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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

While you cannot view technology as some kind of force of nature, immune to ethics, blaming the misery of joblessness on technology is beside the point.

When is the last time the minimum wage was raised? The last time the work week shortened? Those laws are in place because of technology eliminating human labor. Those legal changes were the solution to a problem technology created. But they have not been updated while technology is galloping away. We blithely crush low-skill, entry level jobs because they are easy to crush.

Technologists have a responsibility to mitigate the impact of technology. But the answer isn't to restrain technology. The answer is to deliver benefits to society as a whole, and that comes from restructuring our economy to benefit workers.

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There are other levers, such as Basic Income. A suggestion I heard would be to abolish minimum wage altogether, and introduce unconditional basic income.

The hope is that basic income would make part time work sustainable, and give more leverage to workers. Possibly making minimum wage unnecessary.

Society simply isn't ready for such a solution. I floated the idea to my dad last week, and his reaction was instructive. There's just no convincing "Main Street" that paying people to sit around and do nothing could possibly benefit society. It's a political non-starter.

Is that not what we already do through welfare/benefit payments? Plus the administration costs of such a system.

One solution would be a negative income tax, where you take some threshold X and basically cut low income people a cheque for (X - Income) / Y where Y is something like 2.

That way there is never a financial incentive not to work as every $ you earn will make you at least $0.50 better off than you were before (where Y = 2).

Under a complicated benefits system you often have incentives not to take low paying or casual work in case it disqualifies you for government benefit. In many cases the rules around this can be complicated, so even the effort required to figure this out can be a disincentive.

> Is that not what we already do through welfare/benefit payments?

Not in France. Here, you're supposed to look for a job (and prove it). If you don't, no welfare for you.

I believe few countries have a welfare system that is conditioned on nothing else than near-zero revenue.

We have a similar system in the UK, though it is fraught with bureaucracy. There is little (quality) help offered to people seeking jobs which leaves some people just going through the motions. From what I remember they want people to look for work within certain categories which can either be too broad or too narrow.

> Is that not what we already do through welfare/benefit payments?

Yep.

The main problem here is that most people don't understand incentives and what motivates them. They think everyone's just out to work as little as possible. Selling a negative income tax or basic income to the public, or any system where you provide anyone with "three hots and a cot," as my father put it, is impossible, regardless of how much we need it. According to them, we'd be irreparably damaging the social fabric.

> The answer is to deliver benefits to society as a whole, and that comes from restructuring our economy to benefit workers.

Isn't it more likely to be a political problem ? I am thinking capitalism and neo-liberal tenets are tainting technologies and those philosophy hold the responsibility for the current situation. The job/resource/supply/demand pool, despite what pro free market supports believe, isn't limitless.

It is most likely that raising minimum wage will lower demand for employees. How? For one, there will be more deployment of previously unviable technology to compensate for human labor. There are many other unintended consequences as well.

Unless we were to subsidize companies when they hire more workers, raising minimum wage would increase un- or under-employment.

If you raise the US Minimum wage to $20 an hour you will immediately see people move their companies to Mexico,China,etc.. So that will only make the problem worse. Instead of making $10 an hour those employees will be making $0.

Honest question which companies? Which companies that currently pay workers minimum wage are able to move overseas? Mcdonalds, Walmart etc cannot move their service jobs overseas.

Won't the result just be a further investment in technology that leads from two people making $10 an hour to 1 person making $20.

It might incentivise those companies to find ways of doing business with less human labour. For example computer checkout /ordering systems or more emphasis on doing business online.

They'll automate even more. It might spur a push to improve commercial robotics.

Why not regulate work week trough WTO, UN or other international organisation?

Some maybe, but such reports will be grossly over exaggerated and a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of employment in the US.

The truth is that much of the manufacturing here in the US is already largely automated, and many of the few jobs left in manufacturing are a few higher skill positions that probably pay an hourly wage near or above $20 already. Any job that's going to be eliminated is going to be eliminated in the next few years whether you raise the minimum wage or not. Instead this argument against a higher minimum wage means that every worker who job cannot be outsourced because it is some service industry job for example is being held down financially on account of the country losing jobs that might be automated eventually anyway.

On top of that a $20 minimum wage would also probably create much more demand by many of those who today are earning less than $20 per day.

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