The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
nytimes.com
The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
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Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#2Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#3I imagine they’re all gone now. A great example of the free market creating a niche product that was useful and affordable to its customers and the government regulating it out of existence. I’m sure there were abuses by owners but the system worked for the majority.
Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#4I imagine they’re all gone now. A great example of the free market creating a niche product that was useful and affordable to its customers and the government regulating it out of existence. I’m sure there were abuses by owners but the system worked for the majority.
If you can't afford a home up to our standards, better that you should be homeless? If you can't land a job at minimum wage, better for you to be unemployed? I wish that these were reductio ad absurdems rather than common place luxury beliefs.
Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#5A few years after this, a documentary was made about some of the men still living at the Sunshine (mentioned in the first paragraph): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0m2FaC8GUs
Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#6I imagine they’re all gone now. A great example of the free market creating a niche product that was useful and affordable to its customers and the government regulating it out of existence. I’m sure there were abuses by owners but the system worked for the majority.
If you can't afford a home up to our standards, better that you should be homeless? If you can't land a job at minimum wage, better for you to be unemployed? I wish that these were reductio ad absurdems rather than common place luxury beliefs.
It’s a lose lose. If you remove the wage floor many people with “livable” wages now would have theirs cut, it’s a problem of adversarial incentives a la nash.
Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#7I imagine they’re all gone now. A great example of the free market creating a niche product that was useful and affordable to its customers and the government regulating it out of existence. I’m sure there were abuses by owners but the system worked for the majority.
If you can't afford a home up to our standards, better that you should be homeless? If you can't land a job at minimum wage, better for you to be unemployed? I wish that these were reductio ad absurdems rather than common place luxury beliefs.
Less than 1% of workers make minimum wage. There are effectively zero opportunities to increase employment by offering wages below the minimum. If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because the employers think they are a net negative.
Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#8I imagine they’re all gone now. A great example of the free market creating a niche product that was useful and affordable to its customers and the government regulating it out of existence. I’m sure there were abuses by owners but the system worked for the majority.
Yeah, the main flophouse discussed in the article (White House) closed in 2014 and is now a "boutique" hotel serving a very different set of clients
Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can't afford a home up to our standards, better that you should be homeless? If you can't land a job at minimum wage, better for you to be unemployed? I wish that these were reductio ad absurdems rather than common place luxury beliefs.
Less than 1% of workers make minimum wage. There are effectively zero opportunities to increase employment by offering wages below the minimum. If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because the employers think they are a net negative.
> Less than 1% of workers make minimum wage.
So minimum wage helps less than 1% of workers, at the expense of people who don't have skills valued at the minimum wage? Why are you confident that's a net positive trade off?
> If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because the employers think they are a net negative.
That's why I think that people should be able to work for less, for employers who think they are a net positive at a lower wage. It's better than the true minimum wage of zero. It's not like the value of labor is discontinuous, such that it is worth zero if is worth less than a minimum.
Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Less than 1% of workers make minimum wage. There are effectively zero opportunities to increase employment by offering wages below the minimum. If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because the employers think they are a net negative.
> Less than 1% of workers make minimum wage. So minimum wage helps less than 1% of workers, at the expense of people who don't have skills valued at the minimum wage? Why are you confident that's a net positive trade off? > If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because the employers think they are a net negative. That's why I think that people should be able to work for less, for employers who think they a…
> That's why I think that people should be able to work for less, for employers who think they are a net positive at a lower wage.
No. If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because employers think they would be a net negative at a $0 wage. There are a couple counter examples like walmart no longer being open overnight, but even then thats more because of theft than paying the employees. It is not hard to find a minimum wage job in the vast majority of the country. If you cant its because employers think you will do an exceptionally bad job. Every single adult has skills valued at minimum wage in the US, the question is just if they have a drug problem or mental illness or something like that. Those people wouldnt be helpful at $0 wage either