingly, as Friedman points out, the universal basic income would actually shrink the welfare system.

That is cost-shifting, not cost reduction - what is the difference between artificially inflating someone's paycheck beyond the value of the work performed and paying them what their work is worth and handing them money to make up the difference?

Re:Living Wage

[PopeRatzo]

Wrong, the alternative to one welfare scheme is not another welfare scheme, it is freedom from collectivism and from psychopaths like you that want to rule via the force of violence.

Hey man, if you have a complaint with that famous collectivist Milton Friedman, take it up with him, not me.

Re:Living Wage

[foghelmut]

Yes, but it is a single welfare system. You don't need social security, food stamps, public housing, medicaid, pell grants, school lunch programs, etc etc etc etc etc. You only have the universal income department. One set of administrators. Overhead would be greatly reduced.

Minimum wages hurt the poor, quite intentionally.

[jcr]

Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this subject. Minimum wage laws were introduced by blatantly racist legislators pushing eugenic goals in the early 1900s, with the intention of rendering "undesirables" unemployable, and therefore unable to marry and have children.

Today's minimum wage advocates are more stupid than evil, but they still do horrible damage to the least-skilled members of society. They imagine that a minimum wage law says "Here you go: you get to earn at least this much!", but what they actually do is forbid you from earning anything unless your labor is able to fetch that cutoff price.

The real minimum wage is always zero.

-jcr

Re:Quality of Life

[jcr]

These laws benefit the larger corporations at the expense of the mom-and-pop operations, dumbass.

-jcr

Minimum wage = government subsidized wage

[millertym]

The biggest problem with not raising the minimum wage, imo, is that if it's low enough that a full time employee on minimum wage qualifies for state assistance then the reality is that the tax payers are footing part of the paycheck for the company involved.

To few comprehend the enormous amount of corporate welfare going on as tax payers fund the lives of minimum wage workers, while the corporation reaps the profit.

The minimum wage should always be set high enough that someone working full time earning it would not qualify for government assistance.

Unlink employment from health insurance or make EU

[Joe_Dragon]

Unlink employment from health insurance or make it more EU like where in some cases the employer pays in something or can pay something in. But they are not stuck paying the higher costs of sick people (higher rates small places and can be in for a big hit (self fund))

benefits cliffs are an issue where it can be bette

[Joe_Dragon]

benefits cliffs are an issue where it can be better to not work or not to work more then X hours.

Re:We should decrease the minimum wage to $1 per h

[ShanghaiBill]

strong unions already took care of that and with nearly 100% membership

Union membership by country:

Sweden - 82%
Denmark - 76%
Norway - 57%
Switzerland - 22%

Businesses where low wages are common, such as retail and fast-food, are the least likely to be unionized.

Laws and unions - or just shoot us

[Catbeller]

Of course they'll automate. They'd automate anyway. Their ideal world is no workers, affluent customers, and I assume packs of armed drones keeping the starving armies away from their mountain lairs.

Of course we need unions, mandated non-capital representation on corporate boards a la Germany, international laws forbidding seeking slave labor, minimum wages, and YES, rent controls. Or it goes to hell fast.

It is more about self preservation for the wealthy

[LordZardoz]

The argument for Universal Basic Income should not be based on any concept of fairness or trying to guarantee outcomes. That path is generally unworkable anyway.

It should be about self preservation.

If a societies wealth ends up too concentrated among a small segment of the population (say 10%), you are going to end up with 90% of the population having a huge incentive to destroy the social economic system that is screwing them over.

More bluntly, a rich person is able to live a life of comfort and luxury because all of his poorer neighbors are not envious and angry enough to want to tear his head off and take his shit.

If 90% of the population is living in poverty and squalor, the wealthy 10% have a good incentive to spread enough of the wealth around to keep that 90% content enough that they do not want to murder wealthy.

END COMMUNICATION

Spot on...

[jopsen]

Besides it's not like the US has a lack of low paying jobs... In fact unemployment isn't high, it's just many of the jobs are low paying.

Too low unemployment isn't healthy either, it might worthwhile translating some of the low paying jobs into fewer slightly higher paying jobs when unemployment is low. If unemployment is too low that'll hinder growth too..

You have low unemploymet...

[jopsen]

Canada currently has relatively low employment (just googled for a graph)...
So the idea of translating some of the low paying jobs to higher paying jobs might be worth while... Sure unemployment might increase a little in the process, but if unemployment keeps going down it'll eventually strangle the economy too.

When unemployment is low, encouraging automation by increasing minimum wages seems to make sense.

Note: from a human perspective having a living minimum wage always makes sense.

Scaling up [Re:And this is news because ??]

[Tablizer]

I'd ask the sexy genie to give them all a work ethic instead.

If everyone worked 60 hours a week, then not enough would be out consuming to keep econ going. And it may make for less available jobs since 2 people do the work that 3 normally would. Still doesn't scale. Try again.

Robots have a great work ethic, by the way. (Until they break down.)

Re:Scaling up [Re:And this is news because ??]

[HornWumpus]

Most people that actually do brain work (as opposed to 'face time' or sitting meetings) for 60+ hours/week end up being net negative workers in a couple of months. It's why when you're walking into a death march you triple your rate, you're going to need time to recover and it isn't free.

Savings are also put back into the economy. You might be operating under the 'Scrooge McDuck, pool of money' misconception. At this point most consumption is 'conspicuous' anyhow. Hours worked doesn't effect need to impress neighbors, you either have that curse or you don't.

'Work ethic' doesn't imply 60 hour weeks, just preferring work to handouts and actually working, at least between /. posts.

Re:Scaling up [Re:And this is news because ??]

[Tablizer]

Most people that actually do brain work...for 60+ hours/week end up being net negative workers in a couple of months...'Work ethic' doesn't imply 60 hour weeks

Okay, but then the definition of "work ethic" becomes subjective/vague/hard-to-measure, etc., making communication and studies about it difficult.

As far as hours worked affecting consumption, the only way to really settle it would be a direct study. Otherwise, we are both guessing human behavior.

Anyhow, I think the goal should be to get machines to work their tails off and NOT humans working their tails off*. The trick is to tune the motivations and money flow to the humans such that the benefits don't logjam to one group or to nowhere (recession).

* Social darwinists are against this, believing that difficult struggles keep humans strong and alert to protect against invaders (from other countries or maybe other planets).

Re:Accept the shit sandwhich or we'll make it wors

[TheInternet01]

You're looking at a single market. They don't buy food, buy cars, houses, toliet paper, paper plates, go camping, visit the waterslides, etc. There is a large part of the economy you're ignoring.

Re: We should decrease the minimum wage to $1 per

[kenh]

Norway nationalized the North Sea oil fields, their economy is atypical.

Norway has a very aggressive personal income tax rate, approaching 40%.

The average US worker pays 0% personal income tax, over 40% of tax filers actually get refunds in excess of all monies paid in.

https://tradingeconomics.com/n...

Minimum wage does not matter

[emaname]

Automation will happen regardless of what happens with the minimum wage.

Manufacturers see an opportunity to reduce labor cost AND introduce what is thought to be a more reliable, consistent, predictable labor resource. It does not matter what the minimum wage is.

Machines are there every day, all day. Their output typically is predictable. They don't organize into unions. Their performance isn't affected by personal problems. They don't need rest breaks, bathroom breaks, lunch breaks, healthcare plans, pensions or 401k's. Typically you can turn the overhead lights off while the machines do their work. All the OSHA issues go away. And the equipment is a capital asset and can be depreciated over some period of time whereas an employee has increases in the burden rate.

There probably are more reasons, but I think the list I've given already add up to a tidy profit margin.

Re:We should decrease the minimum wage to $1 per h

[LynnwoodRooster]

Unions in Europe also tend to be much more rational than ones in the US. In the US they are often all about making union leadership richer, and using the members to get ahead. For example, the IAM (machinist's union) which tends to strike at Boeing every 3-4 years. Boeing holds out just long enough so, when they give in to union demands for a 4% or 5% increase over the next few years, they've already saved enough wages not paid to the striking workers to offset that strike. Yet the union leadership demands and pushes for that strike every single chance they get - and use it to increase dues and raise their own salaries (which are quite high, most qualifying as being in the top 1%).