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People with better fitness for employment had their situation improved. People with less fitness for employment may be more likely to be harmed. That’s a big s

People with better fitness for employment had their situation improved. People with less fitness for employment may be more likely to be harmed. That’s a big success for the former group for sure. Whether that’s a policy success is slightly hazier than you presented I think, without other interventions to support those who are more likely to be harmed by the reduction in employment.

MLR 1y ago
If it's actually only a 2.7% decline in employment relative to baseline then the increase in total wages paid would have to be very small to make this a bad policy. I agree that a lost job should carry some kind of premium compared to a total increase in wages paid, and you also have to go and look at the total hours worked to get a good picture, but if the total relative increase in remuneration was higher than about 10% or so I think that's probably enough to be able to hand wave the employment decrease. If it only turns out to be 5% I'd be a bit iffier about it. In the UK we have a pretty generous minimum wage (for over 21s), I think even relative to $20 in California, and the effect on employment has been very small while minimum wage jobs now give a pretty OK life, so I'm inclined to support high minimum wages generally.
- delusional 1y ago
  > I agree that a lost job should carry some kind of premium compared to a total increase in wages paid I don't think it's nearly that clear. Western nations are at a near record low unemployment rate. We should want to remove low paying jobs.
  - roenxi 1y ago
    But that was the best job they could find. Presumably those people are going to be unemployed now. I mean, maybe they're kids and their families will have enough slack to just adsorb the change but in theory they need welfare checks now to survive since they probably can't justify anyone paying them $20/hr. So it actually costs the broader economy more than the salary they lost - firstly the work they were doing isn't being done, secondly someone else now has to work to earn the keep of the person who was just laid off because the job that paid them around what their skills were worth just got regulated out of existence.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      You'd probably have to know more about what the jobs were. Certainly there's more self-service and fewer people waiting around to help customers in large stores than there were at one time. And small-time retail has also fairly visibly declined in favor of big-box and online purchases.
    - delusional 1y ago
      > but in theory they need welfare checks now to survive since they probably can't justify anyone paying them $20/hr Are you implying that there are people in the world who just can't do anything productive enough to be worth $20/hour? That they are so useless that this was the only thing worth doing with them? That seems fucking insane. If that's true, we have a huge problem with misallocation of value.
      - sokoloff 1y ago
        I think it's self-evidently true that there is a not ignorable group of people who can't create enough value to be worth being paid $20/hr (plus the employer-paid overheads) and have that be something that an employer would voluntarily do. Around 10% of the population does not score highly enough on the ASVAB (an aptitude test for the military) to qualify for military service. The military, like any large employer, has an awful lot of jobs that require minimal skills and aptitude and for 10% to be Category V [unqualified for military service] based on aptitude, I would expect they wouldn't be the employees to create $20+/hr in value for private sector or other government employers either.
        delusional 1y ago
        Ohh no, it's Jordan Peterson. Not every job is the military. Most jobs are in fact not the military. Not qualifying for military service does not render you worthless in the general economy. Furthermore, being worthless in the general economy does not render you worthless in society. I wasn't qualified for military service in my country, not because of intelligence but some physical conditions. I became a banker.
        1y ago
  - p1dda 1y ago
    What do you think happened to the tens of thousands that lost their jobs? Are they homeless now?
    - delusional 1y ago
      I'd hope we could find something more productive for them to do.
      - parineum 1y ago
        Hope in one hand...
- tialaramex 1y ago
  Also low minimum wages are actually just corporate welfare. The gap between what a minimum wage job pays and what it costs to scrape by is covered by government or charity, if they didn't do that the workers would die, which means the jobs don't get done, so that means the resource spent by governments or charities as a result of a low minimum wage is a subsidy for the employer. Instead of paying what it costs they get it for cheaper to create a fiction of "employment".
  - hellcow 1y ago
    This right here. We should demand not to subsidize the richest companies in the world. The Walmart family can afford to pay their employees a living wage. Instead you and I pay for that in taxes, while they extract billions in profit and value from their business. If anything we should be subsidizing small businesses to give a more level playing field against companies with global economies of scale.
    - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
      > We should demand not to subsidize the richest companies in the world. Not without overturning Dodge Bros vs Ford, I believe. The ruling created shareholder primacy, the privilege of shareholders to have maximum bites of the corporate apple. It rigidly protects shareholder (and by ext, executive) interests. The never-ending wealth that flows from that - first buys politicians, then officials, judges and (eventually) every part of regulation & corporate oversight. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
    - burgerguyg 1y ago
      Have you actually looked at what Walmart pays? Even in areas where the minimum wage is still $7.25, they're paying nearly double as a starting wage. They raised their starting wage over $10 in 2017 and have consistently raised it even where they're not legally obligated. Meanwhile, all raising wages in the current market does is implement a wealth transfer from businesses to landlords with minimum wage workers as the mules transporting the money. If you let the housing supply remain this tight and just increase wages, you just bid up rents and make the most economically vulnerable fight over the insufficient supply of affordable units.
- roenxi 1y ago
  > If it's actually only a 2.7% decline in employment relative to baseline then the increase in total wages paid would have to be very small to make this a bad policy. That seems unlikely to be just that though, this study was just on the people who lost jobs. If 20,000 people are out of a job, there is probably another larger cohort on less hours. And we also don't know how much wages rose. The people who were fired were the ones who could only justify being paid the minimum. The ones who stayed might already have been paid more like $17, $18 or $19/hr. So yes to what you say, but the study doesn't say anything about whether total compensation went up or down.

MLR 1y ago

If it's actually only a 2.7% decline in employment relative to baseline then the increase in total wages paid would have to be very small to make this a bad policy. I agree that a lost job should carry some kind of premium compared to a total increase in wages paid, and you also have to go and look at the total hours worked to get a good picture, but if the total relative increase in remuneration was higher than about 10% or so I think that's probably enough to be able to hand wave the employment decrease. If it only turns out to be 5% I'd be a bit iffier about it. In the UK we have a pretty generous minimum wage (for over 21s), I think even relative to $20 in California, and the effect on employment has been very small while minimum wage jobs now give a pretty OK life, so I'm inclined to support high minimum wages generally.

delusional 1y ago
> I agree that a lost job should carry some kind of premium compared to a total increase in wages paid I don't think it's nearly that clear. Western nations are at a near record low unemployment rate. We should want to remove low paying jobs.
- roenxi 1y ago
  But that was the best job they could find. Presumably those people are going to be unemployed now. I mean, maybe they're kids and their families will have enough slack to just adsorb the change but in theory they need welfare checks now to survive since they probably can't justify anyone paying them $20/hr. So it actually costs the broader economy more than the salary they lost - firstly the work they were doing isn't being done, secondly someone else now has to work to earn the keep of the person who was just laid off because the job that paid them around what their skills were worth just got regulated out of existence.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    You'd probably have to know more about what the jobs were. Certainly there's more self-service and fewer people waiting around to help customers in large stores than there were at one time. And small-time retail has also fairly visibly declined in favor of big-box and online purchases.
  - delusional 1y ago
    > but in theory they need welfare checks now to survive since they probably can't justify anyone paying them $20/hr Are you implying that there are people in the world who just can't do anything productive enough to be worth $20/hour? That they are so useless that this was the only thing worth doing with them? That seems fucking insane. If that's true, we have a huge problem with misallocation of value.
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      I think it's self-evidently true that there is a not ignorable group of people who can't create enough value to be worth being paid $20/hr (plus the employer-paid overheads) and have that be something that an employer would voluntarily do. Around 10% of the population does not score highly enough on the ASVAB (an aptitude test for the military) to qualify for military service. The military, like any large employer, has an awful lot of jobs that require minimal skills and aptitude and for 10% to be Category V [unqualified for military service] based on aptitude, I would expect they wouldn't be the employees to create $20+/hr in value for private sector or other government employers either.
      - delusional 1y ago
        Ohh no, it's Jordan Peterson. Not every job is the military. Most jobs are in fact not the military. Not qualifying for military service does not render you worthless in the general economy. Furthermore, being worthless in the general economy does not render you worthless in society. I wasn't qualified for military service in my country, not because of intelligence but some physical conditions. I became a banker.
      - 1y ago
- p1dda 1y ago
  What do you think happened to the tens of thousands that lost their jobs? Are they homeless now?
  - delusional 1y ago
    I'd hope we could find something more productive for them to do.
    - parineum 1y ago
      Hope in one hand...
tialaramex 1y ago
Also low minimum wages are actually just corporate welfare. The gap between what a minimum wage job pays and what it costs to scrape by is covered by government or charity, if they didn't do that the workers would die, which means the jobs don't get done, so that means the resource spent by governments or charities as a result of a low minimum wage is a subsidy for the employer. Instead of paying what it costs they get it for cheaper to create a fiction of "employment".
- hellcow 1y ago
  This right here. We should demand not to subsidize the richest companies in the world. The Walmart family can afford to pay their employees a living wage. Instead you and I pay for that in taxes, while they extract billions in profit and value from their business. If anything we should be subsidizing small businesses to give a more level playing field against companies with global economies of scale.
  - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
    > We should demand not to subsidize the richest companies in the world. Not without overturning Dodge Bros vs Ford, I believe. The ruling created shareholder primacy, the privilege of shareholders to have maximum bites of the corporate apple. It rigidly protects shareholder (and by ext, executive) interests. The never-ending wealth that flows from that - first buys politicians, then officials, judges and (eventually) every part of regulation & corporate oversight. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
  - burgerguyg 1y ago
    Have you actually looked at what Walmart pays? Even in areas where the minimum wage is still $7.25, they're paying nearly double as a starting wage. They raised their starting wage over $10 in 2017 and have consistently raised it even where they're not legally obligated. Meanwhile, all raising wages in the current market does is implement a wealth transfer from businesses to landlords with minimum wage workers as the mules transporting the money. If you let the housing supply remain this tight and just increase wages, you just bid up rents and make the most economically vulnerable fight over the insufficient supply of affordable units.
roenxi 1y ago
> If it's actually only a 2.7% decline in employment relative to baseline then the increase in total wages paid would have to be very small to make this a bad policy. That seems unlikely to be just that though, this study was just on the people who lost jobs. If 20,000 people are out of a job, there is probably another larger cohort on less hours. And we also don't know how much wages rose. The people who were fired were the ones who could only justify being paid the minimum. The ones who stayed might already have been paid more like $17, $18 or $19/hr. So yes to what you say, but the study doesn't say anything about whether total compensation went up or down.