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Comment by jostmey | Hacker News Reader

I remember my last visit to Baltimore. I saw a lot of homeless people. I saw a lot of buildings in need of repair. There were people needing work and work needing to be done (fixing buildings). I was left wondering what was preventing the economy from functioning.

Every side of an argument has an element of truth. Businesses will not pay people more than they must, which can be a problem if people don't have enough money to buy propping up the economy. And for every rich philanthropist, there's probably ten donald trumps.

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> I remember my last visit to Baltimore. I saw a lot of homeless people. I saw a lot of buildings in need of repair. There were people needing work and work needing to be done (fixing buildings). I was left wondering what was preventing the economy from functioning.

I'm reminded of this image: http://i.imgur.com/mwfN4cM.jpg

For those using screen readers, the image is of a poster containing the following text:

If you're unemployed, it's not because there isn't any work. Just look around: A housing shortage, crime, pollution; we need better schools and parks. Whatever our needs, they all require work. And as long as we have unsatisfied needs, there's work to be done.

So ask yourself, what kind of world has work but no jobs. It's a world where work is not related to satisfying our needs, a world where work is only related to satisfying the profit needs of business.

This country was not built by the huge corporations or government bureaucracies. It was built by people who work. And, it is working people who should control the work to be done. Yet, as long as employment is tied to somebody else's profits, the work won't get done.

"So ask yourself, what kind of world has work but no jobs."

The article gets it completely wrong. A world with a high minimum wage has work to be done, for example, but no jobs.

There's always work to be done. The existence of jobs depends on somebody willing to pay someone the market rate for that job. In many cases, the market rate is too high for the value of the work performed.

Minimum wage essentially outlaws all work that generates less than a certain value.

>There's always work to be done.

In theory wages can be negative. So there will always be infinite demand for work to be done unless the government sets a minimum wage.

Actually, negative wages are allowed by the government.

But the main confusion is between work and job. Works is anyone performing a task. A job is someone paying you for that, and in the strict sense, someone hiring you to do it on a contract.

You may be assuming incorrectly that there is work that needs to be done - if there is no one who wants to pay to use the building, there is no reason to fix it (i.e. just because an asset exists doesn't mean there is demand for it)

And you may be assuming those who wish to fix and use the building have the capital required to do so.

I'm not sure how accurate the little graph google gives you when you search "baltimore population" is, but it looks like the population is falling.

Less people means less commerce which means less demand for buildings. Perhaps those rundown empty buildings have not enough value for someone to invest in fixing them up (and therefor, have no incentive to employ people to do so).

> Every side of an argument has an element of truth.

Agreed. To have an honest discussion about minimum wage, it's important to recognize that it's two things at the same time. First, it's a minimum wage which most people are familiar with, but second it's also a law that makes it illegal for low skilled workers to get jobs. Yes, we're helping some people earn a better living, but we're also not allowing people to work if an employer or employee aren't creative enough to find a way to make them more productive. It's a trade off, and that's one reason why it's more complicated that most people realize and why a dialog needs to be created around the topic.

It's a real shame that you are being downvoted simply for being right.

No. You don't get claim to want honest discussion then say minimum wage makes it illegal to hire low skilled workers.

It makes it less likely to hire people who add less value per hour than the minimum (+overhead) but A) that doesn't make it illegal. B) low skill and low value-added are not the same thing. C) there are things in businesses that must be done regardless of generated value (which of course brings up the problem of measuring value). D) training people is and always has been an option.

Which is not say that a minimum wage increase won't cause unemployment of marginal employees but it sure as hell doesn't make employing them illegal. Which is again a hell of a statement to make when asking for honesty

> Which is not say that a minimum wage increase won't cause unemployment of marginal employees but it sure as hell doesn't make employing them illegal.

It sure as hell makes it unprofitable. For honesty you're skipping out over a bunch of interesting points to bolster your own viewpoint..

Either you hire them under the table (illegally) to do tasks you're able to get a computer or robot to do but you don't want to make the capital investment, or you hire them for the minimum wage, put them on the books until you've saved enough money to invest in things that would make your business more profitable.

Minimum wage does make it illegal to hire low skilled workers. They're getting replaced by robots and computers. In agriculture, because of a perceived crackdown on immigrants, they're simultaneously raising the wages they pay for workers and investing in technology that will make the workers obsolete.

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