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$15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. The other effect of

$15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgrounds, and more. Meaning more reliable candidates will come back in and those who dismissed fast food, warehouse, and retail, jobs as not paying enough will now accept those jobs. You will get some retirees, stay at homes, college kids, and even some recent graduates, coming in.

rc_mob 8y ago
This sounds like good problem to have. Companies can pick from a larger pool and find better workers.
- kodablah 8y ago
  Well, I guess that's one way to put a positive spin on unemployment.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    It's putting a positive spin on paying people a living wage. Unemployment goes up, support the unemployed with safety nets and raising taxes. The problem is not the cost; the money exists in the economic system, clearly. It's simply an allocation issue. But pessimists can keep carrying on with "the sky is falling" while progressive economic policies continue to march forward, bringing the US to parity with the living standards of other first world countries.
    - refurb 8y ago
      while progressive economic policies continue to march forward March forward? If anything there has been a dismantling of "progressive" economic policies over the last few decades. To the benefit of the economy.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        You must admit, this is a significant win for Sanders (Disney first, now Amazon). I agree with you that progressive policies have been dismantled over the last few decades, but would argue that the electorate is engaged enough now to claw back those losses (majority of Americans support universal healthcare now, for example). My point was this is not the last win for Sanders and those who align with his progressive policies. Efforts will continue to drive up the minimum wage in all 50 states.
    - rc_bhg 8y ago
      > The problem is not the cost; the money exists in the economic system, clearly. It's simply an allocation issue Yeah I really agree with this statement a lot
- jmngomes 8y ago
  The problem is that "better workers" is usually defined by most companies as "smallest possible salary".
  - nova22033 8y ago
    Isn't that how consumers behave? A "good deal" is usually finding the product at the lowest cost possible..which is usually made possible by paying people the "smallest possible salary" the market can bear. Consumers like you and I are responsible for this.
    - jmngomes 8y ago
      Well, it seems like you are conflating two very different issues, but anyway, that's not how I behave, personally. I buy more expensive products less often, provided that those are produced in a humane way (e.g. no sweat shops or animal cruelty involved). A "better product", in my view, is radically different from a "cheaper/cheapest product". The same goes for professionals.
jacquesm 8y ago
> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. Or maybe it will just force employers to pay better wages to those they employ already. $7.50 / hour is what they pay kids here to stock grocery chains.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bufferoverflow 8y ago
  Or maybe it will increase unemployment and will increase the inflation. Why stop at $15? Let's make it $50/hr, make everyone "rich".
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    There is a difference between everybody being 'rich' and simply paying a living wage. Note how Ford got as big as it was in part not just because he made a damn good automobile but because he paid his employees a wage large enough that they could afford a car. A couple of billionaires less and a higher standard of living for the masses is a good thing.
    - bufferoverflow 8y ago
      Define "living wage". Please be specific, no vague dancing around.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        Living wage: a wage sufficiently high that after paying taxes there is still enough left over for small family or individual to live off when all normal expenses are accounted for based on a workweek no longer than 40 hours in total. That works out to $2400 gross per month (so before taxes) which if you can't recoup it from the work input says more about the company you are working for and their inability to capture value. Keep in mind that raising the wage across the bar will increase inflation but will level the wage disparity between 'smart' work and 'dumb' work.
lgeorget 8y ago
> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. On the other hand, isn't it illogical in a free market economy that wages do not increase at a rate at least equal to the inflation? How do you keep the economy running if people have less and less purchase power as time goes by? (These are genuine questions, I'm not an economist at all.)
- esrauch 8y ago
  I think the answer is that full employment is increasingly not necessary to keep the economy running in this increasingly automated economy.
  - lgeorget 8y ago
    But how come low wages do not impact negatively the domestic consumption, which is an important part of the GDP?
    - snuxoll 8y ago
      Have you not seen the explosion of consumer debt over the past decades? Buying power is now tied to how much a bank is willing to lend you, not how much you have in your savings accounts. Synchrony, who Amazon partners with to offer their store card, will give basically anybody with a pulse a $500 credit line and ramp them up to thousands fairly quickly as long as they don't default. I don't even want to get into the real debt traps targeted at the least fortunate among us like payday/title loans, buy-here-pay-here car dealerships, etc.
    - esrauch 8y ago
      With increased income disparity, the top can make up for the bottom on domestic consumption metrics.
- justinhj 8y ago
  Some of the answers are that technology makes things cheaper, people feel wealth from house prices rising faster than wages, easy access to cheap credit gives another more temporary feeling of wealth
wlll 8y ago
> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. I don't believe that. People aren't going to dig the ditches and flip the burgers themselves just because it costs them a few $ per hour more now. These people aren't taking part in "charity" jobs that will dissapear if the wages go up, they're still going to stack shelves, they're just going to do it for more $. Additionally, paying people an actual livable wage I'd suggest makes it more likely they will be reliable. When you're not juggling poverty related health problems with more jobs than it's sensible to have I'd suggest you will perform better at whatever job you do. > The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgrounds, and more. I'm not sure I follow you there. It seems that you're saying that there's a band of workers that are unreliable (credit/crimial issues) that are just waiting for wages to go up before they jump into the labor pool, but that the lower paid workers don't have these problems? > Meaning more reliable candidates will come back in and those who dismissed fast food, warehouse, and retail, jobs as not paying enough will now accept those jobs. You will get some retirees, stay at homes, college kids, and even some recent graduates, coming in. This seems to contradict what you said in the last paragraph so I might have misunderstood something somewhere. Regardless, I doubt there's a pool of workers who are well enough off that they don't have to currently work who on discovering that the lowest paid jobs in the country now pay a bit more will suddenly want to start work.
theandrewbailey 8y ago
A national $15/hour minimum wage isn't going to fly in places like small town Kentucky or West Virginia. Those places don't have good jobs anymore, and the only businesses left are a drive-thru and a Dollar General. They can barely afford a dozen or so people working at minimum wage now, and they can't run a place with half the employees. Their customers can barely afford to shop there and can't take paying more to cover it. The only reasonable option in this scenario is to close.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Dollar General and other national chain drive thru eateries are substantially profitable (profits in the billions of dollars, DG margins are ~%30). The odds of Dollar General, McDonalds, and company and closing up in rural America is so close to zero, for our purposes we can round down to zero. They might raise prices a bit, and be slightly less profitable to shareholders, but they won't close up shop.
  - theandrewbailey 8y ago
    I was thinking more along the lines of a local mom and pop drive thru where people get their daily 6 pack and lottery ticket than a McDonalds.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Then mom and pop will need to work their store, instead of underpaying employees.
      - Alupis 8y ago
        Does this not mean those employees are out of work? Benefit some lucky workers with increased wages, while driving others out of work entirely? We're talking about doubling the national minimum wage. That's a hefty increase, especially for areas where cost of living is quite a bit different than say, California.
hindsightRegret 8y ago
I don't see what's bad about that? You are bringing in reliable candidates into the workforce that previously did not participate. Some probably sucked off of unemployment. So, the net result is a higher-skilled workforce that gets paid a livable wage. Arguing that those in their current min wage jobs that are under-performing will become unemployed due to higher bar and more candidates coming in - all the better. The design of our economy should not be to minimize unemployment (which by the way is, as you touched on, flawed due to not accounting for disinterested/discouraged workers). It should be to draw out as many competent workers as possible and ensure that only the truly needy (mentally disabled, psychologically unstable, etc) apply for disability. The unemployed should have an incentive for trying to better their skills in order to get off of unemployment. If the incentive is a $7.25/hr shithole Amazon warehouse position, then that does not provide a viable motivator.
mrnobody_67 8y ago
... and it increases the ROI of investing in automation and robots.

rc_mob 8y ago

This sounds like good problem to have. Companies can pick from a larger pool and find better workers.

kodablah 8y ago
Well, I guess that's one way to put a positive spin on unemployment.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  It's putting a positive spin on paying people a living wage. Unemployment goes up, support the unemployed with safety nets and raising taxes. The problem is not the cost; the money exists in the economic system, clearly. It's simply an allocation issue. But pessimists can keep carrying on with "the sky is falling" while progressive economic policies continue to march forward, bringing the US to parity with the living standards of other first world countries.
  - refurb 8y ago
    while progressive economic policies continue to march forward March forward? If anything there has been a dismantling of "progressive" economic policies over the last few decades. To the benefit of the economy.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      You must admit, this is a significant win for Sanders (Disney first, now Amazon). I agree with you that progressive policies have been dismantled over the last few decades, but would argue that the electorate is engaged enough now to claw back those losses (majority of Americans support universal healthcare now, for example). My point was this is not the last win for Sanders and those who align with his progressive policies. Efforts will continue to drive up the minimum wage in all 50 states.
  - rc_bhg 8y ago
    > The problem is not the cost; the money exists in the economic system, clearly. It's simply an allocation issue Yeah I really agree with this statement a lot
jmngomes 8y ago
The problem is that "better workers" is usually defined by most companies as "smallest possible salary".
- nova22033 8y ago
  Isn't that how consumers behave? A "good deal" is usually finding the product at the lowest cost possible..which is usually made possible by paying people the "smallest possible salary" the market can bear. Consumers like you and I are responsible for this.
  - jmngomes 8y ago
    Well, it seems like you are conflating two very different issues, but anyway, that's not how I behave, personally. I buy more expensive products less often, provided that those are produced in a humane way (e.g. no sweat shops or animal cruelty involved). A "better product", in my view, is radically different from a "cheaper/cheapest product". The same goes for professionals.

jacquesm 8y ago

> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. Or maybe it will just force employers to pay better wages to those they employ already. $7.50 / hour is what they pay kids here to stock grocery chains.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bufferoverflow 8y ago
Or maybe it will increase unemployment and will increase the inflation. Why stop at $15? Let's make it $50/hr, make everyone "rich".
- jacquesm 8y ago
  There is a difference between everybody being 'rich' and simply paying a living wage. Note how Ford got as big as it was in part not just because he made a damn good automobile but because he paid his employees a wage large enough that they could afford a car. A couple of billionaires less and a higher standard of living for the masses is a good thing.
  - bufferoverflow 8y ago
    Define "living wage". Please be specific, no vague dancing around.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Living wage: a wage sufficiently high that after paying taxes there is still enough left over for small family or individual to live off when all normal expenses are accounted for based on a workweek no longer than 40 hours in total. That works out to $2400 gross per month (so before taxes) which if you can't recoup it from the work input says more about the company you are working for and their inability to capture value. Keep in mind that raising the wage across the bar will increase inflation but will level the wage disparity between 'smart' work and 'dumb' work.

lgeorget 8y ago

> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. On the other hand, isn't it illogical in a free market economy that wages do not increase at a rate at least equal to the inflation? How do you keep the economy running if people have less and less purchase power as time goes by? (These are genuine questions, I'm not an economist at all.)

esrauch 8y ago
I think the answer is that full employment is increasingly not necessary to keep the economy running in this increasingly automated economy.
- lgeorget 8y ago
  But how come low wages do not impact negatively the domestic consumption, which is an important part of the GDP?
  - snuxoll 8y ago
    Have you not seen the explosion of consumer debt over the past decades? Buying power is now tied to how much a bank is willing to lend you, not how much you have in your savings accounts. Synchrony, who Amazon partners with to offer their store card, will give basically anybody with a pulse a $500 credit line and ramp them up to thousands fairly quickly as long as they don't default. I don't even want to get into the real debt traps targeted at the least fortunate among us like payday/title loans, buy-here-pay-here car dealerships, etc.
  - esrauch 8y ago
    With increased income disparity, the top can make up for the bottom on domestic consumption metrics.
justinhj 8y ago
Some of the answers are that technology makes things cheaper, people feel wealth from house prices rising faster than wages, easy access to cheap credit gives another more temporary feeling of wealth

wlll 8y ago

> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. I don't believe that. People aren't going to dig the ditches and flip the burgers themselves just because it costs them a few $ per hour more now. These people aren't taking part in "charity" jobs that will dissapear if the wages go up, they're still going to stack shelves, they're just going to do it for more $. Additionally, paying people an actual livable wage I'd suggest makes it more likely they will be reliable. When you're not juggling poverty related health problems with more jobs than it's sensible to have I'd suggest you will perform better at whatever job you do. > The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgrounds, and more. I'm not sure I follow you there. It seems that you're saying that there's a band of workers that are unreliable (credit/crimial issues) that are just waiting for wages to go up before they jump into the labor pool, but that the lower paid workers don't have these problems? > Meaning more reliable candidates will come back in and those who dismissed fast food, warehouse, and retail, jobs as not paying enough will now accept those jobs. You will get some retirees, stay at homes, college kids, and even some recent graduates, coming in. This seems to contradict what you said in the last paragraph so I might have misunderstood something somewhere. Regardless, I doubt there's a pool of workers who are well enough off that they don't have to currently work who on discovering that the lowest paid jobs in the country now pay a bit more will suddenly want to start work.

theandrewbailey 8y ago

A national $15/hour minimum wage isn't going to fly in places like small town Kentucky or West Virginia. Those places don't have good jobs anymore, and the only businesses left are a drive-thru and a Dollar General. They can barely afford a dozen or so people working at minimum wage now, and they can't run a place with half the employees. Their customers can barely afford to shop there and can't take paying more to cover it. The only reasonable option in this scenario is to close.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Dollar General and other national chain drive thru eateries are substantially profitable (profits in the billions of dollars, DG margins are ~%30). The odds of Dollar General, McDonalds, and company and closing up in rural America is so close to zero, for our purposes we can round down to zero. They might raise prices a bit, and be slightly less profitable to shareholders, but they won't close up shop.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  I was thinking more along the lines of a local mom and pop drive thru where people get their daily 6 pack and lottery ticket than a McDonalds.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Then mom and pop will need to work their store, instead of underpaying employees.
    - Alupis 8y ago
      Does this not mean those employees are out of work? Benefit some lucky workers with increased wages, while driving others out of work entirely? We're talking about doubling the national minimum wage. That's a hefty increase, especially for areas where cost of living is quite a bit different than say, California.

hindsightRegret 8y ago

I don't see what's bad about that? You are bringing in reliable candidates into the workforce that previously did not participate. Some probably sucked off of unemployment. So, the net result is a higher-skilled workforce that gets paid a livable wage. Arguing that those in their current min wage jobs that are under-performing will become unemployed due to higher bar and more candidates coming in - all the better. The design of our economy should not be to minimize unemployment (which by the way is, as you touched on, flawed due to not accounting for disinterested/discouraged workers). It should be to draw out as many competent workers as possible and ensure that only the truly needy (mentally disabled, psychologically unstable, etc) apply for disability. The unemployed should have an incentive for trying to better their skills in order to get off of unemployment. If the incentive is a $7.25/hr shithole Amazon warehouse position, then that does not provide a viable motivator.

mrnobody_67 8y ago

... and it increases the ROI of investing in automation and robots.