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Raising minimum wage leads to efficiency gains, because companies automate their processes to remove labor from the equation. We can take care of those people

by rland 6y ago

Raising minimum wage leads to efficiency gains, because companies automate their processes to remove labor from the equation. We can take care of those people who cannot sell their labor at above minimum wage. It's not a law of the universe that they need to be exiled to starvation or eviction. (American corporations would love to have you think so!) Of course, this means that if you own a big company like McDonalds and put all your workers out of a job by automating, you need to do your part to take care of them. When jobs are automated, overall revenue doesn't go down. It often goes up. It's a misallocation that the increased revenue doesn't go to displaced workers in the form of welfare. Groceries are already adapting: they employ fewer people than they did prior, especially in high-cost areas. They already are removing cheap labor: self checkout. The increase in productivity goes to the worker who still remains, in the form of a higher wage.

sand_castles 6y ago
Raising the minimum wage in a vacuum is not doing to do much. The problem with the US is monopoly corporations, monopoly landlords, monopoly banks, monopoly educational institutions and monopoly governance, while the individual and the family unit is left to fend for themselves. Automating jobs does not always work out. Self-checkout counters are a nightmare if you are blind or cannot read the local language. A society that would value the wellbeing of the blind and weak would not try to automate everything.
mjfl 6y ago
It is just simply not true that we can maintain a huge portion of the population on unemployment for an indefinite period of time. It would come out to trillions of dollars per year, the math just doesn’t add up. And I should remind you that not every company is McDonalds or Amazon, but this kind of thinking supports their dominance rather than undermines it because their competition are less able to afford to comply with regulations. Wouldn’t you feel like a fool if you killed all small business in the US and ended up only with a few big players? Isn’t that the scenario everyone is afraid of? Stop making it a self fulfilling prophecy.

by rland 6y ago

sand_castles 6y ago

Raising the minimum wage in a vacuum is not doing to do much. The problem with the US is monopoly corporations, monopoly landlords, monopoly banks, monopoly educational institutions and monopoly governance, while the individual and the family unit is left to fend for themselves. Automating jobs does not always work out. Self-checkout counters are a nightmare if you are blind or cannot read the local language. A society that would value the wellbeing of the blind and weak would not try to automate everything.

mjfl 6y ago

It is just simply not true that we can maintain a huge portion of the population on unemployment for an indefinite period of time. It would come out to trillions of dollars per year, the math just doesn’t add up. And I should remind you that not every company is McDonalds or Amazon, but this kind of thinking supports their dominance rather than undermines it because their competition are less able to afford to comply with regulations. Wouldn’t you feel like a fool if you killed all small business in the US and ended up only with a few big players? Isn’t that the scenario everyone is afraid of? Stop making it a self fulfilling prophecy.