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Comment by chgs | Hacker News Reader

The U.K. has massively increased minimum wage over he last decade or so, but this has meant people who used to be on 50-100% more than minimum wage are now finding themselves on the same wage as shelf stackers.

They are of course now questioning why they bothered to do so much training, incurring debt and lost opportunity, to find everyone on the same wage.

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Yes, well, many young programmers today are finding it increasingly difficult to find a good job out of school, what with all the new AI tools and general diffusion of the skill across the global population.

The skills required to be a "shelf stacker" are generally taught in public schools. What did you think would happen when they started teaching all these kids to program as well? There is a good reason why these giant tech companies kept lobbying for, and creating school programs centered around code-education, and I hope you realize it wasn't purely philanthropic.

Exactly. It's an economic *system*. Change X and there is impact not only on W and Y but perhaps also V and Z. So to say, "Look! We raised the min wage and people earned more money. That's the bottomline", is naive at best.

Furthermore (re: California), increasing the min wage is not a fix for the housing supply and associated failed policies.

Marx always emphasised the general law of capitalist accumulation: no matter what temporary victories a local population might win (wage increases, stable housing, free education and healthcare, etc.), as long as Capital continues to dominate the social world, people will always be enslaved to the conditions of the market, and every effort will be made to extract as much surplus value as possible, since its what produces the most productivity and profit in the capitalist system.

Seems like they need to organize/unionize then, no? Their failure to do so isn’t the “shelf stackers’” fault. If anything, this gives them leverage to get paid more. But they have to use it, because capitalists will never pay someone fairly if they don’t fight for it.

A job is worth only so much. When wages raise above that amount those jobs disappear. Street sweepers are one example.

They really should turn their ire towards their employers, not resent shelf stackers for making the same wage. They have all this training, debt, and lost opportunity, and their employers still pay them minimum wage? That doesn't seem acceptable to me. And it doesn't have anything to do with the shelf stackers.

Market value has to be considered though, can't blame a car mechanic for being pissed that regulations force a shelf stocker, a lower value/difficulty job, to be paid the same (above fair market value).

Car mechanic should be pissed: at his employer, not at the government. His employer is the one choosing to pay him the same as a shelf stocker.

In a functioning labor market with empowered workers, all wages would rise to reflect the skill/scarcity gap between minimum wage work and skilled work.

If all wages rise, than inflations rises along with it… to cancel out the wage rises in practice (unless productivity improves). As the last few years have shown.

So what you're saying is, under this theory, increases in productivity create real improvements in people's purchasing power?

In that case, how do you explain the last 40+ years, where productivity has been skyrocketing, but most peoples purchasing power has remained mostly flat?

Or is it your contention that there is nothing we can do that can increase the purchasing power of regular people under the current system? Because if that's the case, that would be a pretty massive indictment of the system as a whole.

What are you talking about?

Most people’s effective purchasing power have skyrocketed.

e.g. A single solar panel 40 years ago would have been more than a years‘s income for the median American. (And much less efficient too)

Even the crappiest healthcare plans nowadays offers options beyond what the absolute top of the line healthcare plans offered 40 years ago.

Approximately no one who is having trouble affording bread and eggs cares that solar panels are vastly more affordable.

So your just going to ignore the healthcare example that every passing reader can clearly see? Really?

And btw eggs are also roughly the same or even cheaper for the median American income compared to over 40 years ago.

My point is that you can cherry-pick specific examples all you like, but the data clearly shows that the purchasing power (real wages, whatever term you prefer) of average Americans has stayed (nearly) flat for the past 40+ years.

What data? Why not just link it?

Everything I’ve seen suggests otherwise, a big net positive even after factoring in everything.

Then you must have only been looking at horrendously biased sources.

This is incredibly common knowledge. It's very widely reported. Just Google "real wages vs productivity graphs".

It seems you’re confusing these concepts? Purchasing power is NOT equivalent to productivity.

What do you mean by "choosing".

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