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Because $1 * 77 million workers * 2000 hours is only $160 billion dollars? The department of labor said "Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could ha
by jfoutz 10y ago
Because $1 * 77 million workers * 2000 hours is only $160 billion dollars? The department of labor said "Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front."
I don't think anybody claimed there would be a boom. BI on the other hand, might. With minimum wage you're still spending all day working. it's tough to be enthusiastic about much of anything beyond a book or a video game (or it was for me).
I would guess A few people would do nothing. Most people would try a bunch of different stuff and kind of suck at it. A few people would have moderate success. And finally the occasional superstar. Pretty much the same expected outcomes as venture capital, but way way more breakevens.
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Oh, you're making the argument that because the cost of labor increases everything gets more expensive. That's true, but it's in proportion to the labor cost of the thing. Tomatoes are labor intensive, so they cost more. Pasta is mostly automated, so it doesn't go up as much. Relative pricing changes, making books and computers cheaper in terms of tomatoes.
- empath75 10y agoRaising minimum wage raises salaries all the way up the chain, as retail staff now make as much as assistant managers, then assistant managers get a raise and make almost as much as managers and so on.
- jfoutz 10y agowell, if the bottom rung gets 10%, the next one up gets 5%, then 2.5% and so on till you hit the top, where you probably get 20-50%. which sounds horrible but is a tiny fraction in an organization with tens of thousands of people. But again, that only affects prices to a degree that labor is a component. 10% across the board at Ford is .1% increase in the price of a car.
- gozur88 10y agoTomatoes are actually a good case study for wage increases. The last time we had a serious effort to curb illegal immigration we got the usual "crops rotting in the fields" rhetoric from growers, but somehow they lost the political argument. Wages went up due to the resultant labor scarcity. So growers introduced Roma tomatoes, which are not labor intensive because they can be machine harvested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EpFTyN26E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EpFTyN26E
- prostoalex 10y agoThe growers still managed to squeeze in a bunch of exemptions from the minimum wage law https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs12.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs12.htm