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Comment by RangerScience | Hacker News Reader

If you flip the script, you're saying that an hour of a human's life can be worth less that $15; to paraphrase, it's worth at least an inch of jade.

But, seriously, I don't see the issue with ensuring that low-value work isn't worth it for anyone to do, employer or employee.

If nothing about a person is worth at least $15/hour, well, that sounds like a serious failing of the society that created that person.

From what I've seen, the most needy are the people who's work is worth well more than what they're paid, and who aren't paid enough to begin with.

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But there is work that can be done for under $15/h, if you can do it with automation. Suddenly humans are legally unable to compete with things like McDonald's ordering machines.

There are people who would gladly work for less than minimum.

Automation was always going to be involved sooner or later. This would just increase the rate of adoption.

This is what we (as an industry) do, we disrupt and automate things, so I don't understand why you're so concerned about it.

And as for work worth less than minimum, then yeah maybe it's not worth doing by a human anyway.

> Automation was always going to be involved sooner or later. This would just increase the rate of adoption.

The rate of adoption is actually something that matters. If you automate too early you lose money as a business. Also, the minimum wage not only changes the rate of automation but also the things that are automated; namely work that was previously performed by low skilled workers.

> And as for work worth less than minimum, then yeah maybe it's not worth doing by a human anyway.

What a great insight. Tell the people without jobs that it's not worth for them to work at $14,99 and instead to rely on government handouts for the rest of their lives. For many people an entry level job at low pay was how they started their career.

Times change, what was the norm a few generations ago is gone, whether it's getting in as a low paid minion and move up the ladder or being able to afford a house at age 25 on a single income.

There are plenty of cases where if you factor in your expenses to go to a job, you actually get less on your bank account than getting your welfare.

If your business can't offer a salary that compete with a fairly low standard of living such as relying on "handouts" as you put it, then there's something wrong and yes it should be really hard for you to hire anyone. Yes there are some industries which are notable for being prone to that and that's usually why they also receive their own kind of handouts too.

This law sort of enforce it in a way (and beyond obviously).

I'm not US citizen nor a resident there so I have no horse in this race. But I do believe it's mostly a good thing

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