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What harm do minimum wages do?

economist.com

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Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#671

Post by dmitriid »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #371
dmitriid wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demanding other people live in perpetual poverty with no safety nets, how is that not slavery. BTW: Are you American, and do you by any chance identify as Christian? Because I've only seen two groups of people so hellbent on never helping their fellow man. American Christians and American libertarians.

You must have lived a horribly isolated life if those are the only groups you've ever seen this behavior from. Take a look at the EU and austerity measures if you want to see this kind of behavior on a large scale.

> Take a look at the EU and austerity measures

I've yet to see an austerity measure that strips away even the most basic protections the way US does.

> this kind of behavior on a large scale.

The US: 40 million people one month away from eviction. 30 million people are one medical emergency away from life-time of crippling debt.

Americans: oh, look at austerity measures in Europe.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#672

Post by robotresearcher »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #112
ccffpphh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that nobody is entitled to anything. You aren't de facto entitled to receiving money for any services you may or may not provide, regardless of whether you're skilled or not, just because you exist. A company exists because one or more people risked wealth in order to create a net positive system - their existence is not as riskless as one would believe.

> The issue is that nobody is entitled to anything. That's an ideological statement. You may subscribe to it, but not everyone has to. Society is fundamentally based on the notion of shared rights and duties, what these rights and duties entail can be up for debate, but if you don't want to owe anyone, you will have to live a pretty lonely, primitive existance in Siberia or Alaska.

Ironic choice of hermitage, since if you live in Alaska, you're entitled to free money from a communal fund.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#673

Post by strbean »

novok wrote: post #202
aNoob7000 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Federal Reserve has been trying to get inflation above 2% consistently for over 10 years. What are the chances that they get that even now with rates at zero? Also, I would disagree with you about the Federal Reserve not targeting the stock market or other assets. Anytime in the past couple of years that the stock market in the USA has dropped roughly 10-15%, the Federal Reserve has jumped in dropped rates. They…

If you really want to up inflation, go towards a %100 employment target :p

(this statement based on a theory with backed little to no evidence)

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#674

Post by strbean »

pratik661 wrote: post #75
dannyw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetary policy is to benefit the owners; not the workers. 100% employment will drive wage growth as demand exceeds supply. That’s not good for the stock market.

Source? That is an extraordinarily broad statement to make. Central Banks' (the primary institutions behind monetary policy) primary goal is to promote a stable environment for commerce. This typically means maintaining a stable rate of inflation (2-4% for mature economies, 4-7% for frontier economies). This often requires performing a balancing act between managing unemployment and inflation. We have PLENTY of evide…

> We have PLENTY of evidence to suggest that inflation is harmful for everyone, ESPECIALLY for low income workers.

I'm under the impression that inflation is disproportionately hurts those with large amounts of cash saved. In this hypothetical scenario where we have 100% employment and it causes inflation, wages would rise with inflation, so rising prices wouldn't be an issue... right?

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#675

Post by imtringued »

cogman10 wrote: post #455
Ekaros wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not very good argument. As we are where we are now because our productivity has increased insanely since invention of agriculture... If burger flipping robot is more productive than human, we should replace all humans with such robots.

There's a lot of blind faith in "New jobs will appear as old ones are obsoleted". That's certainly has been true, but I don't think it's absolutely always going to be true. Further, what we've seen is that primarily low skill high wage jobs have been replaced with high skill jobs. This is evidenced by the fact that you simply can't make a good living off a high school degree. Based off this https://www.careerprofiles…

Some services are necessary but may not bring enough revenue to justify paying the worker a minimum wage. Robots can do these jobs and people can then focus on jobs that actually value their time.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#676

Post by Beldin »

gjulianm wrote: post #4

> Textbooks state that, in the absence of a minimum wage, a worker is paid his “marginal product of labour”, which means the value of what he produces. > Just as a monopolist can set prices higher than would be the case in a competitive market, a monopsonist can set prices artificially lower. A lot of economic arguments forget these ideas. The labor market is not a free market: companies have more power in negotiatio…

> Companies will always push for lower wages wherever they can

Except for executive compensation. There they very often actively push for more compensation.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#677

Post by imtringued »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #174
sushshshsh wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are already seeing Flippy the burger flipping robot taking over jobs originally meant for humans. The technology for Flippy is only getting cheaper and better, the quality of human labor is already at its most optimal point and is only getting more expensive due to laws passed. Now, you could make Flippy the robot illegal, and maybe x number of businesses would eat the cost of the more expensive workers. But somet…

Or you could make an automation tax and use it to fund UBI

That makes no sense. Just implement a wealth tax because robots increase inequality and make their owners wealthy.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#678

Post by imtringued »

sudosysgen wrote: post #503
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that colinmhayes' point is that you dug the extra nine holes because there was a shovel, not because you got better at digging holes with your hands. The productivity gain was because a shovel was being used. It didn't matter who owned the shovel, it mattered that you were digging with one. But that's not completely true, because a person who only knows how to dig with their hands still only digs one hole a…

Well yeah. But the thing is, someone had to make the shovel to begin with. The gains in productivity of the shovel are just unrealized value of the original labour (and materials).

The shovel maker is paid handsomely. He's the equivalent of a tech worker.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#679

Post by ganafagol »

donw wrote: post #652
prewett wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gay" originally meant "happy", and while "happy" and "joyful" are different, they are at least reasonably close. Wasn't Nietzsche nihilist, though? Seems like it would be hard to be joyful if your science leads to nihilism.

There are a lot of flavors of nihilism, so I'm not sure that having a pessimistic worldview precludes joyfulness. I'd call myself a realist -- and I think there's a lot of overlap with nihilism there, in that I try and see the world "as it is", and not "how I wish it was". The world is a messy, ugly, dark place. It really is, and it's kind of amazing how people go out of their way to pretend that either that darkness…

> The world is a messy, ugly, dark place. [...]

> There is a light in our world, though -- it's us, if we choose to be.

I can easily argue the opposite. The world itself is beautiful. Just sit at a mountain top or in the forest or on a beach and take in their beauty. Look at stars, galaxies, how they interact, it's absolutely stunning. Or zoom in looking at microbes, cells, molecules, atoms. The world is a gorgeous place.

What brings darkness is people. So much hate, greed, awful intrigues, all over the place. Look at the U.S. today, it's the epicenter. Everybody could be so happy. But no, hate because somebody wants to raise taxes. Or wears a gun. Or "wants to take away your 2nd amendment". Or is a misogynist. All covered over with a culture that expects everybody to find everything amazing, wonderful, best country in the world, or hate, cancel, exclude.

It's not the world that's ugly. It's the people.

Re: What harm do minimum wages do?

#680

Post by gfxgirl »

> By contrast, jobs in restaurants are hard to automate

They are not so hard to eliminate. Some people claim the raise of self busing restaurants is in response to hiring people to do those jobs is too expensive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/dining/san-francisco-rest...

The article above claims it's housing costs but the same trend is happening everywhere even places where housing costs are not SF. Of course it could just be a new trend of businesses and nothing to do with any other inputs whatsoever.

These studies claimed a negative impact on new jobs meaning they claim the minimum wage hike made it harder for young people to find a job after the minimum wage went up. That could be because less people quit their now higher paying jobs. Whether that's a net plus or a net minus is probably debatable.

https://evans.uw.edu/policy-impact/minimum-wage-study

https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/webform/w25812_summ...

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