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The Minimum Wage Machine
- coopdog 14y agoDid I just.. appreciate modern art for the first time?
- ScotterC 14y agoYes. Yes you did. Dubious whether to call it 'modern' however. That term in the art world is super tricky. I might fall to contemporary - but that also brings it's difficulties. If you want to be really wiley, you could call it post-genre :)
- cmccabe 14y agoHow about the armless, who can't turn the crank? Sounds like a job discrimination case waiting to happen.
- evv 14y agoThere are lots of jobs armless people can't perform, and hence cannot be hired for.
- pacaro 14y agoSometimes stated as "blind people can't be bus drivers", also known (in the inverse) as a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification or BFOQ [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualific...
- mmagin 14y agoSurely it's illegal to let anyone turn the crank without first obtaining proper proof of employment eligibility (per the I-9 form.) :)
- duncan_bayne 14y agoBut what you don't see is the line of people outside the door, whose labour is worth less than $7.25 per hour, but who can't find (legal) work because of the minimum wage laws.
- scarmig 14y agoAt some point, the overhead cost of managing people whose labor is worth less than $7.25/hour is the predominant cost in employing them--at which point, you might as well just hire the person doing the oversight to do their job, or replace their labor with capital. Minimum wage laws, at some level, prohibit useful employment. But every day the pool of people whose labor is effectively worthless--zero marginal product people, as Tyler Cowen calls them--is growing larger. Very few people, left or right, seem to want to confront this fact. Mostly because it's unpalatable: when horses' labor became uneconomic, we just turned them to glue. What do we do with people?
- krapp 14y agoGiven the option to legally cut their lower-tier employees' wages to zero tomorrow, I wonder how many companies would do so, and still expect those people to show up for work? When horses' labor became uneconomic, we just turned them to glue. What do we do with people? Force companies to pay a living wage.
- whatshisface 14y agoI feel sorry for people who have built their careers around the fine art of crank turning, it is only a matter of time before their jobs are automated away.
- dkokelley 14y agoIf this piece is displayed publicly, such that anyone who is willing can work for minimum wage, what sort of artful, philosophical statement would be made when one enterprising individual attaches a solar powered motor to the crank?
- ars 14y agoWhy does it have to be solar powered?
- dkokelley 14y agoJust to avoid complicating things with electricity costs. Maybe if you spliced into a city power line you could also make a statement about reliance on government subsidies.
- dasil003 14y agoIt could be the dawn of art gallery tennis.
- eabraham 14y agoUnfortunately, it would be lost on individuals whose labour is worth less than minimum wage.
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoWhy don't you embrace true capitalist mentality and just steal the machine and break it open and leave the trash in a public place for public employees to clean up?
- bmmayer1 14y agoYou are so good at capitalism.
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoOn second thought, it would be better if you hired a temp to do the above after they signed a waiver taking all responsibility for their safety and legal risk, then writing off the lawyer's bill for writing up the contract as a business expense.
- marshray 14y agoDoes the machine withhold and file payroll taxes too?
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoNo, so it's being about 33% too generous. It should be depositing a coin every 7.5 seconds if my calculations are correct. Just think about that for a second. 7.5 seconds is a long time to wait for a penny, especially if you have to stand there running a crank the whole time, I'd just build a shack in the forest and start eating tree bark and berries instead.
- svachalek 14y agoWhat are your calculations? Medicare & Social Security should be 7.65%, federal income tax should be 10%, of which about half should fall under the standard deduction (assuming they're working about 30 hours a week). What's the rest?
- marshray 14y agoDon't forget the employer matching 7.65% that they're obliged to hide from you.
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoMy old paychecks at minimum wage where I paid ~35% in taxes. I lived in a commonwealth at the time so county and state taxes as well.
- pmorici 14y agoState Income and sales tax?
- Kilimanjaro 14y agoI always wanted to ask these questions to a knowledgeable group of people: - What if there was a worldwide law about minimum wage at $7/hr? - How would world economies react? - Would it end poverty? destroy economies? ignite wars? - Who is responsible for not existing such a law? Interesting links?
- bejar37 14y agoCause a feedback loop due to companies having to charge more for products leading to inflation
- cglace 14y agoThat actually would lead to price increases. It would not lead to an increase in the supply of money.
- daenz 14y agoKind of related, I've always found this image interesting: http://i.imgur.com/9hRn0.png http://i.imgur.com/9hRn0.png Found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage
- ivix 14y agoLiving standards would become averaged globally. Result: Rich people (thats you and me) get a lot poorer. But on average people get richer.
- icebraining 14y agoWhy? If hiring costs the same everywhere, companies would probably relocate back to the developed countries for other reasons (less shipping, better justice systems, etc), while the developing countries would face massive unemployment. If anything, it'd make poor people much poorer and increase worldwide inequality. Not to mention that such countries would have new "castes", between the relatively well paid employed and the majority of unemployed or black market workers, leading to more social instability.
- mrtron 14y agoIt should have gold coins in the top plexiglass but output pennies.
- jiggy2011 14y agoIf one were inclined to experiment, you could increase the payout of the machine to above minimum wage but with a small chance on each crank rotation that it would deliver a small electric shock.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- grecy 14y agoI highly recommend the first episode of Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" TV show called "Minimum Wage"[1] Morgan and his girlfriend try to live on minimum wage for a month in Ohio. This is some of the best TV I have ever seen. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_30_Days_episodes#Season_1:_2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_30_Days_episodes#Season...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- chrisguitarguy 14y agoThere's also a book in a similar vein called "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" [1]. Fairly good read. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
- luser001 14y agoPSA: It's available on Netflix.
- ScotterC 14y agoThat is great art! Really makes you think
- patio11 14y agoIt's a wonderful piece. One wonders if the experience of the machine would change much if it awarded 6 pennies a second, though. The purpose of the performance is that the labor is soul-crushingly pointless, right? And that anyone who turns the crank is seen as engaged in soul-crushingly pointless work, right? Those both strike me as true even if you're using my 1% Machine.
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoWith a 1% machine, you can pull the lever for a few months then use the earnings to go recuperate and start something wonderful. The longer you pull the lever on the minimum wage machine, the more you have to rely on it since you'll never have a buffer large enough to go do something else and improve your situation. The common pattern is you'll work overtime then end up wasting the money on conveniences make up for lost time sleeping/eating. The only escape is to work at a grueling pace and starve until you have a large enough buffer that you can look for other opportunities, but this is destroyed the moment anything unexpected happens or the energy spent looking is not fruitful. If the 1% machine monkey is not fruitful in his attempt to escape the crank, he's still going back to that 7 cents a second. (or maybe 4 cents if his name was in the news)
- oh_sigh 14y agoJump to conclusions much? You aren't hell banned.
- IheartApplesDix 14y agomy mistake
- ctdonath 14y agoI could get thru a LOT of audiobooks while pulling that lever.
- JulianMorrison 14y ago