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The parent is referring to the how people cannot lower their wage (below the minimum) when automation starts competing against them. The truck driver may make t

The parent is referring to the how people cannot lower their wage (below the minimum) when automation starts competing against them. The truck driver may make three times minimum wage right now, but the truck driver will be prevented, by law, from offering to drive a truck for 1/3 minimum wage when driverless trucks cost 1/2 minimum wage to operate. Humans may want to sharpen their pencils and outcompete automation on price, but are prevented from doing so. Robots never work for free. Capital, operational, and maintenance costs can be quite expensive. However, the cost of automation amortized on an hourly basis may be below the price of hiring someone at minimum wage. As such, humans are legally forced to find something else, or go without work entirely. Given that automation has historically created far more jobs than it replaced, you can argue that it is good thing that people are forced into more useful roles by not allowing them to compete with machines. But if you believe that automation simply takes away jobs for good, as many people do, then minimum wage will actually result in even lower wages for these people than they would have without minimum wage.

dmoo 9y ago
You could easily tax robot labor to ensure it wasn't competitive with cheap labour
- randomdata 9y ago
  It is an interesting thought. How would the tax be implemented? The automated dishwasher in my kitchen relieves human dishwashing services to the tune of an hour or two per week. Minimum wage where I live is $14/hr. That is, on the low end, a little over $700 per year. Would I be on the hook for the $700 each year, minus the current operating costs of the dishwasher, in order to have it operational in my home? And should the taxed value be a straight up calculation like that? Humans are quirky and unreliable, and I may not be comfortable with having a stranger in my house to clean up after me. As such, I may be willing to pay quite a bit more to have the reliable and comfortable automation over hiring a human. Would the tax need to account for that disparity to allow humans to still have a competitive edge?
tigershark 9y ago
Do you really think that people can survive earning 1/3 of the minimum wage? They will be much better off just becoming beggars.
- randyrand 9y ago
  Solution: Negative income tax and/or welfare.
- randomdata 9y ago
  Given the context of this thread, and not an alternative situation that I am sure you can dream up, yes: Mathematically, 1/3 of minimum wage is greater than the only alternative: No wage at all. Considering the scope presented, I am unconvinced that begging will be viable. It's already a struggle today, and would only become more difficult in the the situation presented. I'm not convinced this hypothetical situation presented is realistic to start with, but that is well beyond the topic at hand. The constraints are what they are.
bastawhiz 9y ago
And my point is that what the minimum wage is doesn't matter anyway. You can't lower your minimum wage by law, but you also can't live on that, either. What does it matter if your salary is competitive with that of a machine if you can't afford food, shelter, or any other of life's necessities? Minimum wage is, by all accounts, a success. It prevents employers from creating jobs that prevent a person from ever being successful. And we know that it's good and successful because we have the data to show that it does indeed raise the quality of living to a "barely first world" standard for many people. Seeing this on HN: > not allowing people to have salaries competitively priced vs machines will cause most of the swift pain AI will bring. is startling to me. Who does the OP think this person is that can live on $5/hr or lower? Minimum wage _as it is_ is arguably too low. It's sad that this illusion of "if you lower minimum wage, people will work for the lower wage" seems so pervasive, because it's thrown out as if minimum wage employees are trying to be competitive. If you've eaten twice in the last two days and you're about to lose your car, you'll work for almost anything if it means keeping your head above water for a couple more days. Minimum wage is a solution to a human problem, not a business problem. If a job can't be performed competitively for a survivable salary, employers shouldn't be allowed to say, "well if you don't mind not having heat in your home..." and should instead be forced to use automation. Yeah, it sucks being laid off, but there will always be more minimum wage jobs. If you take away minimum wage, now you're left with even fewer reasonable prospects of a job that pays a survivable wage.
- randyrand 9y ago
  Simple solution to people dying of hunger, food shelters. There are better alternatives to minimum wage that don't have the same problems with AI. one example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax People think wanting to get rid of minimum wage is to be against helping poor people; it's actually the exact opposite. Being against minimum wage is to be against the problems it brings - not being against the poor.
  - sova 9y ago
    Too bad in the United States there is pretty much no chance for a NIT, so minimum wage is the closest we can get.

dmoo 9y ago

You could easily tax robot labor to ensure it wasn't competitive with cheap labour

randomdata 9y ago
It is an interesting thought. How would the tax be implemented? The automated dishwasher in my kitchen relieves human dishwashing services to the tune of an hour or two per week. Minimum wage where I live is $14/hr. That is, on the low end, a little over $700 per year. Would I be on the hook for the $700 each year, minus the current operating costs of the dishwasher, in order to have it operational in my home? And should the taxed value be a straight up calculation like that? Humans are quirky and unreliable, and I may not be comfortable with having a stranger in my house to clean up after me. As such, I may be willing to pay quite a bit more to have the reliable and comfortable automation over hiring a human. Would the tax need to account for that disparity to allow humans to still have a competitive edge?

tigershark 9y ago

Do you really think that people can survive earning 1/3 of the minimum wage? They will be much better off just becoming beggars.

randyrand 9y ago
Solution: Negative income tax and/or welfare.
randomdata 9y ago
Given the context of this thread, and not an alternative situation that I am sure you can dream up, yes: Mathematically, 1/3 of minimum wage is greater than the only alternative: No wage at all. Considering the scope presented, I am unconvinced that begging will be viable. It's already a struggle today, and would only become more difficult in the the situation presented. I'm not convinced this hypothetical situation presented is realistic to start with, but that is well beyond the topic at hand. The constraints are what they are.

bastawhiz 9y ago

And my point is that what the minimum wage is doesn't matter anyway. You can't lower your minimum wage by law, but you also can't live on that, either. What does it matter if your salary is competitive with that of a machine if you can't afford food, shelter, or any other of life's necessities? Minimum wage is, by all accounts, a success. It prevents employers from creating jobs that prevent a person from ever being successful. And we know that it's good and successful because we have the data to show that it does indeed raise the quality of living to a "barely first world" standard for many people. Seeing this on HN: > not allowing people to have salaries competitively priced vs machines will cause most of the swift pain AI will bring. is startling to me. Who does the OP think this person is that can live on $5/hr or lower? Minimum wage _as it is_ is arguably too low. It's sad that this illusion of "if you lower minimum wage, people will work for the lower wage" seems so pervasive, because it's thrown out as if minimum wage employees are trying to be competitive. If you've eaten twice in the last two days and you're about to lose your car, you'll work for almost anything if it means keeping your head above water for a couple more days. Minimum wage is a solution to a human problem, not a business problem. If a job can't be performed competitively for a survivable salary, employers shouldn't be allowed to say, "well if you don't mind not having heat in your home..." and should instead be forced to use automation. Yeah, it sucks being laid off, but there will always be more minimum wage jobs. If you take away minimum wage, now you're left with even fewer reasonable prospects of a job that pays a survivable wage.

randyrand 9y ago
Simple solution to people dying of hunger, food shelters. There are better alternatives to minimum wage that don't have the same problems with AI. one example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax People think wanting to get rid of minimum wage is to be against helping poor people; it's actually the exact opposite. Being against minimum wage is to be against the problems it brings - not being against the poor.
- sova 9y ago
  Too bad in the United States there is pretty much no chance for a NIT, so minimum wage is the closest we can get.