6 ms·

Did we lose occupations to this effect and if yes, which? Like, work we would still like to pay someone for, but now the minimum wages are too high.

by k__ 6y ago

ghaff 6y ago
For the middle-ish class in the US, tons of low-skill service jobs. If you could pay someone $4/hour (or whatever) a lot of people would have lawns mowed, brush cleared, laundry done, maybe meals cooked (less low skill), errands run, etc. Contrast with the level of personal service in, say, SE Asia in many cases. The bar is pretty high to hire someone for a lot of stuff you can easily do but don't really want to, until you're very high income. ADDED: Now some of this has been mitigated by gig economy and other shared resource types of jobs that pay (theoretically) ~ minimum wage or better but are more efficient than a driver waiting around to take you someplace. Or getting meals delivered rather than a personal chef. And laundry with modern appliances is much less of a big deal than it was previously. But the basic point still applies.
- rasz 6y ago
  so what you are saying you no longer can hire a slave man servant? any other examples?
  - ravi-delia 6y ago
    More like you can't be employed as a slave man servent...that is paid. Money. So not a slave.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      Slaves are paid too, mostly in kind but often in money. That's not what makes them slaves.
      - simonh 6y ago
        The kind of work they are doing isn’t what makes them slaves either.
        thaumasiotes 6y ago
        I'm aware of that.
- dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
  How would someone paid $4/hour be expected to sustain themselves though? Or is the expectation that they would a higher paid job and do that on the side? But then why do they need the $4 job?
  - omginternets 6y ago
    The point is that you can’t pay $4, for the very reasons you mention.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      To be clear, I'm not advocating for $4/hr jobs. The parent asked what jobs don't exist because there generally aren't $4/hr jobs for valid reasons. [And yes, low income jobs may make sense for kids doing babysitting, etc.] By and large you need a pretty large disparity between middle income jobs and unskilled but reliable labor for a lot of the jobs to exist except for truly wealthy individuals.
      - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        The point is $4/hour isn’t sustainable in part due to more-productive people bidding up the cost of living and in part due to almost everyone having better options for employment (or unemployment).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jlawson 6y ago
    Lots of people can do useful work without being sole breadwinners, and can use money even in small amounts. Homemakers doing part time work, kids or young people making money (and getting experience) after school, retirees, disabled people on benefits (who may be able to work in limited capacity), travelers/itinerants, or people taking extra quick work on the side like you said.
  - jldugger 6y ago
- tgb 6y ago
  If anything, you seem to be saying the opposite of the Baumol effect! From Wikipedia: > The rise of wages in jobs without productivity gains derives from the requirement to compete for employees with jobs that have experienced gains and so can naturally pay higher salaries, just as classical economics predicts. You claim that those low-efficiency jobs would still have workers if we were allowed to pay them a low enough price. Baumol effect says they'd choose to work higher-efficiency jobs until you paid them the same wage as a high-efficiency job worker.
  - mrosett 6y ago
    > You claim that those low-efficiency jobs would still have workers if we were allowed to pay them a low enough price. I think you misunderstood "If you could pay someone $4/hour..." It's not a statement about minimum wage or anything like that; GP isn't claiming that there's a potential market of $4/hr labor that would exist without regulation. Instead I interpreted the sentence as "Consumers value certain tasks at e.g. $4/hr but due to the Baumol effect nobody is willing to work for that amount."
    - TomSwirly 6y ago
      > $4/hr but due to the Baumol effect nobody is willing to work for that amount. No, it is NOT the Baumol effect that causes that. It's due to the fact that you cannot afford to live on $4/hr.
      - Smaug123 6y ago
        But why can you not afford to live on $4/hr? Or, why is everything so much more expensive than it used to be? These questions may have answers or they may have broken assumptions, but you did not even attempt to address the point at issue.
    - tgb 6y ago
      It's a rather weird way of saying that, but I suppose that must be what they meant.
- Retric 6y ago
  Data really doesn’t back that up. Adjusted for inflation it’s cheaper to get lawn care done today than 40 years ago. Minimum wage was actually higher back then and automation was worse. Landscaping is extremely common with industry revenue hitting $51,908,304,000 in 2016 or an average of ~400$ per household per year across the US.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    In the case of lawn care specifically, automation that requires some capital beyond what may be worth it for an individual probably helps. I have a lawn service and a small crew shows up every two weeks with various gear and they're out in 20-30 minutes. That said, I'm not sure how common getting a lawn service is among middle to lower-middle class households is. And I'm pretty sure most middle class-ish households don't outsource all yard/garden work generally.
    - nasmorn 6y ago
      For a lot of garden owners the yard work is kinda the point of the garden.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Gardening is something of an exception specifically--although even there, there are landscaping projects that aren't necessarily "gardening." But, while some people do just like an excuse to get of the house and do some outside work, generally people are happy to have their lawns cut, leaved raked, brush cut, trees trimmed, etc.
    - sgerenser 6y ago
      In my part of the US, even in an upper middle class suburb, most of the people in my neighborhood do their own mowing and edging. I hate mowing so I’ve actually priced out lawn services and I just can’t justify it. About $40 per service (for a fairly small yard) at 4-5 times a month adds up.
      - 6y ago
- TomSwirly 6y ago
  > If you could pay someone $4/hour What is wrong with you?
  - Smaug123 6y ago
    > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
- mantap 6y ago
  Also retail businesses in SEA tend to employ more workers than would be considered necessary in the west. e.g. hiring far more shop assistants than they need. If your labour costs are a small fraction of your overall costs then you have an incentive to hire many workers to provide better service in peak times even if most of the time they are doing nothing, or just to make your business look good.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Right. If people are relatively expensive , as with US retail, you use fancy retail scheduling software and you maybe share a maintenance or a bookkeeper with other businesses so they're not sitting around twiddling their thumbs most of the time. Ditto for household helpers. If, on the other hand, relatively unskilled people are cheap relative to your salary or a businesses profits, it's easier for you just to keep them around all the time even if it's not as efficient. As someone else noted, there may also be value in specialization. Rather than have a full-time all-around handyman, it may make more sense to just call a plumber if that handyman isn't that cheap relative to the [plumber anyway.
- red_admiral 6y ago
  If you could work a $4/hour summer job and save up for college that way like you used to, I'm sure people would be queueing up to do it. I know, this only holds for some interpretations of "you" and "used" to, but it wasn't that unheard of a generation or two ago.
  - TuringNYC 6y ago
    Why would they? The 4$ wage wouldn’t even scratch the surface of college costs these days. The cost/wage ration is unreal now. Gone are days where a summer paper route paid for the semester. The more rational thing to do would be to spend the time studying, or enjoy your free time before you lose it for a decade.
mlindner 6y ago
You can go to India and see exactly this. Even many middle income families have cleaning maids, drivers, etc also known as "servants". The job of "servant" no longer exists in the west.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >The job of "servant" no longer exists in the west. It's something of a matter of terminology. That would be seen as a generally inappropriate term in the US. Although people do have au pairs/nannies. And they certainly have plenty of regular service people like lawn services who they share with others. Or personal assistants. But, yes, the relationship is generally different. And there's far less of it.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    A 1hour/week service is not a servant. A full-time person is. and a single servant that enables a second working parent is a rather minor example, showing specialization more than income inequality.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  I don't believe you. Cleaning Maids are just called "Cleaning Services"
  - nwatson 6y ago
    The "Cleaning Services" people in the U.S. and I suspect Europe are either independent contractors or wage workers for an independent contractor. They don't do 8-plus hour shifts in your home, or even live in your own home in "servants' quarters" as is common in places like India, Brazil, etc. In a "servant" relationship involving close physical proximity the servant almost is obliged to care for the emotional well-being of those whom they serve, or to at least feign that care. The contractor on the other hand is doing a job at your home in one of many such places and aren't expected to service the customer's emotional needs except as social nicety, and conceivably are raking in more cash per unit-time worked (for independents especially) than those who hire them. The "Cleaning Services" aren't servants. edit: emotional "connection", relative wages
pratik661 6y ago
Having a full time maid. It was pretty common for middle class households in UK to be able to afford servants. Whole sections of middle class housing from the late 1800s in London have servants quarters. Most middle class families in India/Pak/Bangladsh have servants (even live in). Having productive industries absorbing excess labor means that the average middle class family can no longer afford to have full time maids/servants. This is a good thing...
mensetmanusman 6y ago
In some areas: A 100 years ago Americans had live in servants/slaves in about half of households (like what you see in parts of India, Asia, etc.). As income inequality decreases, there are fewer servants in the home 24/7. Society has a transition as rates of abject poverty decrease. It will be interesting to witness the transition in Asia as they go through this.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Half? Really?
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Some history: https://daily.jstor.org/how-america-tried-and-failed-to-solve-its-servant-problem/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-america-tried-and-failed-to-solv...

Did we lose occupations to this effect and if yes, which? Like, work we would still like to pay someone for, but now the minimum wages are too high.

by k__ 6y ago

Did we lose occupations to this effect and if yes, which? Like, work we would still like to pay someone for, but now the minimum wages are too high.

ghaff 6y ago

For the middle-ish class in the US, tons of low-skill service jobs. If you could pay someone $4/hour (or whatever) a lot of people would have lawns mowed, brush cleared, laundry done, maybe meals cooked (less low skill), errands run, etc. Contrast with the level of personal service in, say, SE Asia in many cases. The bar is pretty high to hire someone for a lot of stuff you can easily do but don't really want to, until you're very high income. ADDED: Now some of this has been mitigated by gig economy and other shared resource types of jobs that pay (theoretically) ~ minimum wage or better but are more efficient than a driver waiting around to take you someplace. Or getting meals delivered rather than a personal chef. And laundry with modern appliances is much less of a big deal than it was previously. But the basic point still applies.

rasz 6y ago
so what you are saying you no longer can hire a slave man servant? any other examples?
- ravi-delia 6y ago
  More like you can't be employed as a slave man servent...that is paid. Money. So not a slave.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Slaves are paid too, mostly in kind but often in money. That's not what makes them slaves.
    - simonh 6y ago
      The kind of work they are doing isn’t what makes them slaves either.
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        I'm aware of that.
dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
How would someone paid $4/hour be expected to sustain themselves though? Or is the expectation that they would a higher paid job and do that on the side? But then why do they need the $4 job?
- omginternets 6y ago
  The point is that you can’t pay $4, for the very reasons you mention.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    To be clear, I'm not advocating for $4/hr jobs. The parent asked what jobs don't exist because there generally aren't $4/hr jobs for valid reasons. [And yes, low income jobs may make sense for kids doing babysitting, etc.] By and large you need a pretty large disparity between middle income jobs and unskilled but reliable labor for a lot of the jobs to exist except for truly wealthy individuals.
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      The point is $4/hour isn’t sustainable in part due to more-productive people bidding up the cost of living and in part due to almost everyone having better options for employment (or unemployment).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jlawson 6y ago
  Lots of people can do useful work without being sole breadwinners, and can use money even in small amounts. Homemakers doing part time work, kids or young people making money (and getting experience) after school, retirees, disabled people on benefits (who may be able to work in limited capacity), travelers/itinerants, or people taking extra quick work on the side like you said.
- jldugger 6y ago
tgb 6y ago
If anything, you seem to be saying the opposite of the Baumol effect! From Wikipedia: > The rise of wages in jobs without productivity gains derives from the requirement to compete for employees with jobs that have experienced gains and so can naturally pay higher salaries, just as classical economics predicts. You claim that those low-efficiency jobs would still have workers if we were allowed to pay them a low enough price. Baumol effect says they'd choose to work higher-efficiency jobs until you paid them the same wage as a high-efficiency job worker.
- mrosett 6y ago
  > You claim that those low-efficiency jobs would still have workers if we were allowed to pay them a low enough price. I think you misunderstood "If you could pay someone $4/hour..." It's not a statement about minimum wage or anything like that; GP isn't claiming that there's a potential market of $4/hr labor that would exist without regulation. Instead I interpreted the sentence as "Consumers value certain tasks at e.g. $4/hr but due to the Baumol effect nobody is willing to work for that amount."
  - TomSwirly 6y ago
    > $4/hr but due to the Baumol effect nobody is willing to work for that amount. No, it is NOT the Baumol effect that causes that. It's due to the fact that you cannot afford to live on $4/hr.
    - Smaug123 6y ago
      But why can you not afford to live on $4/hr? Or, why is everything so much more expensive than it used to be? These questions may have answers or they may have broken assumptions, but you did not even attempt to address the point at issue.
  - tgb 6y ago
    It's a rather weird way of saying that, but I suppose that must be what they meant.
Retric 6y ago
Data really doesn’t back that up. Adjusted for inflation it’s cheaper to get lawn care done today than 40 years ago. Minimum wage was actually higher back then and automation was worse. Landscaping is extremely common with industry revenue hitting $51,908,304,000 in 2016 or an average of ~400$ per household per year across the US.
- ghaff 6y ago
  In the case of lawn care specifically, automation that requires some capital beyond what may be worth it for an individual probably helps. I have a lawn service and a small crew shows up every two weeks with various gear and they're out in 20-30 minutes. That said, I'm not sure how common getting a lawn service is among middle to lower-middle class households is. And I'm pretty sure most middle class-ish households don't outsource all yard/garden work generally.
  - nasmorn 6y ago
    For a lot of garden owners the yard work is kinda the point of the garden.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Gardening is something of an exception specifically--although even there, there are landscaping projects that aren't necessarily "gardening." But, while some people do just like an excuse to get of the house and do some outside work, generally people are happy to have their lawns cut, leaved raked, brush cut, trees trimmed, etc.
  - sgerenser 6y ago
    In my part of the US, even in an upper middle class suburb, most of the people in my neighborhood do their own mowing and edging. I hate mowing so I’ve actually priced out lawn services and I just can’t justify it. About $40 per service (for a fairly small yard) at 4-5 times a month adds up.
    - 6y ago
TomSwirly 6y ago
> If you could pay someone $4/hour What is wrong with you?
- Smaug123 6y ago
  > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
mantap 6y ago
Also retail businesses in SEA tend to employ more workers than would be considered necessary in the west. e.g. hiring far more shop assistants than they need. If your labour costs are a small fraction of your overall costs then you have an incentive to hire many workers to provide better service in peak times even if most of the time they are doing nothing, or just to make your business look good.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Right. If people are relatively expensive , as with US retail, you use fancy retail scheduling software and you maybe share a maintenance or a bookkeeper with other businesses so they're not sitting around twiddling their thumbs most of the time. Ditto for household helpers. If, on the other hand, relatively unskilled people are cheap relative to your salary or a businesses profits, it's easier for you just to keep them around all the time even if it's not as efficient. As someone else noted, there may also be value in specialization. Rather than have a full-time all-around handyman, it may make more sense to just call a plumber if that handyman isn't that cheap relative to the [plumber anyway.
red_admiral 6y ago
If you could work a $4/hour summer job and save up for college that way like you used to, I'm sure people would be queueing up to do it. I know, this only holds for some interpretations of "you" and "used" to, but it wasn't that unheard of a generation or two ago.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  Why would they? The 4$ wage wouldn’t even scratch the surface of college costs these days. The cost/wage ration is unreal now. Gone are days where a summer paper route paid for the semester. The more rational thing to do would be to spend the time studying, or enjoy your free time before you lose it for a decade.

mlindner 6y ago

You can go to India and see exactly this. Even many middle income families have cleaning maids, drivers, etc also known as "servants". The job of "servant" no longer exists in the west.

ghaff 6y ago
>The job of "servant" no longer exists in the west. It's something of a matter of terminology. That would be seen as a generally inappropriate term in the US. Although people do have au pairs/nannies. And they certainly have plenty of regular service people like lawn services who they share with others. Or personal assistants. But, yes, the relationship is generally different. And there's far less of it.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  A 1hour/week service is not a servant. A full-time person is. and a single servant that enables a second working parent is a rather minor example, showing specialization more than income inequality.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
I don't believe you. Cleaning Maids are just called "Cleaning Services"
- nwatson 6y ago
  The "Cleaning Services" people in the U.S. and I suspect Europe are either independent contractors or wage workers for an independent contractor. They don't do 8-plus hour shifts in your home, or even live in your own home in "servants' quarters" as is common in places like India, Brazil, etc. In a "servant" relationship involving close physical proximity the servant almost is obliged to care for the emotional well-being of those whom they serve, or to at least feign that care. The contractor on the other hand is doing a job at your home in one of many such places and aren't expected to service the customer's emotional needs except as social nicety, and conceivably are raking in more cash per unit-time worked (for independents especially) than those who hire them. The "Cleaning Services" aren't servants. edit: emotional "connection", relative wages

pratik661 6y ago

Having a full time maid. It was pretty common for middle class households in UK to be able to afford servants. Whole sections of middle class housing from the late 1800s in London have servants quarters. Most middle class families in India/Pak/Bangladsh have servants (even live in). Having productive industries absorbing excess labor means that the average middle class family can no longer afford to have full time maids/servants. This is a good thing...

mensetmanusman 6y ago

In some areas: A 100 years ago Americans had live in servants/slaves in about half of households (like what you see in parts of India, Asia, etc.). As income inequality decreases, there are fewer servants in the home 24/7. Society has a transition as rates of abject poverty decrease. It will be interesting to witness the transition in Asia as they go through this.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Half? Really?
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Some history: https://daily.jstor.org/how-america-tried-and-failed-to-solve-its-servant-problem/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-america-tried-and-failed-to-solv...