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Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

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Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#301

Post by krnlpnc »

gwright wrote: post #264
krnlpnc wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage works out to about $2500/mo before taxes where I live. That’s not enough to pay for rent, utilities, food and incidentals. Not to mention insurance(s). Not to mention a car if your commute requires it. Not to mention family/dependents. Not to mention emergency savings. Not to mention retirement. The list goes on. It’s not about a “much more than comfortable lifestyle”. It’s about establishing a baseline…

Is a minimum wage intended to provide support for one person or for a family (including dependents)? You aren't really clear in your comment on this point, which is common confusion in much discussion of this topic. If it is for an entire family, then shouldn't there be a different, lower minimum wage for an individual without a family? What about a teenager with an after school job? What about a retiree who is just…

IMO an average household. Going into more detail than that is a slippery slope towards profiling and discriminatory pay.

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#302

Post by sokoloff »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #228
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that we'll have "working homeless" in the decades to come. "A 2010 longitudinal study of homeless men conducted in Birmingham, Alabama, found that most earned an average of ninety dollars per week while working an average of thirty hours per week[192]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_S... "Employees at Amazon's base in Dunfermline, Fife, were apparently so worried they’d lose th…

And it's highly disturbing to me that people will defend these situations on this site. An alarming amount of HN commenters seem to believe that the cost of labor is a function of the money created by the labor. In other words, a job will only pay $X/hr because it creates $Y/hr in revenue where Y > X + some margin. They pretend that if Y goes up, then it brings X up and if X is low, then it means Y MUST be low as wel…

The more logical claim reads more like "employers will logically try not to employ unprofitable labor", meaning that the wage paid to a worker will generally be no higher than the variable profit enabled by that worker.

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#303

Post by microcolonel »

varjag wrote: post #198
microcolonel wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> minimum wages in certain trades My understanding is that these come from private agreements, not legislation. Are you saying that there are a handful of industries where there is actual legislation?

No. You can't say legally employ a cleaner for less than their occupation minimum wage. They don't have to negotiate for it or be in a union, either. https://www.arbeidstilsynet.no/en/working-conditions/pay-and...

Collective bargaining agreements are private agreements, aren't they? I meant that the legislature and regulators me not decide the wages; and your reference seems to directly indicate that.

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#304

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

ggggtez wrote: post #270
Alex3917 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you raise the minimum wage, it makes automation more effective in comparison. Which is why in NYC when they raised the minimum wage for fast food workers, most of the people at McDonald's who used to take orders just got replaced with kiosks. This is in effect a subsidy for the tech companies that automate labor, like the company that makes the McDonald's kiosks.

>Which is why in NYC when they raised the minimum wage for fast food workers, most of the people at McDonald's who used to take orders just got replaced with kiosks Is it really true though? When you actually look at the real world, you'll find those kiosks at McDonalds in airports too, despite not being in districts that raised minimum wage. And what about McDonalds in other wealthy countries, that often have state…

They've been superior for a while. We had touchscreen kiosks at a Jack-in-the-Box (cheap burger chain) at near my university back in 2007.

It was a pilot program, and the CEO said they found that young people preferred to wait in line for the kiosk rather than place their order with an actual human, but older people preferred the opposite, so they decided to wait before rolling it out to all their locations. I think touchscreen devices are finally omnipresent enough that the older age demographics can handle ordering via a touchscreen.

A more sinister take would be that the larger restaurant chains anticipated minimum-wage increases, and timed the rollout of touchscreen devices to coincide with the rollout of minimum wage legislation, so their lobbyists can make the argument that minimum wage increases cost jobs, because they're still going to have to pay the cooks in the back and the people to keep the place clean.

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#305

Post by Digory »

pwthornton wrote: post #168

How many of the people arguing for keeping the minimum wage unchanged were arguing that in good faith? In general, increasing pay into people at the bottom of the ladder has a much bigger economic effect than the opposite. Reasonable increases in the minimum wage, particularly ones that track inflation and cost of living are not going to harm the economy. As many have pointed out, the minimum wage in many places has…

About 2-3% of hourly paid workers earn minimum wage. For the most part, it's not about the masses, but the skills necessary to get onto the bottom rung.

As others have said elsewhere, in most cities, labor is at about $!5/hr already.

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#306

Post by Proven »

I don’t need to read this lame “research” to know that higher labor prices mean lower employment.

And the lame “research” also completely ignores the discriminatory nature of minimum wage (by which government legalizes the less productive workers out of the labor market).

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#308

Post by fzeroracer »

BurningFrog wrote: post #291
fzeroracer wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What job skills exactly are you learning doing minimum wage jobs in 2019? That always seemed like a bit of a meme to me, considering if you've already held one minimum wage job before then you've already learned everything they have to offer practically. This might be different if companies were interested in training employees but they aren't. So what happens with no minimum wage is that you have a class of workers…

Job skills to learn for people who can't get a minimum wage job can be - Getting to work on time and every day. - Functioning in a workplace without getting in fights. - Sobriety. - A basic knowledge of English. Once you've mastered those, McDonalds will be happy to hire you.

Those aren't job skills. Those are all things you learn as part of your basic education.

So again, what actual skills do you learn on the job? If your argument is that we should remove the minimum wage to help people who can't make it through the educational system, I think the actual argument is that our educational system is fucked and needs to be fixed. Even then, most of the unemployed have those skills you've mentioned but aren't hired for any number of reasons unrelated to their competency or wages.

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#309

Post by helpPeople »

roflchoppa2 wrote: post #54
helpPeople wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure your area, but unskilled labor goes for 15$/hr in metro Detroit. You cannot get people to show up for less than that. Source, wife owns a business and that's going rate to answer phones.

is it difficult for your wifes business to make money, and pay your employees at $15 (or more)? Serious question.

Maybe in a few years it will be easier. After 2 years she's only made 6k profit.

Re: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

#310

Post by monocasa »

mikepurvis wrote: post #299
LegitShady wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the user chose the wrong blocks. There's no way for the platform to know

HN doesn't support proper quoting, which is why people do these hacks.

> HN doesn't support proper quoting, which is why people do these hacks.

Yeah, but there's better hacks at least.

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