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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

You mean those studies about Seattle airport employment zone and such small scale examples of raising the minimum wage? I don't think it applies in general, or it would be a big mistake to think that you could replicate that widely.

But maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe we don't send work offshore to lower cost countries to take advantage of wages lower than ours.

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In my country it didn't increase unemployment.

> Maybe we don't send work offshore to lower cost countries to take advantage of wages lower than ours.

Labor costs in the US are higher than in China, so this should and has happened anyway. You think it would happen to a larger degree and it could be correct. But it is a restricted perspective aside from the fact that not every work can just be outsourced to low wage countries.

> Maybe we don't send work offshore to lower cost countries to take advantage of wages lower than ours.

it's not like lowering the minimum wage would change this much - if the cost of living is an order of magnitude lower in a third-world country, the labour costs are going to be an order of magnitude lower too

Sure, but it happens in increments however small you want to make it -- to some subset of jobs at every ratchet of the bar.

Perhaps we could address offshoring by putting tariffs on countries with minimum wages lower than those in the US.

A good portion of this is manufacturing, isn't it?

A first start would be to stop subsidizing the transportation costs through the US Navy and oil subsidies/tax breaks

I do not mean those, no.

But maybe I'm mistaken.

Couldn't tell you. Never heard of that study. It sounds like one study among so many that all indicate the same.

Maybe we don't send work offshore to lower cost countries to take advantage of wages lower than ours.

People DO send work offshore for that reason, and you know it. Why so childish? Why such pointless passive aggression? Why come out with that kind of nonsense bullshit? Grow up and have an adult conversation.

I am, and I guess I need to spell out the point more explicitly. The point was that raising the minimum wage demonstrably affects employment by the fact that we every day choose to send work overseas instead of using people here at home at higher wages.

So the notion that raising minimum wages doesn't affect employment just doesn't hold water unless you study it in a very isolated environment, where the effects of it get washed out by the larger absorptive capacity of the broader labor market.

Northern Europe haven't had significantly more unemployment even though the labour costs and regulations are much better than in the US. How would you explain that?

That is false. Example: unemployment rate of youth in Spain for 2019 was 32.9%, the rate for same period in US was around 9%. Similar situation in other Northern Europe countries, with high unemployment rate especially among youth, as they are the most vulnerable to minimum wage laws which limit their ability to acquire skills and experience needed to move to higher paying jobs.

No. I never said anything about Spain and southern europe.

Overall unemployment isn't worse historically. Not sure why you cherry-pick youth as if it invalidates the overall stat somehow. But even that stat isn't worse historically.

You have not actually demonstrated this though. No evidence you provide won't be just as good of evidence for alternative causes of sending work overseas, like cost of living.

The point was that raising the minimum wage demonstrably affects employment by the fact that we every day choose to send work overseas instead of using people here at home at higher wages.

You're going to have to work a lot harder to prove that those two facts are related than just saying them.

Perhaps you mean that the very lowest paid jobs are those that are outsourced? Are you talking about very low-wage factory jobs, such that people in China may be paid a few dollars an hour where the same in the US would be many dollars an hour? Or are you talking about IT outsourcing, which happens at values much higher than minimum wage?

If I have to guess your arguments and make them for you, then I don't really need you in this conversation at all, I suppose.

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