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

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

#251

Post by avz » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 11:31 AM UTC

mbfg wrote: post #56

I'm all for raising the minimum wage, temporarily it may help people for several years. The truth is the automation wave is coming quickly regardless of what people are paid. And it's not for just minimum wage jobs. Think about jobs like truck driver where there's probably several million people who count this as their profession in the US. In 10-20 years, that number will probably approach 0. There's a nasty new wor…

Yes, we have already automated away some production facilities and will soon automate the rest, but human work is way more than just producing goods. Increasing amount of our work is focused on solving problems. Saying that we may now stop working is like saying there are no more problems to solve. That we're done here. That this is the world we want.

Given the abundance of problems to solve, I think there will be abundance of jobs. Many of them may involve directing robots or ML algorithms for increased productivity at lower skill level. Others may involve seeking out specific problems to solve. Note that this task requires you:

* to have initiative,

* to be affected by a problem yourself or to empathize with someone else who is affected.

Such jobs would stay around for a very long time.

Maybe one day we will have a god-like super-AI that would not need to be run and configured by anyone and would seek out and solve problems completely of its own accord. But this isn't even on the horizon.

EDIT: formatting

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

#252

Post by makomk » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 11:35 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #186

zanny wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 minim…

We don't have labor gluts at all. In the US working mothers struggle to find child care for their children, houses go uncleaned, and productive people drive themselves to work. That's a situation of labor scarcity, not a labor glut.

Well, childcare, house-cleaning and car driving have potential costs far in excess of the cost of wages - if someone steals your stuff or damages your furnishings whilst cleaning your house, or crashes when they're driving you to work, or injures your kids, that can be hugely expensive. Also, getting someone else to drive you to work is really inefficient - it means that two people are stuck in a car being unproductive for the entire drive rather than one, plus the driver probably has to drive back afterwards.

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

#253

Post by makomk » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 11:39 AM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #79

makomk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with supply and demand is that people can't exactly stop eating for a few months if they can't find work that pays as much as they'd like, so as long as there are more people who need jobs to eat than there are jobs it can't do much to stop the downward pressure on wages - which in turn means that it's in business owners' interests to make sure this is true. (Why do you think there's really so much pressu…

You think that high minimum wage will somehow magically create more jobs? Could you please explain this entertaining possibility?

No, where do you get that idea from?

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

#254

Post by rasz_pl » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 11:39 AM UTC

SyneRyder wrote: post #237

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…

"Fortunately, fully automating the process of driving or running a restaurant is decades away." It's closer than you think. Dominos Australia is already trialling automated delivery (in Brisbane, I believe?) with their new DRU robots. [1][2] On the pro-human side, Dominos appear to be testing if people will pay extra for a human, under the guise of "For an extra $3, guaranteed delivery in 20 minutes." (The DRU robots…

you linked to early April fools joke ...

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

#255

Post by toomanythings2 » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 11:44 AM UTC

I own several franchised fast food restaurants.

This article ignores several key points. Robots are expensive and would need to be custom made for each restaurant to replace humans. Also, there would be missing the human touch, making a restaurant visit cold and automated. No more "service" and personal touches. You get what you get.

The immediate issue is, who pays for the increased labor cost? You do. And, no, it won't just add a dime to your bill. My labor cost has gone up 150% since I started in this 30 years ago as an investment. All my material costs are also up at least that same amount. The unit cost to you of one of our products was $4 back then. Today it is $8.

I now feel I hire better people but I hire fewer of those people and, currently, won't hire teenagers cause they're unreliable but the quality of person I need to run with this light crew is hard to find, more due to the stigma of working fast food than the actual pay (though that's part of it).

The customer is price sensitive. The customer likes the human touch. If restaurants go robotic, the most popular restaurants will be those without one, and while the idea of raising pay to $15/hour is great, someone has to pay for that, and that someone is you.

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

#256

Post by makomk » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 11:45 AM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #96

makomk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could just as easily say, "The good argument for having a maximum 'price of bread' is that without it, bread prices will be pressured up, because every bakery on the planet wants prices as high as possible, and they generally have the means to achieve it." You could certainly just as easily say that, but there's an obvious reason why it isn't true: so long as there are multiple suppliers and it's possible to prod…

A race to the bottom only happens with fungible goods, where any price differential is sufficient to completely dominate purchasing logic. There is a very broad spread in the quality of bread, and people's purchasing decisions are heavily weighted by product marketing.

That rather depends on how much people can afford to spend on bread. At least here in the UK, there's been a massive rise in the popularity of discount supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl which sell their own off-brand products that's gone hand in hand with the economic crisis. Also, it doesn't require a complete race to the bottom to ensure that bread is available at a reasonable price and the existence of premium brands doesn't cause non-premium bread to disappear.

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

#257

Post by kuschku » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 12:07 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #138

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…

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?

> why do so many people want to live in the US?

The same reason why a million refugees came to Germany:

False expectations.

What people expect from the US is a country with no taxes, great economy, and the ability to become a millionaire within of months.

That’s why.

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

#258

Post by crdoconnor » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 12:12 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #181

crdoconnor wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a nasty new world order coming where a vast majority of jobs will be gone. If anything is going to cause this dystopian future to happen it'll be trade deals like TTIP and TPP not magical androids. >Even if you have a job that is 'automation-proof' or 'automation-resistent' but not an elite, your income will be paltry compared to the super rich class Americans have fought (and won) against robber barons befo…

How do TPP and other trade deals which allow Chinese people to compete economically with Americans destroy jobs? I'm assuming, of course, that Chinese are people too.(I've never been there but I've met a few of them. They didn't seem that different from me.) Out of curiosity, did ending Jim Crow (allowing blacks to compete economically with whites) also destroy jobs? Can we create prosperity by making up arbitrary di…

>How do TPP and other trade deals which allow Chinese people to compete economically with Americans destroy jobs?

By moving factories which previously employed Americans to countries where they don't, leaving those Americans unemployed.

All of that cheap stuff you buy at Walmart that was made by Americans pre-1990 isn't now all made by robots.

>Out of curiosity, did ending Jim Crow (allowing blacks to compete economically with whites) also destroy jobs?

No. No jobs were moved overseas via Jim Crow laws to take advantage of lax labor and environmental laws.

Out of curiosity have you ever looked into the details of any of these trade deals? Because many of them implicitly support slavery.

Does that matter to you?

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

#259

Post by kuschku » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 12:13 PM UTC

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.

> Robots are going to pay the social security tax.

Those robots are owned by business owners like half of the people commenting in this thread, and, like the comments already show, they’ll push for 0 taxes on their robots.

They’d rather have people die than to increase the costs of their products by a few dollar.

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

#260

Post by golergka » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 12:16 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #161

jrmurad wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I'm quite sure the "un-construction" he's talking about takes the lines of, say, revoking a business license. I have no idea why you imagined it would involve beating and robbing anyone.

> I have no idea why you imagined it would involve beating and robbing anyone.

Reading history books gives you strange ideas.