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The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

nytimes.com

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Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#11

Post by delichon »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #10
delichon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

> If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because employers think they would be a net negative at a $0 wage.

Strong disagree, no foundation. There are lots of profits to be made at $10 per hour that can't be made at $15.

A minimum wage raises the bottom wrung of the economic ladder and declares victory for the workers.

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#12

Post by HDThoreaun »

delichon wrote: post #11
HDThoreaun wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

> If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because employers think they would be a net negative at a $0 wage. Strong disagree, no foundation. There are lots of profits to be made at $10 per hour that can't be made at $15. A minimum wage raises the bottom wrung of the economic ladder and declares victory for the workers.

> There is lots of profit to be made at $10 per worker hour that can't be made at $15.

Sure, if you have decent workers. But decent workers can make $15/hr so you cant get them. If youre stuck with the people who cant get a minimum wage job you dont have anyone you can trust and you cant build a business like that unless youre amazon tracking everyone's metrics with a billion dollar warehouse system. (amazon also pays well over minimum wage)

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#13

Post by IncreasePosts »

johnnylambada wrote: post #3

I 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.

Affordable is a stretch. When they went out of business in 2014, they were charging $30/night - $900/mo. You could definitely get actual rooms in NY or even a studio apartment for that much. Yes, it will be way out in the Bronx or Queens, in not a great neighborhood, but it is certainly better than a 4x6' room with a plank in it and just a knee wall between you and a number of strangers. Obviously for a lot of people coming up with $900 at once for a deposit or whatever could be the hard part, but these rooms were more of the equivalent of pay day loans than an actual value.

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#14

Post by derektank »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #12
delichon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because employers think they would be a net negative at a $0 wage. Strong disagree, no foundation. There are lots of profits to be made at $10 per hour that can't be made at $15. A minimum wage raises the bottom wrung of the economic ladder and declares victory for the workers.

> There is lots of profit to be made at $10 per worker hour that can't be made at $15. Sure, if you have decent workers. But decent workers can make $15/hr so you cant get them. If youre stuck with the people who cant get a minimum wage job you dont have anyone you can trust and you cant build a business like that unless youre amazon tracking everyone's metrics with a billion dollar warehouse system. (amazon also pay…

Why is someone who brings in $15.10 of value to a company a decent worker but someone who brings in $14.90 of value someone that can be written off completely? Obviously, we can quibble over the exact numbers and how one assesses value. But that’s kind of the point, we should let people figure that out for themselves what they’re worth and what they are willing to pay other people for.

I understand that there are concerns with race to the bottom dynamics and ensuring a minimum standard of living, but there are better tools for addressing that than the minimum wage (a more generous EITC or negative income tax for example).

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#15

Post by HDThoreaun »

derektank wrote: post #14
HDThoreaun wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is lots of profit to be made at $10 per worker hour that can't be made at $15. Sure, if you have decent workers. But decent workers can make $15/hr so you cant get them. If youre stuck with the people who cant get a minimum wage job you dont have anyone you can trust and you cant build a business like that unless youre amazon tracking everyone's metrics with a billion dollar warehouse system. (amazon also pay…

Why is someone who brings in $15.10 of value to a company a decent worker but someone who brings in $14.90 of value someone that can be written off completely? Obviously, we can quibble over the exact numbers and how one assesses value. But that’s kind of the point, we should let people figure that out for themselves what they’re worth and what they are willing to pay other people for. I understand that there are con…

There are many vacant minimum wage jobs. I think the issue here is just that you overestimate the number of people who cant get a job because minimum wage exists. If you are a decent worker you are able to get a minimum wage job in this country, so if you cant you are by definition not a decent worker. Looking at the micro scale (employee only worth $14.90 to a single company) is largely irrelevant because there are plenty of other companies that find decent employees to be worth $15/hr. The level of incompetence you need to have to not be worth a minimum wage job to any company is so high that you are actively hindering business from being done.

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#16

Post by JohnMakin »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #7
delichon wrote: post #4

Earlier 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.

federal minimum wage, which is lower than many, many states, so stating this is a little misleading. It's also at or around 1% (for federal), not less - per this 2023 source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/

In states like california, this number is much higher: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878/3

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#17

Post by pas »

user3939382 wrote: post #6
delichon wrote: post #4

Earlier 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.

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.

Sure, but now there's a deadweight loss by allocation inefficiencies (plus the disemployment effects are strongest at the margin, so now many people are working less than they want to, because they cannot sell more of their work for less, so ie. they have part time jobs).

The "obvious" thing is to subsidize employment (by negative income tax for low-incomes to avoid discontinuities), and sectoral/collective bargaining (to avoid divide-and-conquer information asymmetry), and unemployment payments (to allow for the market to find new "healthy" equilibrium, so people don't have to take the first shitty job).

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#18

Post by bilbo0s »

jhbadger wrote: post #8
johnnylambada wrote: post #3

I 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

Hate to be “that guy”, but this isn’t regulation or government. Rather it’s the free market with actors willing to do anything to make gentrification profits. Which are, unfortunately for our society, quite sizable.

You can have flophouses. Officially or under the table. But you can’t have them in areas with the vultures circling so to speak.

Not saying gentrification is good or bad. Just saying, if gentrification profits are there to be had, it’s a bit foolish to expect people to not do whatever it takes to secure those profits.

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#19

Post by jollyllama »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #13
johnnylambada wrote: post #3

I 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.

Affordable is a stretch. When they went out of business in 2014, they were charging $30/night - $900/mo. You could definitely get actual rooms in NY or even a studio apartment for that much. Yes, it will be way out in the Bronx or Queens, in not a great neighborhood, but it is certainly better than a 4x6' room with a plank in it and just a knee wall between you and a number of strangers. Obviously for a lot of people…

Perhaps they entered a price-increase death spiral as they were saddled with free-riders as the operator in TFA says.

Re: The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

#20

Post by t1234s »

Are these types of accommodations popular among tech people working in startups? I imagine if you are spending multiple days in a row at the office (or offices across multiple cities) it doesn't make sense to pay rent on a location you never use. I remember reading an article of a Google employee that lived in a box truck in the parking lot.
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