Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity • Hacker News Board

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#191

Post by BuckRogers » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #187

BuckRogers wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the idea "laughably naive" doesn't seem appropriate when many businesses today are ran this way, some of them producing billions of dollars a year. That makes me question your age, as anyone with some life experience knows about worker co-ops. They're all over the western world. GE and Microsoft are fully aware of them, they've researched this extensively, sending representatives around the globe to figure ou…

nobody is saying that NO companies should be run that way. I have a lot of respect for worker co-ops. But to say that ALL companies should be run that way is silly. Look at the companies where co-ops are successful: They have either 1) very predictable revenue streams or 2) are in an enterprise where there are almost no material costs (costs are entirely personnel or upkeep/personnel-infra costs). In this universe ar…

Good thing that I never said all companies were to be worker owned. Because that wouldn’t be my belief. Other than my views not aligning with the premise that you’re pushing onto me, I agree with your points and think that they are good. My belief is that capitalist and democratic business should coexist and even compete for employees. I know where I want to be a developer. I think some of your assertions would be proven false, such as a democratic workplace not having the ability or will to borrow money to expand.

The majority of businesses actually are proven and stable business models. The local convenience store is pretty much the perfect cooperative opportunity. There’s really no reason for 7-Eleven out of Japan to be owning most convenience stores.

Venture capitalism still has a place in the ideal mixed mode economy.[0] For those risky ventures. But that’s really not what the majority of the economy should consist of. And it doesn’t. We’re just really misaligned in our model for what the majority of our economy is.

Unions did a good job of distributing wealth in a free market way. But those still drive out capitalist businesses to cheaper countries. Cooperatives have every incentive to stay here.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_socialism

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#192

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

BobbyJo wrote: post #190

ashtonkem wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Productivity is an input to the supply of competition, so it does more than create a ceiling, it also serves as an upward force on the floor. This is trivially disprovable. Did grocery stores increase the wages of their clerks once self checkout was a thing, or did they keep wages the same and lay off some of them? Productivity only affects wages when there’s competition for labor, not when there’s competition for…

> This is trivially disprovable. Did grocery stores increase the wages of their clerks once self checkout was a thing, or did they keep wages the same and lay off some of them? That doesn't disprove anything. Productivity is an input to and has an effect on demand, but it's not the only factor. It doesn't need to be the only factor to matter. Lots of things matter. Economics is a complex field.

Right, so do you have any examples of rising productivity driving up wages for minimum wage jobs?

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#193

Post by dangus » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #178

dangus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would overseas workers be counted in a measure of US worker productivity?

If a US company has higher revenue then they appear more productive. It could be that they have reached that productivity by using off shore workers. So the number of people indirectly involved in the US economy has increased.

But the article isn't talking about company revenue, it's talking about worker productivity - income generated in an hour of work.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#194

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #63

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1930s, a store clerk in a large city could afford to support a family in a home they would eventually own on their single income. Today, a couple with that same job would likely be in public housing and would be scraping by.

In the 1930s many homes only had icebox "refrigerators" that worked by putting Ice in the top to cool whatever was below. IMO productivity has been absorbed by getting more for your money in hidden inflation . Eg: today when you buy a phone (and internet access) you get a free encyclopedia (wikipedia), movie theater (youtube), camera, Video recorder, note pad and pen (app), alarm clock, calendar, ... get my drift? Sa…

All the replies are missing my basic point. Everything built today is far more complex than what was built before. If a car is twice as hard to make then I can be twice as productive, but still only produce 1 car (with twice as many features, say).

Or I can make a single phone, but with N times as many features.

The productivity gain has been absorbed by complexity in the things we produce.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#195

Post by code_duck » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:29 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #91

code_duck wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning any single family home (presumably with a yard) seems clearly more attractive than living in a public housing apartment complex.

I'd rather have an apartment with Internet access than a house without.

So you mean that you would rather live now than in the 1930s?

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#196

Post by xupybd » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #193

xupybd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a US company has higher revenue then they appear more productive. It could be that they have reached that productivity by using off shore workers. So the number of people indirectly involved in the US economy has increased.

But the article isn't talking about company revenue, it's talking about worker productivity - income generated in an hour of work.

How do you calculate income generated in an hour of work without looking at revenue?

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#197

Post by dangus » Tue, Sep 21, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #196

dangus wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the article isn't talking about company revenue, it's talking about worker productivity - income generated in an hour of work.

How do you calculate income generated in an hour of work without looking at revenue?

What I'm trying to say is that labor productivity does not have anything to do wages.

We can talk about productivity in terms of output divided by input wages, too, but that's not what this article is talking about from what I can tell. It is strictly talking about workers in the US and it's talking about how much output they can generate from each hour of labor performed, regardless of what they are being paid.

(I will say, the article's own loose terminology does make it a little ambiguous, but to me the context of the article points squarely at labor productivity: output per hours worked, not hours per wage earned)

Let's take an example:

Chinese worker works 40 hours at $5/hour

US worker works 40 hours at $25/hour

Weekly total sales of product from each plant is 1,000 units at $10 per unit, so revenue is $10,000

So, now we divide revenue by hours worked for labor productivity. In this example, whether the employee is Chinese or US their labor productivity is still $10,000/40 = 250

Obviously, this hypothetical company might choose to mainly use Chinese labor for this particular product, but that doesn't change the fact that each employee is equally productive in this example.

If this hypothetical company chose to increase offshoring, their revenue would not increase because the output is worth the same either way, but their profit would increase if all other costs remain the same.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#198

Post by xupybd » Tue, Sep 21, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #197

xupybd wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you calculate income generated in an hour of work without looking at revenue?

What I'm trying to say is that labor productivity does not have anything to do wages. We can talk about productivity in terms of output divided by input wages, too, but that's not what this article is talking about from what I can tell. It is strictly talking about workers in the US and it's talking about how much output they can generate from each hour of labor performed, regardless of what they are being paid. (I w…

Ah I think I know where we are crossing wires.

I'm wondering if they have hidden the hours worked offshore. So it it looks like productivity per hour is up but actually it's happening off the books of US companies.

So in the example. The US plant has US workers that input say 20 hours to make 1000 parts. But buys in a component made in China and that component has 1000 hours per 1000 output parts. The US company sees that component as a material cost not a labor cost so doesn't count that as labor going into the end product.

I hope I'm making sense?

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#199

Post by dangus » Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #198

dangus wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm trying to say is that labor productivity does not have anything to do wages. We can talk about productivity in terms of output divided by input wages, too, but that's not what this article is talking about from what I can tell. It is strictly talking about workers in the US and it's talking about how much output they can generate from each hour of labor performed, regardless of what they are being paid. (I w…

Ah I think I know where we are crossing wires. I'm wondering if they have hidden the hours worked offshore. So it it looks like productivity per hour is up but actually it's happening off the books of US companies. So in the example. The US plant has US workers that input say 20 hours to make 1000 parts. But buys in a component made in China and that component has 1000 hours per 1000 output parts. The US company sees…

I see what you mean. In this theory it's almost like US labor faces a survivorship bias.

In your hypothetical example, a US company wouldn't really keep a factory open in the US that produces 1000 outputs per 1000 hours. They'd rather purchase the good as an input material from an overseas factory. e.g., Apple's iPhones aren't produced at all by Apple employees.

Another topic we never really reached in this discussion is how worker productivity is affected by capital investment:

Is a McDonald's worker more productive than they were in 1980 because of their own abilities and skills improving, or is it due to computerized and automated assistant devices like automatic drink pouring machines and sophisticated point of sale software?