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In most middle class communities almost no one is paid minimum wage, not even teenagers. Usually it's paid in poor areas with a huge surplus of low skilled labor. And even then, those who stick on the job for six months make more; simply because they have proven to be dependable and learned how to do the job more efficiently. There are pockets in very poor states where minimum wage is common, but those surrounding areas are also very poor. The whole state might be poor. Not much profit margin in what they do.
The last time this really became controversial was when Jacob Vigdor, et al. did a city-commissioned study on raising the minimum wage. This study included one of the "synthetic" models that is vaguely criticized in your link. The study concluded mixed results. One one hand it found numerous workers earning more. On the other it suggested a decrease in hours among some jobs and a decrease in supply of some jobs on the lowest end of wages. So then the City (then-mayor's office, likely taking orders from Kshama Sawant) scrambled to hire an outsider from Berkeley known for being biased in favor of the minimum wage to come in and shoot down Vigdor's study.
This study didn't say the sky would fall, predict prices would rise, and businesses would close. It also didn't hypothesize that grocery stores would hike their prices within a year. It primarily found concern that some workers would struggle to maintain adequate hours and that the supply of low wage jobs would shrink. Nonetheless, the city felt any downsides was not flattering enough for their agenda, so they weaponized out-of-state researchers to attack the study they commissioned.
Maybe the writer in your link mainly wants to refute the global sky-is-falling arguments that are auto-deployed by people who have made up their minds that they're against the minimum wage no matter what. I get that. The evidence clearly doesn't support economic devastation in every instance of raising the minimum wage. Raising the MW seems to typically do pretty well in booming, rich markets with high costs of living. That's especially where it tends to get passed. Seattle is one of those places.
[Professor Jennifer] Otten and colleagues collected data from six supermarket chains affected by the policy in Seattle and from six others outside the city but within King County and unaffected by the policy. They looked at prices for 106 food items per store starting one month before enactment of the ordinance, one month after, and a year later.
This may not be the best time to mention that here in Toronto, in the past 6 months, virtually all the major supermarkets have wiped out two thirds of their checkout lanes and replaced them with self-checkout. :shrug:
Count the number of self-checkout kiosks and divide by 3? :shrug:How do you measure "employees not hired"?
This may not be the best time to mention that here in Toronto, in the past 6 months, virtually all the major supermarkets have wiped out two thirds of their checkout lanes and replaced them with self-checkout. :shrug:
What is amazing to me is the conservative posture on this. When it comes to workplace issues they have tended to oppose things that benefit workers: unemployment insurance, workers comp, safety enforcement, pesticide regulation, union protection, civil rights and equal pay laws, etc. But their compassion and thirst for justice for the working person emerges when an increase in the minimum wage is debated. Strange.
While that may be true, I have a hard time believing the employer who can save $70M a year automating isn't considerably more motivated to dealing with the risks and headaches of automating than the employer who can save $25M a year.That has happened everywhere. I have been an IT professional for over 20 years, how much someone was paid has never factored into whether we automated a job or or not. If you can automate a job, it doesnt matter what they are paid, they could be paid slave wages and its still more efficient to automate the job.
While that may be true, I have a hard time believing the employer who can save $70M a year automating isn't considerably more motivated to dealing with the risks and headaches of automating than the employer who can save $25M a year.
Plus there's the moral factor to consider, especially with small businesses. That retailer wondering if they should keep that contractor on staff, offer those perks to customers, fill needs with flesh and blood human beings for the social good, in spite of modest or even negative returns on investment, is going to be far less morally conflicted about "fixing" the problem if it turns into an additional $25-60 per employee per day cash burn.
I disagree on a number of bases. The main one being that employers--especially small businesses--aren't purely interested in the bottom line. They're interested in reducing their own workload, their comfort and convenience, and in the social welfare of their communities. Employees can best automation in all three, but there's only so much financial pain employers can or will tolerate before bending to the realities of the almighty dollar.Its never even a question what someone is making as to whether we code them out of a job. For example, you could be paying a book keeper near slave wages to maintain a ledger, and it still will be more economically efficient for a business to have an accounting package like GP doing that for them. If we ever get fully autonomous cars, it won't matter what we pay Uber drivers, they will still be out of a job. A factory worker on an assembly line will never be as efficient as a robot doing that job. If you can automate the work that a legal secretary is doing, then you will regardless of what you are paying the legal secretary.
Point being, this notion that minimum wage increases lead to more automation is nonsense. The same jobs being automated out of existence in high wage countries are being automated out of existence in China as well, despite wages being only a fraction in China what they are here.
I disagree on a number of bases. The main one being that employers--especially small businesses--aren't purely interested in the bottom line. They're interested in reducing their own workload, their comfort and convenience, and in the social welfare of their communities. Employees can best automation in all three, but there's only so much financial pain employers can or will tolerate before bending to the realities of the almighty dollar.
Less important but also a factor: people are willing to pay more in order to get flesh and blood human experiences in retail, food, and even farming and manufacturing. But the premium they're willing to pay isn't limitless. Raise it above a certain threshold and once again people are sent running into the open arms of automated supply lines, whose attractiveness magnifies with each minimum wage hike.
You can't claim that wages aren't a factor simply because automation is a force to be reckoned with even in slave-wage labour countries. China isn't culturally the US. Even if they were, I maintain that their push towards automation would be vastly more forceful and systemic if their employers were contending with high wages.
Where you may have a point is that the price point automation ultimately provides is below any reasonable living wage, but this makes a modest minimum wage all the more important. Modest wages, combined with moral social consciousness of business owners and consumers, will be the only reason there are any low-wage jobs left.
This is why I've said what the real motivation for the $15 minimum wage is--and this should be admitted/acknowledged--is disproportionately negatively affecting poor rural red areas relative to high-cost thriving cities. The effects of this across-the-board policy would be wildly different to an economically depressed rural red area than a thriving metropolis. Find me a pro-$15 minimum wage Democrat that is willing to discuss these differences. A $15 FMW would cause a 0% change to San Francisco's minimum, whereas a town in rural Alabama would see a 107% increase to theirs. Do Democrats really care what the effect of this would be to a place like rural Alabama? Of course not. They stand to lose nothing by pissing those people off, because their prospects of ever winning over rural Alabama voters is essentially zero regardless.
Prominent party insiders in both parties love to promote policies that have a sinister underlying disproportionate negative effect on the states dominated by the other party. For example, Trump's tax reform disproportionately hurt blue states by limiting the state and local tax deduction. Similarly, big boosts to the national minimum wage would be most difficult and disruptive to the lowest cost, poorest states, which are typically Republican-voting.
This may not be the best time to mention that here in Toronto, in the past 6 months, virtually all the major supermarkets have wiped out two thirds of their checkout lanes and replaced them with self-checkout. :shrug:
Jill is willing to pay a bit more to patronize Bob's small business because she knows he hires locally and keeps Jeff and Mary, an accountant and receptionist respectively, on staff.Bob's small business keeps a book keeper and a receptionist on staff. Bill's small business buys an accounting package and an automated attendant, thus doesn't need those positions anymore. Bill's small business then undercuts Bob's small business in prices. Bob's small business must do what Bill's small business did in order to remain competitive.
There's a first time for everything, and the past few years have been a very busy time for unprecedented firsts.Every minimum wage increase is met by claims of doom and gloom by cheap labor conservatives, yet their predictions have never came to fruition.
How do you know? How are you so confident a massive wage hike at this cosmic moment in time won't cross the threshold to obsoleting tens of millions of jobs? Does nothing else about the time we're living in scream "unprecedented and unpredictable" to you?Now sure, you could set some wage so high that no one would hire anyone, but no one is suggesting a wage anywhere near that high.
I've always thought that full time minimum wage should be three times what a one bedroom apartment costs. As this number tends to reflect cost of living in the area.
This would pit employers against landlords, which IMO would be a good thing. Maybe get businesses to turn against real estate "speculation".
I said before that places where housing was cheap just hadn't been gotten to by the "speculators". (In quotes because much real estate speculation is actually just buying enough of the available real estate to create an apparent "shortage", driving prices up. I saw this practice triple the price of a home in the corridor around Joshua Tree CA when they thought it was going to be the next telluride or Santa Fe.)
Texas is now seeing this phenomenon.
That has happened everywhere. I have been an IT professional for over 20 years, how much someone was paid has never factored into whether we automated a job or or not. If you can automate a job, it doesnt matter what they are paid, they could be paid slave wages and its still more efficient to automate the job.
Its like the "unions forced businesses overseas" canard. No American could pay their landlord at $5/day.
So it really was just cheap labor.
The Great Divergence in the mid seventies where wages stopped following GDP growth occurred as our status heads came into direct competition with foreign status heads with vast desperate populations.
It's really hard to become the richest, most powerful person when other competitors enjoyed those cheap labor pools. So something had to be done to "level the playing field".
David Goldstein (blogger) - WikipediaGoldstein was the recipient of a 2009 Fuse "Sizzle" Award. He was given the Spotlight on the Shadows Sizzle Award "for journalism that matters." According to the awarding organization, Goldstein's a"progressive muckraking and political analysis... keep legislators honest and provide the information and analysis we all need to recognize great leadership and hold legislators accountable." [9]
In Seattle, Minimum Wage Hike Comes at a Cost to Some WorkersA long line of studies about the minimum wage has revealed that it can drive down employment at the low end of the wage scale, but those losses are made up for by increases in higher-paying jobs. The University of Washington findings, however, suggest that there’s some merit to the usual complaint that gets lodged against minimum-wage hikes -- that they’re not only expensive for employers, but threaten to cut the first rung on the career ladder out from under teenagers or others just getting their start in the labor market. “The evidence that we’re picking up is consistent,” says Jacob Vigdor, an economist at the University of Washington. “We’re pricing out low-skill workers.”