If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour • Hacker News Board

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#191

Post by missedthecue » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #187

missedthecue wrote: post #179

And if they had kept up since 1949, minimum wage would be $4.22 an hour. Two can play the game of cherrypicking troughs and peaks. Additionally, average productivity is not minimum wage productivity. They are separate statistics, and the bulk of the efficiency gains have not been made at the burger flipper level, but at higher levels, where there have been huge gains in pay. The productivity gains in engineering and…

It's not cherry picking when wages have been stagnant for the last 40+ years.

Wages have not stagnated. Disposable income adjusted for inflation is up enormously since 1968, while at the same time, the average number of working hours per year is at an all time low. This is according to data collected by the federal reserve.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=rKwm

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#192

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

mason240 wrote: post #190

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Busses are definitely a specific skill requiring specific certification. I don't know if dedicated bag loaders exist these days but everyone has other job requirements. While yes, the market for low skill jobs is large, I think you're still diminishing these roles.

Bus drivers are not making MW anywhere.

And they require skills. Which puts them firmly out of the mindless, worthless, broom pushing category that was being constructed here.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#193

Post by monocasa » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #185

monocasa wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If productivity is going up, why would we subsidizing their employers by paying part of their wage?

Progressive taxation would mean that the subsidy comes from the people making the most money. The goal of a UBI is to decouple basic living from employment, giving employees more leverage to negotiate pay.

But why aren't they paying a living wage in the first place, a wage that they were paying in the past if not for inflation?

And wouldn't the cost of the subsidy mainly be spread across the upper end of the middle class and not the employers, making it be a net benefit for the employers?

Walmart for instance already has a huge emphasis on setting their employees up with welfare and using that to pay them a below living wage, why would expanding that system convince employers to pay more?

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#194

Post by friedman23 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #162

friedman23 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scandinavia isn't a country

We are all aware of that. Doesn't change that their policies are extremely similar by all accounts.

The point is that I can't determine where his country's wealth comes from if he doesn't state his country. Also I'm skeptical f this person actually even being from the region. For example, if he is from Norway most of his wealth is derived from oil.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#195

Post by cryptoz » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #191

pmiller2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not cherry picking when wages have been stagnant for the last 40+ years.

Wages have not stagnated. Disposable income adjusted for inflation is up enormously since 1968, while at the same time, the average number of working hours per year is at an all time low. This is according to data collected by the federal reserve. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=rKwm

Wages have stagnated. Your graphs aren't really relevant to this question; so what if per capita disposable income has increased? That doesn't say anything at all about wages of people in America.

Here is a more complete picture, with words and discussion and multiple graphs too: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#196

Post by dantheman » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

jahaja wrote: post #91

rayiner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you replace 1,000 workers with 50 and a very expensive machine, should you pay each worker who remains 20 times as much? Because that’s the assumption in the article. The people who build and service the technology are paid well. They’re techies who live in Silicon Valley, etc. But there are just very few of them compared to the 950 newly obsolete workers.

This makes me think of this passage by Bertrand Russell wrt. increases in efficiency and working hours: "The War showed conclusively that by the scientific organization of production it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If at the end of the War the scientific organization which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and…

Those displaced (50% in the example above) can go and provide services in another area... Why should only the pin producers get 4 hour weeks. What about those have to toil in the field for 8 hours a day to produce food?

What happens is that those 4 can go do something else; now in reality that something else is often not as good as what they were doing before or else they would have already been doing it.

But people are not static and can improve, develop skills, and learn new things. Also prices normally go down, which encourages innovation, and can create whole new classes of jobs.

For instance before medical imaging we didn't have x-ray technicians, etc - But I'm glad that new field was created.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#197

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #191

pmiller2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not cherry picking when wages have been stagnant for the last 40+ years.

Wages have not stagnated. Disposable income adjusted for inflation is up enormously since 1968, while at the same time, the average number of working hours per year is at an all time low. This is according to data collected by the federal reserve. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=rKwm

The graph is truly awful for showing hours worked. Also, what's that gigantic leap in disposable income? Are we to believe that on average American's have $50,000 worth of disposable income when they didn't before? I think that relies heavily on which version of average is being discussed.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#198

Post by chordalkeyboard » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #110

Many comments are focused on "But why should minimum wage jobs pay scale rise with productivity? The jobs haven't gotten any more demanding." But isn't this logic applied to average CEO pay, which has gone up many times faster than productivity? CEOs work isn't any more demanding than it used to be, either.

> CEOs work isn't any more demanding than it used to be, either.

I think it has, actually. The CEO's job became more complicated as a result of the increased complexity in the world. There used to be only brick-and-mortar and mail order, now there is internet. They used to advertise on tv, radio, and newspaper. Now they can advertise tv, radio, newspaper, online ads, and social media influencers. They didn't have to worry about ransomware, now they do. And so on.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#199

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #179

And if they had kept up since 1949, minimum wage would be $4.22 an hour. Two can play the game of cherrypicking troughs and peaks. Additionally, average productivity is not minimum wage productivity. They are separate statistics, and the bulk of the efficiency gains have not been made at the burger flipper level, but at higher levels, where there have been huge gains in pay. The productivity gains in engineering and…

Also, "total compensation" is the correct thing to compare with, not "wage".

Total compensation includes the value of benefits and the (so-called) employer contribution to taxes. Total compensation can be up to 40% more than salary.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#200

Post by yoz-y » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

thatguy0900 wrote: post #90

dantheman wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is why these services exist? I don't think it has to do with wages, I think it has to do with the difficulty of firing employees.

Is this an issue in other countries where it is even more difficult to fire employees?

I haven't looked into whether it's specifically an issue but in France it's notoriously hard to fire employees and indeed a lot of work is done by workers hired from agencies. This is also because it is very hard to make temporary contracts here.