3 ms·

> Many of the jobs in that category are payed little because it's not really economical to pay more. Wages are constrained by productivity and what customers ar

by darawk 8y ago

> Many of the jobs in that category are payed little because it's not really economical to pay more. Wages are constrained by productivity and what customers are willing to pay What do you mean by that? > E.g. if you have to pay people a lot to wash cars then those will simply disappear. What will disappear? The cars? Cleanliness? What I think you mean is that people will demand fewer car washes, which is true. But so what?

mifreewil 8y ago
People will demand fewer car washes or they will start to use fully automated car washes that don’t require people, or they will wash their own car. High labor costs makes automation that may have been thought of as too expensive or complicated before to seem more viable.
- ollie87 8y ago
  Automated car washes scratch the crap out of your car, so I doubt it. They're more likely to just do it themselves.
chrismeller 8y ago
I think you're being a little too pedantic, the meaning seemed pretty clear to me... 1) In some sectors and job roles pay is what it is because there are other hard costs involved, the quantity of labor required is prohibitively high, and/or customers are not willing to pay $75 for <insert name of item or service>. Customers are willing to pay $25 for <insert name of item or service>, so you take 25 and subtract all the other costs involved as well as a profit margin to make it worth your while, do some multiplication (or division, as appropriate) to figure out how many of <insert name of item or service> each person can complete in a given hour, and end up being able to pay each person working on <insert name of item or service> $10 per hour. Whether or not someone is willing to toil away 8 hours a day on <insert name of item or service> for $10 per hour... well, that's what we're talking about. 2) What will disappear? The manual carwashes, obviously. Whether they get replaced by automatic ones (which eliminates the prohibitively high labor cost at a marginal increase in hard costs that decreases over time) or simply by people washing their cars themselves (which eliminates all of the above) doesn't really matter, as we're talking about labor issues and in either scenario the guy washing the car is out of his job. So what? So nothing, except the whole topic we're discussing.

by darawk 8y ago

mifreewil 8y ago

People will demand fewer car washes or they will start to use fully automated car washes that don’t require people, or they will wash their own car. High labor costs makes automation that may have been thought of as too expensive or complicated before to seem more viable.

ollie87 8y ago
Automated car washes scratch the crap out of your car, so I doubt it. They're more likely to just do it themselves.

chrismeller 8y ago

I think you're being a little too pedantic, the meaning seemed pretty clear to me... 1) In some sectors and job roles pay is what it is because there are other hard costs involved, the quantity of labor required is prohibitively high, and/or customers are not willing to pay $75 for <insert name of item or service>. Customers are willing to pay $25 for <insert name of item or service>, so you take 25 and subtract all the other costs involved as well as a profit margin to make it worth your while, do some multiplication (or division, as appropriate) to figure out how many of <insert name of item or service> each person can complete in a given hour, and end up being able to pay each person working on <insert name of item or service> $10 per hour. Whether or not someone is willing to toil away 8 hours a day on <insert name of item or service> for $10 per hour... well, that's what we're talking about. 2) What will disappear? The manual carwashes, obviously. Whether they get replaced by automatic ones (which eliminates the prohibitively high labor cost at a marginal increase in hard costs that decreases over time) or simply by people washing their cars themselves (which eliminates all of the above) doesn't really matter, as we're talking about labor issues and in either scenario the guy washing the car is out of his job. So what? So nothing, except the whole topic we're discussing.