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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

#351

Post by CharlesColeman »

andymockli wrote: post #249
CharlesColeman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am apprehensive about the neutrality of a show... I'd also assume any show that bills itself as "Paul Krugman's column refuted, week after week!" is more of an ideological security blanket than real intellectual engagement or critique.

I'd personally categorize Paul Krugman as an idealogue. You might think the same of Bob Murphy and Tom Woods, but the aim was to offer a counterpoint to Krugman's ideas. I believe you'd find the intellectual engagement and critiques within the podcast, not the subtitle.

> I believe you'd find the intellectual engagement and critiques within the podcast, not the subtitle.

No, I doubt it. If they think they can refute [1] like clockwork future columns they've never seen, it's almost certain they're just rehashing dogmas for the faithful. I have better things to spend my time on than that.

[1] a very strong word, by the way

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

#352

Post by mikepurvis »

monocasa wrote: post #310
mikepurvis wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Email-style quoting doesn't work that well for a paragraph exceeding one line, and even worse for multiple paragraphs.

Obvious answer is just not to quote that much, but sometimes it's desirable to, especially as in the case above, where a block of external text is being quoted (as opposed to just quoting the particular part of another comment that you're addressing your reply to).

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

#353

Post by someone7x »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #180
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…

This is true, but people who argue for it most vocally refuse to acknowledge the fact that it’s not economically feasible to reward the lowest paid people with a MUCH MORE than comfortable lifestyle. The minimum wage is for two things: To prevent the exploitation of workers at a certain level, and to allow workers to support themselves. Some people also fail to realize that there will always be poor people. The only…

"Some people also fail to realize that there will always be poor people."

Replace "poor people" with heretics and you sound as self-rationalizing as an inquisitor.

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

#354

Post by UnFleshedOne »

didibus wrote: post #22
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The markup on most products is such that US businesses could easily manufacture their products in the US at current minimum wages and still handily profit. What data are you basing this on? You're also ignoring the most important part - consumer choice. People buy cheap shit because it's cheaper. It's the foundation of Walmart. So let's say the companies here did manufacture here, but then a foreign competitor offe…

I think that's precisely the issue. Economists thought that driving an open market would push up wages as efficiencies come back around, thus both driving for cheaper goods and higher wages. But they didn't anticipate exactly the effect of globalism and the exodus to China happening so quick. Foreign industries could be taxed to some level relative to what their workers are paid and their working conditions to even o…

> both driving for cheaper goods and higher wages

This actually works -- cheaper goods for developed countries and higher wages for China. On the balance this is a win economically. Environmentally it is the opposite -- better for developed countries and worse for manufacturing ones.

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

#355

Post by daotoad »

BurningFrog wrote: post #347
fzeroracer wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very, very familiar with how the poor and poverty stricken live considering I've been there and have been very public about my and my family's experience. Which is precisely why I find framing arguments around removing minimum wage as some benefit to the poor to be rather disgusting, because it does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. A job which can't pay shit isn't going to help you survive when the rent…

I honestly can't understand how people think earning $5/h is worse than earning $0/h. I'm not being sarcastic. It's such a bizarre mental contortion.

Because the way the American social safety net works, you often wind up losing more than $5/hour worth of benefits to get that $5/hour job.

Many low wage jobs are physically demanding, have terrible (or no dependable) schedules, and offer limited hours so as to avoid having to offer benefits. It's not uncommon for low wage workers to juggle two or three jobs in order to get enough hours of paid work to survive. The problem then is that it is very hard to manage schedule conflicts between the jobs when they occur. Too many conflicts can cost you your job. I've seen this happen many times.

Check out this article in Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/life-af...

Also highly recommend On The Media's multipart investigation into poverty in America: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/busted-ame...

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

#356

Post by jsjsx6xjsnq »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #315
BurningFrog wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, increasing pay into people at the bottom of the ladder The bottom of the ladder is the unemployed, who make $0/h. The good faith argument for no minimum wage is that those people would have a much bigger chance to find jobs and build job skills.

> The bottom of the ladder is the unemployed, who make $0/h. If government programs are included, the unemployed definitely don't "make" $0/hour. As is often pointed out, taxpayers are effectively funding the underpayment of workers Walmart, McDonalds, etc because of government subsidies. I don't have a dog in this hunt but the issue is much too complicated by government action to say unequivocally that the unemploye…

You clearly do have a dog in the hunt because you're framing it as the government subsidizing the companies. All of your examples are jobs with a ground level bar for entry so low that people with zero skills or clear mental illness can still manage to learn them and become gainfully employed. Were these people not employed at all they'd require /more/ government support not less.

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

#357

Post by gpanders »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #231
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very naive view of economics. Ideally everyone's income should be derived from the value they generate. So ideally wages continue to rise because productivity continues to rise. But there are many cases where it make more sense to pay 4 low skilled workers to do a job instead of paying the costs of automation plus the cost of the higher skilled worker to use the automated solution. It's why so many jobs in…

> Ideally everyone's income should be derived from the value they generate. Define "value". Or more specifically, how do you measure "value" for jobs that don't directly generate revenue? How much value does the janitorial staff create? How much value does your IT team create? What's the dollar value of your cybersecurity team? What about HR? None of these teams directly create revenue for the company, but certainly…

> The idea that income should be derived from value is incredibly naive.

On what other basis do you propose it be derived?

Non-revenue generating roles provide value by allowing the revenue-generating roles to generate revenue. This is the basic concept of specialization. You could likely even take a stab at quantifying this: time spent freeing up revenue-generating roles to generate revenue combined with some kind of supply-and-demand factor.

For example, if I'm a one-man widget shop, hiring a janitor to sweep the floors for me means I can spend that time generating more widgets instead of sweeping floors. The value provided by that janitor is proportional to the additional revenue I generated from those extra widgets, scaled by the large supply of janitors in the labor market.

The idea that income should be derived from value is only naive if you take a fixed view of "value == revenue". No doubt some middle managers have this view, but that's a sign of ignorance and incompetence, not a flaw in the underlying theory itself.

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

#358

Post by SideQuark »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #332
ChrisLomont wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How much value does the janitorial staff create? When the company hires them, the company has decided that the company obtains enough value for the transaction. So does the janitorial staff. >And yet they're having to fight for fair wages? They're the most valuable labor in the company! Not if someone else is willing to do the job for the same pay - this is market clearing. They're paid what it takes to fill the pos…

So then we are in agreement that wages are not a function of value created by the worker. They pay only what it takes to get the position filled, which is a completely unrelated number to value.

>So then we are in agreement that wages are not a function of value created by the worker.

Wages are a function of value created. As a trivial example, wages are capped by total cost to employ, which is driven by wages and legal requirements. There is no way around this on a large scale without a business losing money, i.e., dying.

>which is a completely unrelated number to value

No, this is untrue. Marx had the same thought, but didn't understand that employers also compete for workers, which is why the poorest workers are vastly richer than Marx could have understood.

A simple way you can check it empirically is to take a dataset of companies, compute mean revenue per employee, and correlate to mean wage by company. You'll certainly find that these numbers are completely related.

You can do the same thing using work sectors using BLS data on pay by job type, then revenue generated in those jobs. Again, you'll find a strong correlation between revenue generated per employee and per employee wages.

These empirical tests you can do yourself should convince you wages are tied to value added.

If you then do proper factor analysis to account for other costs varying between companies, such as cost for materials or equipment, the correlation between wages and value becomes stronger.

Edit: here's a dataset to get you started [1]. 1000 companies with # of employees and median wage. Find revenue per company and you're all set to do an initial analysis.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/graphics/how-does-your-pay-stack-up/

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

#359

Post by btilly »

sudosysgen wrote: post #285
btilly wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth noting that the rise of wealth in our society means that "decent living" by the standards of the 1930s means "extreme poverty" by today's standards. More precisely the real value of median income tripled from the 1930s to the 1980s. Lower income brackets did likewise. So it is historically incorrect to hear FDR say "decent living" and map it onto current notions of a decent living. Separately, we have man…

Not exactly. While you could claim that due to technological advances a person working a low skilled job at full time in 2019 is better off than someone doing an equivalent job in 1980, you fail to take into account that in 2019 that person would be by major guidelines in a much worse position, ie, no hope of owning a house, taking public transit, can't support a family in a city, less likely to be in a supportive un…

The comparison that I made is not between 1980 and the present, it is between 1930 and 1980. This is a very different time period and saw very different trends than have happened since.

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

#360

Post by btilly »

dredmorbius wrote: post #337
btilly wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people say "tracked inflation", but few understand that inflation is measured relative to a basket of goods, and which basket of goods you pick really matters. Which means that the inflation rate you personally experience will depend on your lifestyle. The result is that the inflation rate as experienced by the well-off (who consume more luxuries) is generally quite different than the inflation rate as experi…

There's a long-standing folk wisdom that the rich pay less for things than the poor. How well that stands up to scrutiny I don't know, though I encountered it recently on an old (probably 1960s / early 1970s) Studs Terkel interview, as a guest comment. (Guests were Willard Moss, pioneer amateur filmmaker, & John Dubay.)

The link that I posted was based on a fine grained analysis of actual spend by actual households.

It found that, indeed, the rich pay less for the same good than the poor. And that the gap is increasing over time.

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