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Comment by binonsense | Hacker News Reader

Weird turn at the end of the article: fear-mongering about any minimum wage at all.

Fun historical fact: as recently as 1987, the NYT advocated against any minimum wage at all: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/14/opinion/the-right-minimum...

> there's a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market. A far better way to help them would be to subsidize their wages or - better yet - help them acquire the skills needed to earn more on their own.

It’s an issue I’ve chosen to have no opinion on. I’ve seen studies showing it reduced employment and I’ve seen studies showing it pressured all wages upwards without reducing employment.

In the end: IDK but it doesn’t seem like the best issue to focus on to help people.

But doesn't it help the state overall, because more people will become ineligible for tax breaks and other diverse subsidies and programs the state offer's for the low-income households. Has any study taken a look at that?

I had the same thought:

35hr x $7 = 245, x4 weeks = $980

35hr x $15 = 525, x4 weeks = $2100

At my poorest (and with 3 dependents) EBT only ever paid out $~650 a month. The gross delta here is $1120. So the state should come out ahead.

But all I've heard of is hours being cut in line with wage increases. So few workers are pulling that $2100 and are presumably still on benefits.

Surely there is some level at which it will reduce unemployment. So really it’s just an argument as to what the right level is.

27 years is a pretty long time. In that time the wealth gap has widened and the minimum wage fears of businesses closing or poor people not getting a job seems to be false.

It's particularly gross that so many states have a minimum wage of a little over $7 in 2024. That's ~$14k before taxes at 40 hours a week.

> That's ~$14k before taxes at 40 hours a week

I think that’s a liveable wage in some parts of farm country. Not great. But better than being undercut by illegal labour. (At least, that’s the argument one would have to disprove. I’m generally in favour of a $25/hour minimum wage.)

> 27 years is a pretty long time.

Even longer than you think, since 1987 was 37 years ago.

For many of us small business owners, that 1987 opinion is on the money. The direct and immediate consequence of raising the minimum wage by a bunch is that I'd have to lay a couple of people off, which would be heartbreaking (for them of course, but also for me).

Unskilled labor simply isn't worth very much most of the time, but it's nice to help people get their foot in the door. One of my absolute favorite outcomes for an employee is to have them grow in capacity so that I "have" to pay them way much more than some artificial wage floor because they've developed into a solid contributor.

If you’d been giving reasonable cost of living adjustments over the years and paying a living wage to your employees in the first place instead of just paying the minimum, then a raise wouldn’t be such a shock.

What sort of small business do you run?

What on earth are you talking about? We give cost of living increases to every employee every single year.

My favorite part was how this politician-bribing, crooked, lobbying business owner is just looking out for his business. Can't blame him. Nope, no blame on these guys modifying the law for their own profit... No, it's all the Governor's fault. It's not as though they were working together on this or anything.

The job of a business owner is to make money for their business. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

The job of a governor is NOT to take bribes in exchange for exclusions in a law. Government is meant to be a check on business that represents the common interest, so the fault lies squarely in that department.

I am a little confused what you are saying here. Are you saying Newsom doesn't deserve all the blame, because I agree with him not deserving it all, but I don't really see anyone claiming he is solely to blame (other than you implying it).

I live in CA. I blame everyone down the chain. Most people I know say the same thing. Its not one person or entity. Its the entire chain that allows this to happen including the legislature, business owners that are lobbying, the governor that is signing these bill, but most of all the citizens voting in CA. We voted for this. IMO we are the one entity the most to blame.

Until we, the voters, step up and take responsibility for our actions nothing is going to get fixed. After all why would the business owners, legislators, or governor be expected to take responsibility when everyone who votes in the state gets to pass the buck?

That's how you do propaganda properly.

You pick on a legitimate issue and discreetly add something that pushes your agenda.

Weird for Reason?

Fair, I didn’t know they had this particular agenda. I just found the turn to be weird because it wasn’t well supported by the content of the article in my opinion. Felt pretty “out of nowhere”.

It's from Reason. I tend to enjoy their articles as interesting and generally well thought out, as long as I keep in mind that they're pretty far down the Libertarian path.

That's how you get articles like this: "this Big Government law is poorly written", and "the government shouldn't interfere with someone's negotiated pay rate" are quite compatible.

(NB: I'm not speaking for or against either of those stances here, just describing what I suspect would be Reason's rationale.)

Same. In case folks in this thread aren't familiar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(magazine)

> Reason is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation, with the tagline "Free Minds and Free Markets".

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