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The same can be said for minimum hourly employment requirements, too. It is interpreted as a guarantee to make $X, but in reality, it is literally a prohibition

The same can be said for minimum hourly employment requirements, too. It is interpreted as a guarantee to make $X, but in reality, it is literally a prohibition to make <$X. Most people I talk to take employment (at the aggregate and individual level) as constants when discussing this, but that's not how this works. For employment, for instance, much more useful analysis comes out of lifetime income analysis. We really ought not care how many people earn minimum wage... we ought to really care how their wage changes over time. Not even suggesting that there isn't merit to a minimum wage, but just that our discourse of it almost always omits the point you bring up about "everyone else who suffers." That's important to talk about.

Spooky23 5y ago
That’s comparing apples to oranges. Minimum wages reduce some of the exploitation that low quality employers will always engage in. If you travel to a state that has the lowest minimum wage for waitresses, you won’t find more waitstaff, lower prices or better quality. Just more misery. Any further erosion of worker rights in this gilded age is gross and unacceptable.
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  Very true. Visit high minimum wage areas like San Francisco and Seattle, with no visible misery at all.
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    So... a lower minimum wage will solve the homeless problem? That does not compute.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  When I travel to places with lower minimum wages, I do tend to find lower prices.* Get yourself a breakfast omelette plate in San Francisco and the same order in Jackson, MS. I can pretty much guarantee that the plate in Jackson will be less, possibly 50% less. * I don’t claim it’s caused by the minimum wage difference, but it seems pretty strongly correlated.
  - kritiko 5y ago
    As a New Yorker, I have been surprised when I travel that food isn't cheaper many places... For instance, I searched "Brunch" in Google Maps for Jackson and omelette plates are $10-16 at Google's top result[1]. Labor costs certainly impact prices, but restaurant pricing isn't totally formulaic outside of maybe "market price" fish dishes. Kenji Lopez Alt has written about this[2]: Here's where one of the first intricacies in menu pricing arises: Menu prices have to make sense to the customer. Placing a $15 carrot entree and a $20 chicken dish next to a $40 mushroom dish and a $45 steak doesn't compute; the range is simply too big. Either the latter two dishes are far too expensive, or the first two are far too cheap. Which sceniaro seems true largely depends on the atmosphere of the restaurant and pricing at similar restaurants, but both cases can be disconcerting. Because of this, most successful restaurant owners fudge the numbers a bit. "You're willing to lose money on some things because they're important to keep on the menu," says Maws. [1]https://www.elviesrestaurant.com/day https://www.elviesrestaurant.com/day [2]https://www.seriouseats.com/menu-pricing-vegan-vegetarian-meat https://www.seriouseats.com/menu-pricing-vegan-vegetarian-me...
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > As a New Yorker, I have been surprised when I travel that food isn't cheaper many places... Some of that may be on you, choosing to eat the expensive food. My experience in Shanghai was that I could eat basically the same things I'd eat in America, and it would cost basically the same amount of money. Or I could eat local food for 5-10 times less than that. But you know, if I go to 老外街 ("foreigner street") in Shanghai to eat at the Mexican restaurant there, it's not exactly a secret that I may be willing to pay more for food than a normal Chinese person. And they price accordingly.
      - kritiko 5y ago
        Sorry my original comment was unclear. I was strictly talking about traveling within America. Internationally there are huge price differences.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
- int_19h 5y ago
  Not all developed countries have legally mandated minimum wages, even those that are often considered "socialist" in American parlance. Indeed, Sweden is one such example! (In practice, those places still have minimum wages - it's just that they're negotiated between employers and unions, and can vary across different industries and geographically where that makes sense.) The real problem with min wage is that it's effectively a regressive tax, because it raises the cost of the cheapest produced goods/services - which, of course, tend to be disproportionally used by those who simply can't afford anything else. So you're taxing the poor to help the very poor! It is better compared to a free-for-all jungle, but it's much worse than e.g. UBI (funded by actual progressive taxes, on income, or better yet, on capital gains) without min wage.
imtringued 5y ago
This is called work piling. The unit of work isn't whatever people want it to be, it's jobs, meaning entire human beings. During a recession it rarely makes sense to keep people employed at full capacity, maybe you only need each person at 50%. So the obvious solution is to just fire 50% of the workers. You now have a segment of the population with enough work and another with too little. Those with work are scared of losing the job. Those without are desperately trying to compete in the labor market to get a new job. https://youtu.be/EKd6WURBqOY https://youtu.be/EKd6WURBqOY

Spooky23 5y ago

That’s comparing apples to oranges. Minimum wages reduce some of the exploitation that low quality employers will always engage in. If you travel to a state that has the lowest minimum wage for waitresses, you won’t find more waitstaff, lower prices or better quality. Just more misery. Any further erosion of worker rights in this gilded age is gross and unacceptable.

jdminhbg 5y ago
Very true. Visit high minimum wage areas like San Francisco and Seattle, with no visible misery at all.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  So... a lower minimum wage will solve the homeless problem? That does not compute.
sokoloff 5y ago
When I travel to places with lower minimum wages, I do tend to find lower prices.* Get yourself a breakfast omelette plate in San Francisco and the same order in Jackson, MS. I can pretty much guarantee that the plate in Jackson will be less, possibly 50% less. * I don’t claim it’s caused by the minimum wage difference, but it seems pretty strongly correlated.
- kritiko 5y ago
  As a New Yorker, I have been surprised when I travel that food isn't cheaper many places... For instance, I searched "Brunch" in Google Maps for Jackson and omelette plates are $10-16 at Google's top result[1]. Labor costs certainly impact prices, but restaurant pricing isn't totally formulaic outside of maybe "market price" fish dishes. Kenji Lopez Alt has written about this[2]: Here's where one of the first intricacies in menu pricing arises: Menu prices have to make sense to the customer. Placing a $15 carrot entree and a $20 chicken dish next to a $40 mushroom dish and a $45 steak doesn't compute; the range is simply too big. Either the latter two dishes are far too expensive, or the first two are far too cheap. Which sceniaro seems true largely depends on the atmosphere of the restaurant and pricing at similar restaurants, but both cases can be disconcerting. Because of this, most successful restaurant owners fudge the numbers a bit. "You're willing to lose money on some things because they're important to keep on the menu," says Maws. [1]https://www.elviesrestaurant.com/day https://www.elviesrestaurant.com/day [2]https://www.seriouseats.com/menu-pricing-vegan-vegetarian-meat https://www.seriouseats.com/menu-pricing-vegan-vegetarian-me...
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > As a New Yorker, I have been surprised when I travel that food isn't cheaper many places... Some of that may be on you, choosing to eat the expensive food. My experience in Shanghai was that I could eat basically the same things I'd eat in America, and it would cost basically the same amount of money. Or I could eat local food for 5-10 times less than that. But you know, if I go to 老外街 ("foreigner street") in Shanghai to eat at the Mexican restaurant there, it's not exactly a secret that I may be willing to pay more for food than a normal Chinese person. And they price accordingly.
    - kritiko 5y ago
      Sorry my original comment was unclear. I was strictly talking about traveling within America. Internationally there are huge price differences.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
int_19h 5y ago
Not all developed countries have legally mandated minimum wages, even those that are often considered "socialist" in American parlance. Indeed, Sweden is one such example! (In practice, those places still have minimum wages - it's just that they're negotiated between employers and unions, and can vary across different industries and geographically where that makes sense.) The real problem with min wage is that it's effectively a regressive tax, because it raises the cost of the cheapest produced goods/services - which, of course, tend to be disproportionally used by those who simply can't afford anything else. So you're taxing the poor to help the very poor! It is better compared to a free-for-all jungle, but it's much worse than e.g. UBI (funded by actual progressive taxes, on income, or better yet, on capital gains) without min wage.

imtringued 5y ago

This is called work piling. The unit of work isn't whatever people want it to be, it's jobs, meaning entire human beings. During a recession it rarely makes sense to keep people employed at full capacity, maybe you only need each person at 50%. So the obvious solution is to just fire 50% of the workers. You now have a segment of the population with enough work and another with too little. Those with work are scared of losing the job. Those without are desperately trying to compete in the labor market to get a new job. https://youtu.be/EKd6WURBqOY https://youtu.be/EKd6WURBqOY