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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

#371

Post by BurningFrog »

daotoad wrote: post #355
BurningFrog wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> 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.

Yeah, the marginal tax for the underclass is a huge problem!

If you lose $12/h in benefits by taking a $10/h job, most people won't take the job. Not because they're lazy, but because they're sensible rational people.

That's a big poverty trap we've built.

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

#372

Post by Faark »

slavik81 wrote: post #329
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US? You should have been able to get heavily subsidized health insurance (which is a hassle), unemployment, etc. Still crappy but it's not $0. But that's exactly my point: it's very difficult to discuss this when policy is such a swirl.

Canada, but it's the same in the States. Unemployment is for people who have lost a job. I would not have qualified. What stuck with me was that everything required that I already had a job. Maybe it was the economy at the time, but nobody wanted to hire someone without work experience. When I discovered that even unemployment required I have work experience, it felt like I was living in Catch-22. For that reason, I…

> For that reason, I support the government acting as an employer of last resort.

I like that concept as well. But there are problems. Quality of work is one. Another is the complication of getting something useful out of that manpower. Would probably be done by lending that workforce to companies... subsidized if necessary, but with significant bargaining power. Still this could end up becoming a nightmare with incompetent / corrupt governments. It would be a great natural minimum wage, though, since you'd be stupid to work for less than you could get at you gov job.

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

#373

Post by bb88 »

sokoloff wrote: post #302
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the truism really is this:

In a micro sense: each company will try to reduce labor costs as much as possible, since costs are the enemy of profit.

But when we look at the macro situation then: employees are much of the demand curve. Less income means less demand.

This is the reason for much of the talk about UBI and job automation.

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

#374

Post by gnaritas »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #344
gnaritas wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not meant to provide a living. Companies don't exist to provide jobs, jobs are a byproduct of the business, not its reason to exist. Minimum wage jobs are people with no skills who are easily replaceable, usually teenagers learning to enter the workforce.

Maybe in 1950. Today, it can be any retired person, highly educated or not, who can't find a better job.

It certainly can be, but that's not a business problem, there will always be people who failed to prepare or lacked the necessary skills to prepare for old age or people who refuse to move somewhere they can find a job. Education doesn't equal skill; jobs pay for skills, not for education; if you have skills you can find a better than minimum wage job, but you might have to move.

Those are problems for society, not for individual business owners. Those problems should be solved by taxes, not by forcing business owners to pay people more than they are worth to the business.

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

#376

Post by SamReidHughes »

krnlpnc wrote: post #375
SamReidHughes wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page is wrong. Those are not illegal questions.

Agree to disagree

Um, no, you can read the law itself or follow some links on the page you linked. This isn't a matter of opinion.

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

#377

Post by Twixes »

conanbatt wrote: post #345
autoexec wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is to say what is the best wage? Should the government decide what people's wages should be? I don't think the government should dictate exactly what a person's wage should be but setting a minimum makes perfect sense because otherwise businesses pay slave wages and use taxpayer money to subsidize their labor expenses. As a taxpayer I don't want to my taxes spent on food stamps for employees working 40 hours a…

> minimum makes perfect sense because otherwise businesses pay slave wages Why is being unemplyed at 30U$S better than employed at 3U$D? It is clear that there are non-salary benefits to work that arent covered in MW. Thats why internships exist. Places that serve housing or food, like colleges, shelters, kitchens etc could afford to hire more people. > As a taxpayer I don't want to my taxes spent on food stamps for…

In fact, working for shitty pay is WORSE than being unemployed – you spend hours a day doing work that doesn't lead to any personal growth and just takes up your time and health AND still can't afford to live. But in desperation you'd still hang on to that, because what else to do? Beg on the street? Just die?

That's no way to treat people, but I assure you, many executives would not hesitate to sentence their employees to such fate if they could. They would squeeze the poor out like lemons and just throw them out when they're done. That's because companies are authoritarian and their ruling class have no obligation at all to people at the bottom instead preferring to enrich themselves. That's why trickle–down economics is fiction. The government however is democratic and supposed to prevent exploitation of its people. Hence the minimum wage.

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

#378

Post by conanbatt »

Twixes wrote: post #377
conanbatt wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> minimum makes perfect sense because otherwise businesses pay slave wages Why is being unemplyed at 30U$S better than employed at 3U$D? It is clear that there are non-salary benefits to work that arent covered in MW. Thats why internships exist. Places that serve housing or food, like colleges, shelters, kitchens etc could afford to hire more people. > As a taxpayer I don't want to my taxes spent on food stamps for…

In fact, working for shitty pay is WORSE than being unemployed – you spend hours a day doing work that doesn't lead to any personal growth and just takes up your time and health AND still can't afford to live. But in desperation you'd still hang on to that, because what else to do? Beg on the street? Just die? That's no way to treat people, but I assure you, many executives would not hesitate to sentence their employ…

> In fact, working for shitty pay is WORSE than being unemployed

Those employed at shitty pay disagree very strongly about this.

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

#379

Post by Twixes »

conanbatt wrote: post #378
Twixes wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, working for shitty pay is WORSE than being unemployed – you spend hours a day doing work that doesn't lead to any personal growth and just takes up your time and health AND still can't afford to live. But in desperation you'd still hang on to that, because what else to do? Beg on the street? Just die? That's no way to treat people, but I assure you, many executives would not hesitate to sentence their employ…

> In fact, working for shitty pay is WORSE than being unemployed Those employed at shitty pay disagree very strongly about this.

That's because their alternative is homelessness and starvation. Obviously they disagree with that even more than with being exploited.

But for society overall it's better to have even the most mundane jobs pay a living wage AND a safety net for those in between jobs.

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

#380

Post by downerending »

ajross wrote: post #367
downerending wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the parent, but as a second-generation immigrant, I broadly agree with all of this. I'm fine with whatever laws we all decide, and I think they should then be vigorously enforced. Our current wink-wink scheme, supported by both major parties, is bad for a lot of people, and in many way most harmful to illegal aliens (who are abused and/or are virtually enslaved).

You think literally millions of people are sneaking across the southwest desert and risking having their children seized and put in cages[1] to be "abused and/or virtually enslaved"?. No, that's not how it works. Immigrant jobs tend to be poorly regulated (no taxes witheld, benefits delivered nor social services funded, etc...). But they're jobs and they pay what jobs pay, generally around minimum wage, because that'…

I think that most illegal immigrants don't fully understand the downsides, yes. But whether or not that's true, I think it's unethical for us to tacitly encourage them to put themselves and their children in a position where they can be practically enslaved, or even raped or murdered, with little recourse to law.
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