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The bottomline is to ask: After a year, do these workers have more disposable income, or does - for example - local housing cost raise and eat up the higher wag

The bottomline is to ask: After a year, do these workers have more disposable income, or does - for example - local housing cost raise and eat up the higher wages? What if that was the point of this study - be a submarine for increasing the minimum wage? If has been said that Silicon Valley is a conduit to move VC money to landowners, and here is just more of it.

firstplacelast 3y ago
It seems like the best course of action is to tie minimum wage to housing costs (on a per-county or city basis), this would help ensure the ownership class has to balance the costs of assets and labor. If you want cheap labor, housing costs must go down. If you want expensive real estate, labor costs must go up.
- ctrw 3y ago
  Why not tie housing price to minimum wage? We don't end up in a feed back loop that explode unlike in your example.
- 20after4 3y ago
  Interesting idea, that actually could work. The biggest issue I could see though is that the people paying labor costs are not necessarily the same people paying wages so putting pressure on one doesn't necessarily get a result from the other.
  - HarryHirsch 3y ago
    Just look at Walmart. They don't offer a living wage, so they fix their employees up with every last social program the locality offers. And as a citizen you don't even get to opt out of that. Ordinarily, when you disagree with any business, the first step would be to boycott it, but you can't, you cannot opt out of your taxes going to food stamps and housing subsidies for those working at Walmart under the living-wage threshold. Especially insidious: work requirement for people on food stamps.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Likely means some type of purchase power parity calculation. Now to how big area should the minimum wage apply to is more complicated question. And should it be based on where the job is or where the employee lives.

firstplacelast 3y ago

It seems like the best course of action is to tie minimum wage to housing costs (on a per-county or city basis), this would help ensure the ownership class has to balance the costs of assets and labor. If you want cheap labor, housing costs must go down. If you want expensive real estate, labor costs must go up.

ctrw 3y ago
Why not tie housing price to minimum wage? We don't end up in a feed back loop that explode unlike in your example.
20after4 3y ago
Interesting idea, that actually could work. The biggest issue I could see though is that the people paying labor costs are not necessarily the same people paying wages so putting pressure on one doesn't necessarily get a result from the other.
- HarryHirsch 3y ago
  Just look at Walmart. They don't offer a living wage, so they fix their employees up with every last social program the locality offers. And as a citizen you don't even get to opt out of that. Ordinarily, when you disagree with any business, the first step would be to boycott it, but you can't, you cannot opt out of your taxes going to food stamps and housing subsidies for those working at Walmart under the living-wage threshold. Especially insidious: work requirement for people on food stamps.
Ekaros 3y ago
Likely means some type of purchase power parity calculation. Now to how big area should the minimum wage apply to is more complicated question. And should it be based on where the job is or where the employee lives.