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Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

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Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#131

Post by wavefunction »

pgtruesdell wrote: post #93
karmacondon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think minimum wage laws exist? It's because at one point in our nation's history, businesses implicitly colluded to set wages low. They have more power in wage negotiations than workers do, because there are generally people who can afford to do unskilled labor for very small amounts. Businesses got greedy and took that too far, offering people wages far beyond a minimum standard of living. So in response,…

Collusion to suppress wages is already illegal. All you're saying is that you don't have any faith in the government to prevent collusion. Which is a whole separate issue.

Or maybe the poster doesn't have any faith in businesses to do the decent thing by their workers. Which is a whole separate issue.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#132

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

icebraining wrote: post #92
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I just don't know what to say to this. Sounds like the kind of thing someone who gets paid well above the minimum wage would say. Check out this Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_count... and sort by Hourly Nominal in descending order. Australia, France, New Zealand, Ireland, Belgium, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, and Canada all have minimum wages above the US. All…

To play Devil's advocate, most of other countries have an higher unemployment rate than the US.

That's definitely one metric of success.

Now name three others.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#133

Post by lr4444lr »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #103
cornholio wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are essentially making the luddite case. The counterargument usually goes like this: yes, people would be fired and there will be serious pain in the short run; however the machines will drastically improve productivity, therefore reduce prices, so real wages will go up along with demand and the extra income not spent on, say, buying feed stock for your horse, will go in creating other jobs and economic sectors t…

Does anyone have any economic information on what happened to grocery stores when the scanner was introduced? Did prices go down? What happened to those workers? I bet consumers didn't notice any benefits. I bet wait times stayed the same because fewer lines were open. I bet prices didn't go down either.

Grocery stores operate on very low profit margins already. Also, agriculture/husbandry and mass transport is heavily subsidized and regulated (in thr USA at least). It's a good suggestion, but I don't think cashiers are a major labor cost, and suspect the lessons to be gleaned from that industry will have limited predictive power.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#134

Post by WalterBright »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #130
karmacondon wrote: post #111

I think the fundamental purpose of a business is to accomplish a task, not to employ people. For example, I don't care how many people are employed to keep hackernews running. I'm thankful for their efforts, but I don't care if it's one person, ten people, or one bot. Or how much any of them get paid. The only thing that consumers and businesses care about is the end result. If a job can be done by a machine, that's…

Business is a social construct and we can un-construct it if it proves no longer to be the socially valuable way to do things. It's there to serve humans. if it doesn't do that, it's a parasite, drag it out behind the shed and shoot it.

If people find a business's product valuable enough that they'd pay their own money for it, then it serves a valuable purpose.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#135

Post by sanxiyn »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #103
cornholio wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are essentially making the luddite case. The counterargument usually goes like this: yes, people would be fired and there will be serious pain in the short run; however the machines will drastically improve productivity, therefore reduce prices, so real wages will go up along with demand and the extra income not spent on, say, buying feed stock for your horse, will go in creating other jobs and economic sectors t…

Does anyone have any economic information on what happened to grocery stores when the scanner was introduced? Did prices go down? What happened to those workers? I bet consumers didn't notice any benefits. I bet wait times stayed the same because fewer lines were open. I bet prices didn't go down either.

Following papers investigate this very interesting issue:

Raising the Barcode Scanner: Technology and Productivity in the Retail Sector (2011): http://ssrn.com/abstract=1754469

Change at the Checkout: Tracing the Impact of a Process Innovation (2013): http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215258

Q. Did prices go down? A. Yes! Scanners reduced prices of groceries by about 1.4% in their first decade. (pQ. What happened to those workers? A. We don't know, but scanning stores reduced their wage bills by about 4.5%. (pI bet consumers didn't notice any benefits but did receive benefits. I bet wait times stayed the same because fewer lines were open. I bet prices did go down.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#136

Post by wavefunction »

atemerev wrote: post #51
kdamken wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> however the machines will drastically improve productivity, therefore reduce prices Except why would that ever happen? If you were a business owner selling widget X, and it suddenly cost you half as much to make that due to automation, you don't pass those savings on to your customers, you celebrate how much better your margins have gotten and how much more profit you're making.

Because of this little thing called "competition". There will always be new businesses who can live with lower profit margins and drive you out of the market for good. Capitalism 101.

You should check out Capitalism 102 where they discuss barriers to entry.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#137

Post by tmptmp »

T2_t2 wrote: post #98
Chinjut wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution I'd like to see: Enact basic income AND change the fact that our culture views work ethic (narrowly defined in terms of market income) ~= value.

> AND change the fact that our culture views When has that ever worked? I can't think of a single example. Things people may raise like racism and sexism, in so far as they are changed, weren't changed per se, but merged with pre-existing values (liberty, fairness, equality) and morphed into a (usually) more consistent new definition. "We can all vote but not women" is more caveats than the new reality. Sexist ideas…

>> Maybe a sense of "money isn't everything"? That's all I've got, but then all the "77c on the dollar" talk puts money front and centre in almost every debate, making the "money is not everything" hard to sell as a deep cultural concept.

If we can get rid of the consumerism then I guess, we'd able to rein in many ill effects of "money is everything". But again with all these criminally deceptive advertisements targeting the most fundamental animal instincts in us and thus turning us into mindless consumers and thus in turn transforming us into beings which are slaves to their money. Frankly, short of putting ban on the overt and covert advertisement and full implementation of public education in this regard, I don't see any way out of this dire situation. Public education beginning right from the primary school w.r.t. awareness of the ill-effects of advertisements, must be implemented with full gusto.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#138

Post by refurb »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #23
Pyxl101 wrote: post #12

I've never heard a good argument to justify having a minimum wage. A lot of the people who argue for minimum wages commit the fallacy of the false dichotomy: they think that the choice is between everyone having jobs and getting paid what they're paid now, and everyone having jobs and getting paid more -- they think they can somehow legislate the latter outcome. In reality, what tends to happen when you increase mini…

Well, I just don't know what to say to this. Sounds like the kind of thing someone who gets paid well above the minimum wage would say. Check out this Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_count... and sort by Hourly Nominal in descending order. Australia, France, New Zealand, Ireland, Belgium, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, and Canada all have minimum wages above the US. All…

The US really does seem like some strange experiment in how not to do economics and democracy.

This is the exact opposite of how most people view America. If it's so bad, why do so many people want to live in the US?

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#139

Post by gozur88 »

x5n1 wrote: post #113
karmacondon wrote: post #111

I think the fundamental purpose of a business is to accomplish a task, not to employ people. For example, I don't care how many people are employed to keep hackernews running. I'm thankful for their efforts, but I don't care if it's one person, ten people, or one bot. Or how much any of them get paid. The only thing that consumers and businesses care about is the end result. If a job can be done by a machine, that's…

Full employment is one of the fundamental macroeconomic objectives. So yes as governments you do expect exactly that. You also expect to reduce disparity between the rich and poor. Why? Because you don't want people to revolt and create chaos. If unemployment goes up too much and there are no jobs, people will revolt and violence will occur... in which people will probably destroy your peaceful stable life... your fa…

Full employment is not a goal of any particular business, though. "The economy" is just a term to describe the transactions people make over time in their own interest. And any system built on the expectation people will ignore their own interests for the common good is destined to fail.

Re: Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky

#140

Post by gozur88 »

karmacondon wrote: post #88
atemerev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, every business on the planet wants wages as low as possible. This is, of course, correct. On the other hand, every employee on the planet wants her wage to be as high as possible. This is also obviously true. This creates law of supply and demand. Google can't hire a decent software engineer for, say, $30000/year, because other companies will immediately offer more, and supply of talented software engineers is…

Why do you think minimum wage laws exist? It's because at one point in our nation's history, businesses implicitly colluded to set wages low. They have more power in wage negotiations than workers do, because there are generally people who can afford to do unskilled labor for very small amounts. Businesses got greedy and took that too far, offering people wages far beyond a minimum standard of living. So in response,…

>Why do you think minimum wage laws exist?

Minimum wage laws make no sense economically, but they make a lot of sense politically. That's why minimum wage laws exist.

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