The Wage Struggles of Men | Hacker News Reader

The Wage Struggles of Men

economix.blogs.nytimes.com

54 pointsakkartik31 comments

A valid point from the comment section of the articles (In case you didn't go down that far)

You might look at workforce participation by age. The percentage of men and women under 25 had been slowly dropping long before the recession. I figured this was because more of them were going to college. It also occurred to me that, as more men had a working wife, fewer men were working, or working full-time. So men's wages might be going down, and households remaining the same, because the paid work was shifting to a more equal distribution.

- By Lisa deGruyter Clarksburg, WV

A valid point, but the article mentions that the employment decline is disproportionately concentrated amongst low skill workers. It doesn't seem likely to me that these types of workers would be living in a household where only one of the spouses would work and the other would stay at home by choice.

What is more likely? That a low skilled man marries a medium or higher skilled wife who is likely to find a job, or more likely to delay or decide not to have children? Or he is married to a low or unskilled wife who likely couldn't find work if she wanted, or has children she has to stay home to look after?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk&feature=relat..., enough said.

Minimum wage law may be debatable, but Milton's arguments here are poor. The minimum wage is a trivial amount, and noone holds skills below this rate - I severely doubt that the minimum wage stops unskilled people getting work on the basis of being too high a cost for businesses. Furthermore, increasing unemployment among the youth is based on increased education participation and a richer middle-class, not on the minimum wage being so high that businesses can't afford to employ teenagers.

>"The minimum wage is a trivial amount, and noone holds skills below this rate"

It is probably true that the minimum wage is not a binding price floor in rich white suburbs.

I'm not sure what you mean here exactly, but I think you are implying that rich white suburbs don't abide by the minimum wage when hiring? Alternatively you might be saying that everyone in a rich white suburb manages to make more than the minimum wage. Either way it reeks of ad hominem by playing on the accepted racism of white people as heartless and trouble-free.

Regardless, saying people work below the minimum wage is irrelevant to my point that the minimum wage is sufficiently low that it does not deter people from hiring unskilled workers.

I think he means that fixed-level price floors are largely meaningless in circumstances where the marginal utility of a dollar can vary widely from one neighborhood to the next (neighborhoods that often vary along socio-economic lines, which correlates strongly with ethnicity).

I mean that I have read evidence that minimum wages increase unemployment more in poor areas of the country than in wealthy ones. I'm coding all night at the moment, so I don't have time to look it up. But to say that "noone" has skills to offer the labor market that will clear at a price below the minimum wage is myopic.

Okay, so my argument is that the minimum wage shouldn't increase unemployment at all, because it is so low that any reasonable task is worth more than the low rate the wage is set at. What you say makes sense - if a minimum wage is so high that employers can't afford employees anymore then the poor areas will be hit worst, because the poor areas are the most unskilled.

Minimum wage is important because it prevents businesses that are so inefficient that can't even produce enough value to provide their employees with such a low payment.

Not every business is good. Business that can't pay minimum wage is just wasting people time. That time might be better utilized by some better thought out business.

If you don't agree state your opinion instead of downvoting.

So low skill workers find it harder and harder to find jobs. No surprise here.

Automation, bitches.

When I was a kid I was naive (and still am, to a degree) and I thought that in the future machines/computers/automation would do what humans didn't want to or simply couldn't, not to make a few people rich and bring more comfort to upper middle class, but so that humans worldwide could go after more important things that could make us evolve as a species.

Yes, I am also still a bit naive in that way. In the 80's-90's there was this common meme that automation would result in a more equal world where people could use their creative potential instead of doing repetitive jobs.

However, with where we seem to be heading, I sometimes even feel bad for working in tech.

I don't think that meme was wrong. I think the "wrong" part was the assumption that all people have significant creative potential. Remember, 50% of all people have a 2-digit IQ.

What makes you think it is "wrong"? Simply because it isn't the case now? I believe it doesn't have to be this way. Who would have predicted large scale democracy before the French Revolution?

Also, don't define "creative potential" as "high IQ". IQ is just an arbitrary measure which correlates with intelligence (and even that is controversial).

>What makes you think it is "wrong"? Simply because it isn't the case now?

I think that is the standard definition, yes.

According to the way IQ is measured, 50% of all people will always have a 2-digit IQ. It moves with population and age. And once people get to a comfortable level of subsistence they do become more creative. The guys that build swamp buggies and monster trucks probably don't have IQs greater than anyone else, but there they are, hacking Ford F150s to drive through 6 feet of water.

I know how IQ is measured - that's why I felt comfortable making the statement. And of course 100 is not an absolute, fixed value. But, nevertheless, someone with a sub-100 IQ today is unlikely to use his newfound free time, if he's supplanted as high school janitor by a robot, to create wonderful works of art or technology.

So what if he can't create wonderful works of art or technology? Does that mean he's either a high school janitor or -if replaced by a robot- should just be a homeless?

What if he hadn't become a janitor in the first place? What if he had spent all of his youth learning about anything that really makes him tick?

I know - lots of "what if's" but that's exactly what I thought when I was a kid, we would get these kind of answers.

Hope some day we can.

That's a non sequitur. Look at what I was originally reply to:

>In the 80's-90's there was this common meme that automation would result in a more equal world where people could use their creative potential instead of doing repetitive jobs.

They will, but if people won't improve and aren't willing to take the jobs that are available, what are we going to do?

This assumes that moving to another career (because that's really what you're talking about here) is a frictionless process with no transaction costs. This is demonstratably not the case.

No, that would help the process but the process doesn't have to be frictionless nor without transaction costs. It just takes a little longer to transition, but you should still be able to see the process in motion.

It is kind of working out. People making minimum wage have things that were sci-fi when I was a kid, better than the most expensive attempts the rich made to try to buy their way in early back in the day.

Global communicators that fit in the pocket, 40 inch high definition flat panel view screens, game systems with unimaginable processing power and graphics. Most people can't even sign up for basic cable without getting a time shifting miracle-machine or a basic cell phone account without being handed a damn tri-corder.

No argument that inequality of wealth is growing rapidly, but its good to remember that total wealth is growing too and even the poorest are benefiting.

What we really need to do is pull all of the parasites out of our health-care services and allow this magic to happen down there as well before the have-nots figure out it doesn't matter whats on your giant TV if you can't afford those patented, insurance inflated, heart pills and decide maybe its time once again to dust off the guillotines for another go at the rich.

I remember a few months back seeing a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart with one hand and talking on a cell phone with the other.

But I'm not sure if he thought everything was working out...

I did say kind of working out, not working out the way it should (for some definition of should I think we mostly agree on). I'm just saying that automation has made it possible for homeless guys to have cell phones, when before they couldn't.

I'm not even floating a guess as to whether or not he'd be homeless if it not for that automation. That's a much larger and more complicated debate.

On the balance, I'm still betting that more automation makes better lives for more people, even if it seems to increase inequality in the short run.

I wait patiently for the day when mankind looks at himself in a collective mirror and says, "Know what?, everything's so good now that we don't need all of this inequality." I think this is an essential step in man becoming a semi-eternal space-faring species instead of one that just drives itself to extinction.

I think is is sort of true, but the fact remains that humans really enjoy dominating other humans (probably biologically -- think chimpanzees). We currently dominate through economics, so there will always be a dynamic in which the wealthy need to the poor so that there can be a hierarchy.

That isn't the only dynamic, but I think looking to technology (increased efficiency) to do ALL the work in solving human problems (domination) is, well, naive. Some of the work -- yes, and making it possible at all -- often.

Someone linked to this short story in a related discussion about automation: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'd say it has the potential to make you think deeper about low-skill workers, automation and where our future is headed.

I really loved this. Thank you so much for the link!

Can't comment much on it because I'm afraid to give spoilers, but it was a very enjoying read that got me thinking in lots of things.

Thanks again!

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