Hacker News Reader

Comment by klmadfejno | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's a reasonable point of view. Most minimum wage jobs are not productivity jobs, but jobs that need to get done by someone but require no special skills. That is, you can't easily define the value of the sanitation worker who keeps a restaurant clean enough to pass health standards. You just observe that there's enough people willing to do it that you can offer a low wage.

What jobs are being made illegal?

View on HN

Sanitation workers may be low-skill but they are high-value. I don't think this is a good example.

In contrast, a friend of mine recently hired the teenager next door with cash (for less than the local minimums) to do some manual yard labor. This job simply wasn't worth paying for at a higher cost; my friend would have left the work un-done. But in this case the value proposition at a lower price was acceptable and the neighbor was glad for the extra cash.

Well sanitation workers make up a fairly large fraction of the minimum wage workers so that's a representative group of people for the matter at hand.

You're not wrong that unnecessary private exchanges like that might be lost, but those are unnecessary, not that noteworthy in terms of economic scale, and generally aren't relevant to minimum wage laws anyway. My point is precisely that most of the labor that is priced at minimum wage is not like the example you describe.

Many of the people employed at very low wages have attributes which mean that they are not worth hiring at higher costs. Factors such as lack of job history, attendance issues/unreliability, language issues, etc. mean that the employer will opt for a more 'attractive' candidate if there is a price floor.

As an example, if you are looking for a bottle of wine to accompany your Tuesday night dinner, you might opt for a low-cost, low-quality option, as it is adequate for your needs; but if there is a price floor, you will opt for a different, higher quality option.

Price floors mean that deals below the set price are illegal.

> Many of the people employed at very low wages have attributes which mean that they are not worth hiring at higher costs.

The whole article was about how that doesn't seem to be the case, empirically. When the minimum wage rises, the effect on employment is minimal, and people on minimum wage get paid more (they're not fired).

The data is in aggregate; I am talking about the impact on individuals.

> any of the people employed at very low wages have attributes which mean that they are not worth hiring at higher costs.

Unless the job needs to be done, which is generally the case among minimum wage workers. That was my point. You need cleaning staff, and retail workers, and what not. You still hire them even if they cost more. People don't have intrinsic prices. It's not like an old person costs exactly $4.32 an hour and therefore is unable to find work if the minimum wage is $7.25.

The fact that the job needs to be done does not mean that the job needs to be done by the type of person currently doing it. One common response to price floors is to change the qualifications/requirements (as in my wine example). The employer will hire 'over-qualified' candidates to perform a job which does not require their skills or abilities.

Wine is still being 'hired' with a price floor, but it is a different wine, and the price floor doesn't do the low-quality wine producer any good. This example is actually derived from a time when England imposed a flat tax on French wines.

People aren't wine. They do not have intrinsic prices. What you're saying just isn't correct. We've got plenty of people with mental handicaps working at grocery stores and what not, many of them making more than minimum wage. What you're describing is not real.

If you've ever worked at or hired for jobs between 1x and 2x the current minimum wage (in a given area), you know that the kind of people you can hire at 2x are totally different from the people you hire at 1x.

All jobs are productivity jobs. It is the definition of a job. You are paid to accomplish some process. To be productive. Some non-zero skill is always needed. Cleaning surfaces in a restaurant happens to be fairly low-skill. There is a high supply of humans who can produce the result - a clean restaurant. Thus, the wage commonly paid for this job is (compared to higher-skilled jobs) quite low.

As an example, textile and manufacturing jobs being used exported to Asian countries.

It's not like companies want to pay for shipping of products from halfway across the world, but because of minimum wage it makes it more profitable to do so. Which results in jobs leaving to other countries.

Without minimum, those workers wages would have simply gone down over time, allowing them some time to find other opportunities. Instead of just one day the plants up and decides to move to Asia and you're out of a job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com