Hacker News Reader

Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

Where does minimum wage [objectively] fit in?

If an employer can't pay someone what a job is worth, either the job doesn't get done or a machine is found to do it - leaving someone without the opportunity for a job. Yes, it may not be a "living wage", but no wage is even less desirable.

I've started using Taco Bell's remote ordering app. The clerk, seeing how I'd ordered (not using his services), yesterday thanked me for making his job easier. Couldn't help thinking that rather than happy, he should be scared: with all the talk about pushing for $15/hr minimum wages, coupled with automation of order-taking, he's facing prospects of no job instead of an easy one.

I know minimum wage is meant to help, but it only contributes to increased unemployment and inflation.

View on HN

[Objectively] in countries where a minimum wage has been introduced at a higher rate than the US and is reviewed each year it has pushed up wages but had little effect on employment.

e.g. see for instance this discussion http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/02/labour-m...

Further I can't really stand the crocodile tears of business who want to employ workers at below living level wages. Their fake concern for worker is nauseating.

If workers are having to top up wages with food stamps and government aid then the business, management, and shareholders rather than the worker are effectively being subsidised by the taxpayer.

And if you let companies lower wages to compete then the bad employers drive out the good. Far better to make them compete on the product or service not how badly they are willing to treat people.

1. min-wage raises are so modest and so slowly phased-in (in the US) so to not produce smoking-gun employment drops, and employers prepare in advance for them, so sloppy underpowered studies don't show any large effect. marginal effects are small and so you need a powerful study.

2. do you want people who receive food stamps etc. and aren't hireable at $8/hr to have any legal on-the-books employment options or not? either way they're getting the food stamps.

3. I personally would rather see more Costcos+Trader Joes than Wal-marts+McDonalds, so i want to believe your 'bad employers winning' unless we force higher pay, but presumably people won't work for bad employers, so i don't see where your forecast is coming from. anyway it seems a little cargo-cult. you can't just start paying $20/hr instead of $8 and suddenly beat Costco.

> he's facing prospects of no job instead of an easy one.

Everyone is. He is not an exception - every office worker, every lawyer, even every artist is every day one step closer to obsolescence to automation. He might just be really smart and realize the sooner we get there, and the sooner we work out the paradigm shift it requires to approach post scarcity like that, the sooner we either reach the end of free society or enter an era of utopia, and either would be better than stagnating on the brink.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com