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It should be pointed out that studies of small increases of minimum wage that show modest harm do not immediately tell us that huge increases of minimum wage wi

It should be pointed out that studies of small increases of minimum wage that show modest harm do not immediately tell us that huge increases of minimum wage will not cause greater harm. Remember that $15/hour is more than the median wage in much of the country.

andy_ppp 9y ago
These jobs that are worth less than $15 per hour are going to be the first to be replaced by machines so whatever happens we need a solution to give people at the bottom high(er) quality lives.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > we need a solution to give people at the bottom high(er) quality lives. Training and safety nets, funded through tax revenues. Keep in mind, the national minimum wage in Australia is currently $18.29. The entire US has been getting a discount on minimum wage labor for decades, and everyone is kicking and screaming now that those workers are having their wages ratcheted up to what they should be making when accounting for inflation [1] [2]. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-abou... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/21/adjusted-for-inflation-the-federal-minimum-wage-is-worth-less-than-50-years-ago.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/21/adjusted-for-inflation-the-f...
  - comstar 9y ago
    Not to discredit anything you've said, as on the whole I agree with you. But movie tickets are nearly twice as expensive in Australia. [0] [1] And a popular videogame can be wildly more expensive. MLB The Show 2018 for instance is $60 in the US and $100 in AU. These prices are outside that which is explained by the current exchange rate. Yes, you are being paid more. The price of living is also drastically higher there. I think there are better case-studies than Australia. [0] https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/industry-trends/box-office/ticket-prices https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/indus... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/187091/average-ticket-price-at-north-american-movie-theaters-since-2001/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187091/average-ticket-pr...
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      It should be noted that Australia has a healthcare system substantially more equitable than the US, making the price of discretionary goods and services less of an issue. Real estate, education, and healthcare inflation is a thing (despite the price of TVs and tech coming down year after year) in the US (although I am aware of the steep cost of real estate in AU and NZ due to foreign buyers). "Australia has a one of the strongest economies in the developed world. It survived the recent recession unscathed and hasn’t had a real recession in 20 years. And as Australian academics have noted, "Australia and New Zealand, with among the highest minimum wages in the world, have both low levels of unemployment and significantly lower levels of low paid employees. Bankruptcies due to medical costs, which accounted for 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies before the Affordable Care Act, are completely unknown there." https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/laura-chapin/2014/12/09/australia-bests-america-when-it-comes-to-minimum-wage-and-paid-leave https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/laura-chapin/2014/12/09...
    - orbitur 9y ago
      > And a popular videogame can be wildly more expensive. MLB The Show 2018 for instance is $60 in the US and $100 in AU That's actually easily explained by manufacturers tying their product to the US dollar. We're getting fucked by this in Canada, too. My favorite is when Apple laptops fluctuate by $200CAD in either direction while my salary stays the same. Just look at a chart of your dollar against the USD. Movies are more local in a sense.
  - ChrisLomont 9y ago
    Cost of living in AUS is decently higher than the US, and they have more exemption categories from minimum wage than the US. Equivalently to your argument of picking the highest value you can find and claiming others getting a discount, maybe Australia is overpaying for labor, and has been getting less as a result.
- matchagaucho 9y ago
  It'll always be cheaper to pay minimum wage to mop floors vs a $250,000+ "AI Mopping Machine" that requires a $55hr Tech to maintain.
  - occamrazor 9y ago
    True, until the AI mopping machine is 500$ and it us cheaper to throw it away and replace it when breaks.
    - d0lph 9y ago
      It's like every time something new is created, everyone gasps at how expensive it is. Surprise, new technology costs more. I bet cars were prohibitively expensive when the first came out, but now you can get a used one for very cheap.
  - sigstoat 9y ago
    http://store.irobot.com/default/braava-floor-mopping-irobot-braava-floor-mopping/B380020.html http://store.irobot.com/default/braava-floor-mopping-irobot-... also janitors with large areas to clean have been operating mopping machines for 30+ years.
- megaman22 9y ago
  I would predict that there is a lot of work that would otherwise be done, if minimum wage was lower, that simply will not be done at all. Or it'll be done under the table.
  - gowld 9y ago
    That's probably true; downvotes are inappropriate. On the other hand, there is also a lot of work that would be done if the economy gets more aggregate demand from low-wage workers.
- trophycase 9y ago
  China has people sweeping the streets. Considering how dirty some cities are and how much trash can be found everywhere this isn't a totally unreasonable idea
- gowld 9y ago
  That's not obviously true, and not theoretically well justified. It depends on total workforce size and difficulty of optimizing. Wholly eliminating a $15/hr job is just about as valuable as eliminating 30% of the hours needed at a $100/hr job.
  - andy_ppp 9y ago
    I don't understand this and your maths is wrong - it would be 15%? But also the $100 per hour job will just get more complex in a different way and will still take the same hours per day, at possibly some higher efficiency of output. It's like saying because React has made people more efficient at building bug free user interfaces that we can all relax in our jobs as there is no IE6 to support. Instead we all know that the UI has just got more complex, interactive and shiny.
- andrewla 9y ago
  I think this might be a misplaced assumption. Historically I think it has turned out that machines/computers are really good at jobs that people think are hard, but really bad at jobs that people think are easy. Machines are great at doing precision machining, which is hard for humans. But they're terrible at walking, which most people can do without difficulty.
  - d0lph 9y ago
    Right, but surely you don't believe that robotics is stuck where it is, we haven't quite figured out everything, but it's still a new field.
    - andrewla 9y ago
      Far from it, but this is in response to a comment which explicitly said "These jobs that are worth less than $15 per hour are going to be the first to be replaced by machines". I don't think they'll necessarily be the first, and in some cases will come well after much more highly compensated positions have all but disappeared. For example, waiting tables is a classic minimum wage job (in fact, in most states in the US, the minimum wage for waiters is actually less than the standard minimum wage because tip income is assumed to make up the difference), and I'm not seeing waiters being replaced in any significant capacity by robots in the near future. And on the other hand, a difficult job like being a machinist is becoming increasingly obsolete. A master machinist will always be able to find high-paying work, but the market for apprentice or journeyman machinists is drying up very rapidly, because a single master machinist can set the template for a hundred CNC mills and lathes, to the point where the pipeline for master machinists is on life support.
  - andy_ppp 9y ago
    Hmmmm: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-backflipping-robot-atlas-boston-dynamics-artificial-intelligence-warnings-a8077981.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
- vkou 9y ago
  Why? It makes more sense to automate a $40/hour worker, then a $8/hour one. It's why law offices still have janitors, but have largely replaced junior lawyers combing through the legal library with computers.
drabiega 9y ago
I'm largely in favor of a $15 minimum wage, but I agree that if we were going to do this on a national level as opposed to local it would be prudent to phase it in over time so that there is time for pulling back if trouble beings to emerge.
- dnautics 9y ago
  How do you decide what the appropriate level is, gut feeling? I'm afraid that debates over what the number should be obscures debate over the harder question of what is causing the minimum wage to have to keep increasing. The question we should be asking is why are we devaluing the completed labor of the lowest wage classes?
  - otakucode 9y ago
    We 'must' decouple compensation from the actual value being created by workers because workers are far too productive with modern technology. If compensation was related in any way, even a very small way, to value of the work being done, wages would raise so fast that there would be enough jobs for everyone, people would work less and all those promises of the wonderful future technology would bring would actually happen. And that is unconscionable.
  - occamrazor 9y ago
    The idea is to progressively increase minimum wage, until it starts to affect unemployment rate. After that point, it may be a better policy to increase fiscal redistribution, through welfare, basic income, etc.
  - drabiega 9y ago
    What the appropriate value for minimum wage is largely a social question not an economic one. I would stipulate, however, that whatever you think that value is it should probably be a real value, not nominal. The real value of our minimum wage has gone up here and there but it took a huge hit in the 80s and hasn't ever been adjusted back up to what it was before then.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
adventured 9y ago
The overall median wage is misleading. The median full-time wage is $50,000 per year. That's closer to $25 per hour. If you include an 18 or 70 year old working a part-time job, you'll dramatically reduce that median income and present a false picture of true labor earning potential.
- readams 9y ago
  You've confused mean and median there, but the point I was making is that a $15 minimum in Santa Clara county, with a median wage of $29.20 will have a far different impact than in Fresno with a median wage of $16.10. And that's just in California. This about the impact of a minimum that affects nearly HALF of all workers in an area. It's absurd to think that this will not cause serious disemployment effects. (Nationally, median hourly wage is $18.12)

andy_ppp 9y ago

These jobs that are worth less than $15 per hour are going to be the first to be replaced by machines so whatever happens we need a solution to give people at the bottom high(er) quality lives.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
> we need a solution to give people at the bottom high(er) quality lives. Training and safety nets, funded through tax revenues. Keep in mind, the national minimum wage in Australia is currently $18.29. The entire US has been getting a discount on minimum wage labor for decades, and everyone is kicking and screaming now that those workers are having their wages ratcheted up to what they should be making when accounting for inflation [1] [2]. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-abou... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/21/adjusted-for-inflation-the-federal-minimum-wage-is-worth-less-than-50-years-ago.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/21/adjusted-for-inflation-the-f...
- comstar 9y ago
  Not to discredit anything you've said, as on the whole I agree with you. But movie tickets are nearly twice as expensive in Australia. [0] [1] And a popular videogame can be wildly more expensive. MLB The Show 2018 for instance is $60 in the US and $100 in AU. These prices are outside that which is explained by the current exchange rate. Yes, you are being paid more. The price of living is also drastically higher there. I think there are better case-studies than Australia. [0] https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/industry-trends/box-office/ticket-prices https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/indus... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/187091/average-ticket-price-at-north-american-movie-theaters-since-2001/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187091/average-ticket-pr...
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    It should be noted that Australia has a healthcare system substantially more equitable than the US, making the price of discretionary goods and services less of an issue. Real estate, education, and healthcare inflation is a thing (despite the price of TVs and tech coming down year after year) in the US (although I am aware of the steep cost of real estate in AU and NZ due to foreign buyers). "Australia has a one of the strongest economies in the developed world. It survived the recent recession unscathed and hasn’t had a real recession in 20 years. And as Australian academics have noted, "Australia and New Zealand, with among the highest minimum wages in the world, have both low levels of unemployment and significantly lower levels of low paid employees. Bankruptcies due to medical costs, which accounted for 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies before the Affordable Care Act, are completely unknown there." https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/laura-chapin/2014/12/09/australia-bests-america-when-it-comes-to-minimum-wage-and-paid-leave https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/laura-chapin/2014/12/09...
  - orbitur 9y ago
    > And a popular videogame can be wildly more expensive. MLB The Show 2018 for instance is $60 in the US and $100 in AU That's actually easily explained by manufacturers tying their product to the US dollar. We're getting fucked by this in Canada, too. My favorite is when Apple laptops fluctuate by $200CAD in either direction while my salary stays the same. Just look at a chart of your dollar against the USD. Movies are more local in a sense.
- ChrisLomont 9y ago
  Cost of living in AUS is decently higher than the US, and they have more exemption categories from minimum wage than the US. Equivalently to your argument of picking the highest value you can find and claiming others getting a discount, maybe Australia is overpaying for labor, and has been getting less as a result.
matchagaucho 9y ago
It'll always be cheaper to pay minimum wage to mop floors vs a $250,000+ "AI Mopping Machine" that requires a $55hr Tech to maintain.
- occamrazor 9y ago
  True, until the AI mopping machine is 500$ and it us cheaper to throw it away and replace it when breaks.
  - d0lph 9y ago
    It's like every time something new is created, everyone gasps at how expensive it is. Surprise, new technology costs more. I bet cars were prohibitively expensive when the first came out, but now you can get a used one for very cheap.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  http://store.irobot.com/default/braava-floor-mopping-irobot-braava-floor-mopping/B380020.html http://store.irobot.com/default/braava-floor-mopping-irobot-... also janitors with large areas to clean have been operating mopping machines for 30+ years.
megaman22 9y ago
I would predict that there is a lot of work that would otherwise be done, if minimum wage was lower, that simply will not be done at all. Or it'll be done under the table.
- gowld 9y ago
  That's probably true; downvotes are inappropriate. On the other hand, there is also a lot of work that would be done if the economy gets more aggregate demand from low-wage workers.
trophycase 9y ago
China has people sweeping the streets. Considering how dirty some cities are and how much trash can be found everywhere this isn't a totally unreasonable idea
gowld 9y ago
That's not obviously true, and not theoretically well justified. It depends on total workforce size and difficulty of optimizing. Wholly eliminating a $15/hr job is just about as valuable as eliminating 30% of the hours needed at a $100/hr job.
- andy_ppp 9y ago
  I don't understand this and your maths is wrong - it would be 15%? But also the $100 per hour job will just get more complex in a different way and will still take the same hours per day, at possibly some higher efficiency of output. It's like saying because React has made people more efficient at building bug free user interfaces that we can all relax in our jobs as there is no IE6 to support. Instead we all know that the UI has just got more complex, interactive and shiny.
andrewla 9y ago
I think this might be a misplaced assumption. Historically I think it has turned out that machines/computers are really good at jobs that people think are hard, but really bad at jobs that people think are easy. Machines are great at doing precision machining, which is hard for humans. But they're terrible at walking, which most people can do without difficulty.
- d0lph 9y ago
  Right, but surely you don't believe that robotics is stuck where it is, we haven't quite figured out everything, but it's still a new field.
  - andrewla 9y ago
    Far from it, but this is in response to a comment which explicitly said "These jobs that are worth less than $15 per hour are going to be the first to be replaced by machines". I don't think they'll necessarily be the first, and in some cases will come well after much more highly compensated positions have all but disappeared. For example, waiting tables is a classic minimum wage job (in fact, in most states in the US, the minimum wage for waiters is actually less than the standard minimum wage because tip income is assumed to make up the difference), and I'm not seeing waiters being replaced in any significant capacity by robots in the near future. And on the other hand, a difficult job like being a machinist is becoming increasingly obsolete. A master machinist will always be able to find high-paying work, but the market for apprentice or journeyman machinists is drying up very rapidly, because a single master machinist can set the template for a hundred CNC mills and lathes, to the point where the pipeline for master machinists is on life support.
- andy_ppp 9y ago
  Hmmmm: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-backflipping-robot-atlas-boston-dynamics-artificial-intelligence-warnings-a8077981.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
vkou 9y ago
Why? It makes more sense to automate a $40/hour worker, then a $8/hour one. It's why law offices still have janitors, but have largely replaced junior lawyers combing through the legal library with computers.

drabiega 9y ago

I'm largely in favor of a $15 minimum wage, but I agree that if we were going to do this on a national level as opposed to local it would be prudent to phase it in over time so that there is time for pulling back if trouble beings to emerge.

dnautics 9y ago
How do you decide what the appropriate level is, gut feeling? I'm afraid that debates over what the number should be obscures debate over the harder question of what is causing the minimum wage to have to keep increasing. The question we should be asking is why are we devaluing the completed labor of the lowest wage classes?
- otakucode 9y ago
  We 'must' decouple compensation from the actual value being created by workers because workers are far too productive with modern technology. If compensation was related in any way, even a very small way, to value of the work being done, wages would raise so fast that there would be enough jobs for everyone, people would work less and all those promises of the wonderful future technology would bring would actually happen. And that is unconscionable.
- occamrazor 9y ago
  The idea is to progressively increase minimum wage, until it starts to affect unemployment rate. After that point, it may be a better policy to increase fiscal redistribution, through welfare, basic income, etc.
- drabiega 9y ago
  What the appropriate value for minimum wage is largely a social question not an economic one. I would stipulate, however, that whatever you think that value is it should probably be a real value, not nominal. The real value of our minimum wage has gone up here and there but it took a huge hit in the 80s and hasn't ever been adjusted back up to what it was before then.
- crdoconnor 9y ago

adventured 9y ago

The overall median wage is misleading. The median full-time wage is $50,000 per year. That's closer to $25 per hour. If you include an 18 or 70 year old working a part-time job, you'll dramatically reduce that median income and present a false picture of true labor earning potential.

readams 9y ago
You've confused mean and median there, but the point I was making is that a $15 minimum in Santa Clara county, with a median wage of $29.20 will have a far different impact than in Fresno with a median wage of $16.10. And that's just in California. This about the impact of a minimum that affects nearly HALF of all workers in an area. It's absurd to think that this will not cause serious disemployment effects. (Nationally, median hourly wage is $18.12)