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

#321

Post by crdoconnor » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #293

crdoconnor wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 economi…

By moving factories which previously employed Americans to countries where they don't, leaving those Americans unemployed. Assuming you are right that those Americans remain unemployed, you are completely ignoring the newly employed Chinese people. Do they count for nothing? Not even 3/5? Out of curiosity, since your calculus is explicitly putting zero value on Chinese people, why would you care about Chinese slaves?

Are you saying that the employment prospects of Chinese people are the responsibility of the US government but implicitly supporting slavery isn't?

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

#322

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #292

pharke wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gene…

I think that image of monarchs comes from the movies? The famous inventory of Charlemagne's estate includes 2 cups, one chair and a towel. Their food back then was bad meat and oatmeal, no matter who you were. Indeed, just the existence of cheap antibiotics are likely to make the most humble of today's citizens live decades longer than anyone from the past.

You think the image of monarchs comes from the movies and that actually monarchs had little more than a couple of cups? I'm sorry but that is a very delusional view.

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

#323

Post by zanny » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #320

zanny wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply and demand of labor does not care what people need - it does not care at all that mothers want childcare, or the citizens want better roads. All that matters is if that mother or if the citizenry are willing to pay for it. Predominantly most of that is due to the labor glut driving down median incomes and leaving people with less economic negotiating power to get the things they want done. It isn't appropr…

Conversely, if there was an oversupply of labor prices would come down. Note that I said labor is scarce, not that there is a shortage. The fact that prices remain high suggest people are choosing not to work, not that their labor is worthless and they can't find any job. Why do we need a BI if labor is valuable and people are merely lazy? Why do we want to make a scarce resource even scarcer?

What prices are high?

One important, central consideration must remain that labor is local. Surely some cities in the US have a labor shortage, and the worse it gets the more financial pressure it puts on the unemployed elsewhere to somehow manage the opportunity cost to immigrate. But the workforce participation rate is at a twenty year low, it is below 1960s levels before women even entered the workforce en masse, and it is continuing to decline.[1]

I'm also curious who is "lazily" not working, and somehow still eating and sleeping under a roof. And then I'd also argue that if you can find people that are refusing to work minimum wage and instead prefer to be homeless, that is probably because they have no negotiating power in wage relations because... there is a glut of labor. If there is work to do, that is valuable, prices will rise to find supply. If the prices will not rise, then you do not have actual demand, you have desire. Money is the only thing that speaks in economics.

[1]http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/record-94610...

In the macrospective economy, I would like to see evidence of unsupplied demand at the minimum wage for child care or construction workers. My father works construction, and there is a tremendous glut of foreign laborers in our area (Eastern PA) that drive wages down straight to the minimum with no benefits. There is a shortage of skilled labor in the industry, but only because the hiring practices of firms has prioritized the unskilled cheap workers and thus drove talent westward. So now there is a shortage of skilled workers, but only at non-competitive pay rates that the skilled workers left because there was a labor glut, with firms simultaneously unwilling to raise rates back up to attract them back.

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

#324

Post by toomanythings2 » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

mbfg wrote: post #288

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…

Those "other things" mean the cost of food, paper, cleaning supplies, etc. that make a restaurant run. Those same materials are made by low wage earners who, if given $15/hour, will drive up the cost of the supplies I use, thus increasing my operating costs.

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

#325

Post by shkkmo » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:34 PM UTC

LunaSea wrote: post #238

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.

How do you enact basic income when a majority of your population doesn't have an income and thus can't pay the taxes that finance that exact basic income?

Tax capital, not income, like we should have been doing in the first place.

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

#326

Post by turar » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:40 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #292

pharke wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gene…

I think that image of monarchs comes from the movies? The famous inventory of Charlemagne's estate includes 2 cups, one chair and a towel. Their food back then was bad meat and oatmeal, no matter who you were. Indeed, just the existence of cheap antibiotics are likely to make the most humble of today's citizens live decades longer than anyone from the past.

This has a good overview of a routine day in the life of a monarch. It's nothing like bad meat and oatmeal. https://www.quora.com/What-was-daily-life-like-for-a-medieva...

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

#327

Post by mbfg » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:47 PM UTC

badminton1 wrote: post #233

Before computerized elevators, there were manually operated elevators. Before automatic telephone switchboards there were manually operated telephone switchboards... Those things were relatively modern. Future people will say: before automated kitchens there were manually operated kitchens, before automated cleaners there were janitors, before self-driving cars there were manual cars... and so on. The domain of tasks…

Agreed. It's interesting that this thread is almost entirely about low wage earners. Truck drivers were added to the conversation, but the truth is it's not about low wage earning, but about rote working.

In 10-20 years, i'd expect

The job of accountant being pretty much wiped off the map for humans. Turbo Tax, et. al, was a nascent first step.

Doctors, Nurses, Hospital Administrators, Staff will be significantly pared down, and given much more commoner positions, as I can go down to Walgreens, sit in the gene therapy booth and cure my own cancer, hiv, leukemia, als, etc. etc. Perhaps Baby docs will survive the longest... that's kind of icky even for a robot.

Dentists? Higentists? I'd expect in that period of time, we will be able to regrow teeth beyond the first set of adult teeth... so, really what's the point of your job function.

Middle Management? Various surveys suggest people actually would prefer to report to a computer, rather than a human, and really, will it be that hard to believe that middle management can't be done via robot? That's a good number of people without jobs.

Bus/Train/Plane Drivers, gone soon as well.

Almost all manufacturing jobs will be gone.

As automated surveillance reaches its crescendo, surely police forces can be significantly trimmed, even without the introduction of robocop.

And on and on...

If you want a job in the near future, start planning for one that is highly chaotic. But with everyone fighting for those jobs, don't expect much in pay.

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

#328

Post by hjhgyhgd » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

bhickey wrote: post #281

hjhgjtyhdf wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mercantilis…

Surely there are no advanced economies without rich natural resources. Oh wait. There's South Korea and Singapore who are some the most capitalist countries on Earth.

I'm also questioning your belief that being protectionist wouldn't hurt our standard of living. Do you know the T-shirt you're wearing cost a lot more if it was made in the USA?

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

#329

Post by dang » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

LunaSea wrote: post #243

pdkl95 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where does the government get the money to give out to everyone? The exact same place they get it right now - they pull it out of thin air by fiat. (involving a quasi-government agency ("the fed") as a proxy is optional) Money hasn't been zero sum up since the gold standard. Governments already define most aspects of money, and they can change it as needed, such as when Nixon declared that the dollar was no longer…

Congratulations on writing the most retarded comment I have ever read on HN.

You can't comment like this here, regardless of how wrong or ignorant another commenter seems. We ban accounts that do personal attacks. Please re-read the guidelines and post only comments that are civil and substantive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#330

Post by clarkmoody » Sun, Apr 03, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #230

clarkmoody wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So let's assume you now have inflation. You're basically arguing that it's raising the minimum wage that increases inflation, when this is patently not true. Inflation is almost always present, regardless of modifications to minimum wage.

So ... in my comment I was continuing the line of the parent that minimum wage rises lead to upward pressure on wages generally.

My claim would be that general wage level increases lead to inflation.