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

#281

Post by bhickey » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

hjhgjtyhdf wrote: post #273

jqm wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been successful (meaning what exactly?) societies that were not market economy based. People tend to think communism vs capitalism but for most of human history it's been something else. Like hunter/gather or some form of feudalism. I don't disagree that market societies work for distributing goods. But they do have external costs. Are there more efficient ways? Probably. Will market economies go the way o…

Can you name one society with a higher standard of living than one based on a market economy? Hint: You can't.

Higher for who and compared to what?

If a television is a requisite for a high standard of living, great, we're beating Ptolemy. It's disingenuous to pretend that you can do an apples-to-apples comparison across thousands of years and attribute it to market economics. Given the tremendous natural wealth in the United States, we'd probably have a higher standard of living most countries even if we adopted mercantilist economic policies.

This isn't to claim that market economies aren't a great idea, just that I don't think your reasoning holds water.

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

#282

Post by mbfg » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #263

zanny wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why... If you exist in an economy solely consisting of yourself and your employer, you went from receiving 1% if revenue to .2%. Your earnings are never absolute in terms of buying power or wealth - they are both relative, because the market behaves relatively to what people have or do not have. If your CEO gets 5 times richer than you, they now exert 5 times more economic influence on the economy and y…

> That is trickle down in a nutshell, but it is at complete discretion of the capitalist running the show how the money they get is then spent, and nowadays it is definitely not going to be on you. So wait, you're saying the capitalist can choose to pay people zero dollars for their salaries or charge 100 times more for their goods and workers/consumers will automatically accept those terms? Because that's not really…

the capitalist will soon be able to not hire people at all, for an ever larger meaning of 'at all'

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

#283

Post by mbfg » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:15 PM UTC

blazespin wrote: post #121

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…

It will happen.. we still live in a democracy. Sanders didn't win, but he moved the democrats to the left.

I'd be happy to see Sanders pull an upset, but lets not fool ourselves, the democratic party didn't move an inch. They are the same corporatists that they ever were.

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

#284

Post by jsf666 » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:15 PM UTC

zurn wrote: post #219

tmptmp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Marxists and communists have tried doing that thing many times and have failed spectacularly. Business based market economy is the only (till now) successful and socially most beneficial type of society that has ever existed. I upvoted the OP because he/she/it (it may be a bot) has put this thing in clear words.

European social democracies have made it work by continuously re-constructing it. Employees and citizens of the welfare state are at the table when negotiating how to set rules for the managed capitalism. Check out Sweden for example.

Sweden and the rest of European economies built their wealth on typical capitalism. And I've checked out Sweden, after you've gone into its current situation it ain't so great as communists like Sanders make it to be

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

#285

Post by zanny » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:16 PM 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.

If you offered sufficiently high wages to do those jobs, you would find plenty of people willing to do them.

A labor glut does not necessitate me being able to ask for someone to mow my lawn for one cent and having someone volunteer. You have a labor glut when the availability of living wage work declines below the working population who need to earn such a living.

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

#286

Post by galfarragem » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

Risking to be simplist, the political dialectic will be soon resumed to:

the right to be supported by society VS the right to work for society

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

#287

Post by unclebucknasty » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #232

unclebucknasty wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in the UK, but here in the States it is overwhelmingly a left-vs-right debate.

What's interesting is that those who ascribe some sort of moral (or maybe just sentimental) value to being in work are currently a majority on the left and on the right. That goes for the US as well as for Britain.

True, which is why I find it morally bankrupt for people who subscribe to that belief to then feel no moral obligation to pay a living wage.

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

#288

Post by mbfg » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

toomanythings2 wrote: post #255

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 w…

This is a very sane point of course, and you are right that the consumer, and perhaps the low wage earner (in cases of the McDonald's type restaurants) now loses his extra wage to extra meal costs, so it is self defeating.

The problem though is that your costs are not driven up just by wage costs, but by many other things that are not helping the low wage earner. So the self defeating part of the "rising cost past to the consumer" is only a fraction of what makes life miserable for those who are at the bottom. Increasing there pay directly helps them 100%. And so it is still a net win.

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

#289

Post by zanny » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #263

zanny wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why... If you exist in an economy solely consisting of yourself and your employer, you went from receiving 1% if revenue to .2%. Your earnings are never absolute in terms of buying power or wealth - they are both relative, because the market behaves relatively to what people have or do not have. If your CEO gets 5 times richer than you, they now exert 5 times more economic influence on the economy and y…

> That is trickle down in a nutshell, but it is at complete discretion of the capitalist running the show how the money they get is then spent, and nowadays it is definitely not going to be on you. So wait, you're saying the capitalist can choose to pay people zero dollars for their salaries or charge 100 times more for their goods and workers/consumers will automatically accept those terms? Because that's not really…

You are giving exaggerated examples, but in practice the capital owner can, if they want, do the long form negotiations with people to lower wages (to the minimum) and raise prices because they have significantly more bargaining power when they control so much of the wealth pie.

Respectively:

If I run a business and I want to stifle wages at my company, I both stop raises and then start cutting gradually. People will leave, I will hire new workers (we have a labor glut after all, if you expand your reach enough you will find more and more desperate people for money) and repeat the cycle until we hit the wage floor.

No, it is probably not $0. There is some point for even the most desperate and hungry person where you say it is not worth my time to make, say, $2 an hour rather than just trying to find another job. It is not about not giving the worker anything in return, it is about finding the least they are willing to take for the work.

But it is not a fair negotiation. When you are talking about almost every employee, they are bargaining from the perspective of having no time (in a business sense) to barter, and their ability to eat or sleep depends on the job. For the owner, their ability to expand their own wealth depends on the employee, and they can wait as long as they want for the hiree to forfeit to their terms.

Likewise with goods prices, if you are in perpetual profit you can constantly amass more money, and in the US economy wealth amassment enables you to take several measures to raise prices in the long term without losing customers to competition - you buy your competitors out, you bribe politicians to pass legislation that reduces competition or the ability to startup in your industry (through expansive regulations, permit requirements, red tape, and sometimes even outright banning competition as is the case with teleco) and you use the market leverage you get to make more profit.

I imagine today companies like Comcast in some areas are charging 100 times more than real market valuation of a cable internet subscription would be in an environment of absolute market freedom.

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

#290

Post by pharke » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

hjhgjtyhdf wrote: post #268

JulianMorrison wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until now, the possibility of having a group of people who lead a leisure life without an undercaste of slaves hasn't existed. Automation is a new thing under the sun.

That's funny because the "slaves" in America right now enjoy a higher standard of living than virtually every king and queen before our generation.

How is this not patently false? If you take someone living below the poverty line, earning minimum wage, renting their meager apartment, eating highly processed carbs and pseudo-meat, in debt to their bank and payday loan sharks, and under constant threat of homelessness brought on by unexpected illness or economic downturn, how is this situation in any way superior to a king or queen as they existed before "our generation" which I take to mean the modern era rather than literally our generation.

A monarch of the past would have obviously better access to food, more of it, higher quality, they might have slightly less variety available (dependent on the era and location) but they certainly weren't eating the prepackaged garbage that passes for low budget food today.

By law they owned not only their own vast properties, houses, palaces, etc. but also that of all of their subjects and nobility allowing them to give and take as they wished from anyone under their dominion. Even after reforms almost all royal families were still left with vast holdings that produce more than enough wealth to live absurdly opulent lifestyles. There have been many cases of indebted rulers but that is debt in the sense of illiquidity, they were still asset rich and able to melt the plate down to pay off the debts, so to speak.

This notion that everyone was universally worse off in the past and therefore even the lowest of the modern low are somehow better off in their current state and should be thankful for it is the crudest of fallacies. The trite example of modern healthcare being a shining example of why it's better to be poor today than wealthy 200 years ago is equally absurd considering that such care is often avoided by the poorest due to its cost right up until it's too late to do anything about it. You wind up with a situation where a person's only choice is to hope not to get sick since they can't afford the treatment or the missed work either of which could put them even further under water or on the street.