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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

#151

Post by zanny »

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.

The other problem is that today we have labor gluts, particularly of the unskilled variety. Automation reduces the need for workers, those workers become economic outcasts with no influence to have their needs satisfied by capitalism, and the ownership class does not create demand for more unskilled labor - they want founders and professionals who can grow their wealth, that is what they demand.

If you drop the minimum wage you do not need collusion to see real wages for jobs drop insanely low, ironically because those who can live off other income will work them when there is no other easy way to earn additional income - IE, those with wealth will work for less because their life does not depend on that income providing their base needs, which already are in many places more than what the minimum wage offers already (ie, living wage).

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

#152

Post by clarkmoody »

dragonwriter wrote: post #106
mangeletti wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hereby give you an honorary 1000 karma. Reading this article disgusted me. I'm not a "republican" or "democrat", or anything else for that matter, but I have some intelligence and sense. Arguing that raising minimum wage will some how lead to more prosperity is the same thing as stating "people with minimum wage jobs currently have prosperity". The minimum is the minimum, no matter how high we raise it. The only th…

Minimum wage increases, experience has shown, put upward pressure on wages generally. It is not the case that everyone making between the old minimum wage and the new minimum wage ends up at the new minimum after the change.

Let's continue your thought:

If minimum wage increases put upward pressure on wages generally, then what happens? Higher wage levels in general means more money in people's pockets, and this can turn into general price inflation (especially since business costs have risen due to the general level of wages going up).

So let's assume you now have inflation. This means everything just got more expensive, so now that new higher wage level buys you less and less. And now the people who are completely out of work and can't command the minimum wage for their skills/labor are even farther behind.

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

#153

Post by JulianMorrison »

WalterBright wrote: post #134
JulianMorrison wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Overly small scale perspective. Exaggerated scenario for clarity: your one starving human buying survival kibble from a fully automated megacorporation is better off with the kibble and without the pittance they spent on it, an infinitesimal amount of value was created. But humanity as a whole would be better off overthrowing the business system and directing the machines to make every human's life a paradise.

Systems should be compared as systems, not as piecemeal and mostly-forced decisions.

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

#154

Post by djrogers »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #128

I don't want employment, and hell no I definitely don't want full employment, just the opposite. I want us as a species to transition to a leisure society with the ick automated away, and the only jobs humans do being ones humans would love to do for the sheer fun of it. Because a minimum wage has a loophole for "not employed at all", it isn't good enough. A Basic Income has no such loophole, and will allow poor peop…

I'm curious about this. In your ideal above, how would one go about pursuing their dreams without an ability to earn excess capital through labor?

For example, my goal is to have a nice house on 50-100 acres. I also really enjoy jet skiing and boating with my family - especially from a nice lakefront rental with a private dock.

I can't fathom how I would pursue those goals in a 'leisure society'... Or as a prole would I be expected to just accept my assigned housing, only use public transportation, and put my name in an annual lottery for one of the state run vacation compounds?

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

#155

Post by djrogers »

melling wrote: post #4

How did someone come to this conclusion? "Right now the retirement age is rising from 65 to 67, and most people think it will have to go up to 70. If robots can do a lot of the work instead, we could put it back down to 65 or even to 62 while still growing the economy. " Robots are going to pay the social security tax.

I honestly couldn't figure this one out either...

Although now that I think about it, I wouldn't put it past some politicians to come up with a plan to tax businesses for automation as a way to counter the SS shortfall. Kinda like taxing miles driven now that cars are so efficient the gas taxes don't work anymore.

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

#156

Post by dropit_sphere »

felipeko wrote: post #76
erikpukinskis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The human biology and mind is clearly limited, while the progress of machines does not seem to be. Can you explain what you mean by that? That's not an intuitive idea to me, animals/AIs just seem like two different kinds of machines to me with different computational characteristics, neither of which can fully simulate the other.

Not op, but i will try. There's no distinction of biological computation and machine computation, there's just computation. What our brain is doing is computation, we may not fully understand how it does what it does yet, but what we know is that our brain is a very powerful computational machine, that's why it is so hard to emulate its processes. But as man-made machines are still getting more powerful, it will some…

>There's no distinction of biological computation and machine computation, there's just computation. What our brain is doing is computation, we may not fully understand how it does what it does yet,

Doesn't the second part cast doubt on the first part?

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

#157

Post by soared »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #40
unclebucknasty wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not surprising that a conservative think tank released a study against the minimum wage. There are also arguments and studies concluding that the minimum wage ultimately creates jobs.

The conservative government here in the UK has put the minimum wage on a steep upward trajectory. This is not a conservative vs left-wing (or liberal as you like to call it) thing. The more important distinction is between those who keep holding on to paid work as the main or only moral basis for deserved income and the other camp that tries to move away from that principle. There are conservative, left-leaning and l…

Would slowly increasing minimum wage act as a slow (not exact) transition to basic income?

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

#158

Post by JulianMorrison »

djrogers wrote: post #154
JulianMorrison wrote: post #128

I don't want employment, and hell no I definitely don't want full employment, just the opposite. I want us as a species to transition to a leisure society with the ick automated away, and the only jobs humans do being ones humans would love to do for the sheer fun of it. Because a minimum wage has a loophole for "not employed at all", it isn't good enough. A Basic Income has no such loophole, and will allow poor peop…

I'm curious about this. In your ideal above, how would one go about pursuing their dreams without an ability to earn excess capital through labor? For example, my goal is to have a nice house on 50-100 acres. I also really enjoy jet skiing and boating with my family - especially from a nice lakefront rental with a private dock. I can't fathom how I would pursue those goals in a 'leisure society'... Or as a prole woul…

An approach I've considered is, that the living allocation by default is just comfortable. You'd be able to get allocated a city apartment or a rural house. But this is coupled to a delegation based "liquid" direct world democracy where you can either direct your surplus yourself, or delegate it to someone (or some organization). And recursively they can delegate it too.

So suppose you were Elon Musk and you said, I want to build a colony on Mars, you'd probably be able to draw the interest of large delegating entities who would grant resource priority to the program so it could make rockets, and other entities would have projects that needed launching, and so forth.

Or compare a smaller project, if you were a marine biologist and you wanted to equip a boat and go study penguins, there would be some delegating entity that would care about penguins, and you'd get your boat.

Perhaps even if you just wanted a particularly beautiful house, you'd be able to draw enough aesthetes to your cause.

But if you were just a jerk who wanted a mansion, well, probably not.

[Edit: for clarity, you could conceptualize this system as something like crowdfunding, except global, recursively delegated, and directing resources directly instead of money.]

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

#160

Post by jrmurad »

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.

"un-construct it... drag it out behind the shed and shoot it."

Can you "un-construct" this newspeak for us? It sounds like you're advocating that you or some other force besides free and voluntary trade should literally shut down private businesses, possibly beating and robbing their owners in the process (as has been done historically)?

Because there's some formula for determining "social value" which has "number of employees" as a factor?

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