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Then let's raise it to $1000 an hour. We'll all be rich Ridiculous arguments are ridiculous. The rest of your point is more than strong enough to stand on its

Then let's raise it to $1000 an hour. We'll all be rich Ridiculous arguments are ridiculous. The rest of your point is more than strong enough to stand on its own without that kind of nonsense.

jstalin 14y ago
That's my point. Obviously, increasing the minimum wage to $1000 is ridiculous. But so is the idea that raising the minimum wage by $1 has no consequence, as some claim. The higher cost you impose on employers for low skill jobs, the more likely it will be that employers will attempt to hire fewer of those workers or reject unskilled candidates. It's simple logic. For instance, the hamburger-making machine will replace teenagers who need a job at McDonald's. [1] Why wouldn't an employer just purchase a machine that will reduce costs, create a consistent product, and not call in sick if it can do so at an equivalent or lower cost than an unskilled teen who would be required to earn $10 or $12 an hour? [1]: http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/ http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/ EDIT: 5.2% of US workers earn at or below the minimum wage, 50% of those are under 25: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm
- avar 14y ago
  Why do you think a hamburger making machine is a bad thing? Automation in the long term is good for the economy, if it wasn't for automation those same teenagers would be manually plowing fields instead of flipping burgers. If anything raising the minimum wage a bit should spur a lot of automation industries, and those same teenagers would be more likely to get an entry level job there, instead of at a menial job.
  - cema 14y ago
    I guess the point is that, as the min wage grows, certain considerations that were not viable before become viable now, and as a consequence people who otherwise may have been considered for a job would no more, or would lose the job, or the job itself would disappear.
    - Klinky 14y ago
      ...yet when industry eliminates redundancies and increases automation, resulting in lost jobs, it's viewed as efficiency.
      - cema 14y ago
        It does have other consequences, certainly.
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    Automation in the long term is a good thing. However forcing automation by legal system is suboptimal for economy. Even in the long term.
  - chaostheory 14y ago
    It's not a bad thing for us. It's a bad for the people that minimum wage is supposedly trying to help. Increase minimum wage, decrease low skilled jobs, and increase mechanization.
    - dennisgorelik 14y ago
      It is a bad thing for us (software developers) too: yes, we would get a contract to automate these low-skilled guys jobs, but then who's going to pay for these low-skilled guys' unemployment? Besides, our automated solutions would still deliver higher-than-before prices, because if automation was cheaper, then low-skilled jobs would have been automated away without government's legal help.
  - tsotha 14y ago
    >Why do you think a hamburger making machine is a bad thing? It's a bad thing if you pay the bills by making hamburgers.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  It's simple fallacious logic FTFY. I don't normally do this, but since you are relying on classic straw man for your argument, I thought I might as well make it obvious that your whole argument is suspect logically.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Getting rid of low-skill, unproductive jobs that are nothing but drudgery to the sorry people stuck doing them is a Good Thing.
  - crusso 14y ago
    That's extraordinarily elitist and insensitive to some people desperate to work, isn't it?
    - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
      Not really, no. I know loads of people with low-wage jobs. None of them like doing those shitty jobs so much that they'll turn down a wage rise, or a funded unemployment, or a higher-paying job, to "protect" their particular employer. Nobody wants to work more for less, and when you talk about a system that keeps productivity down (ie: a race to the bottom between labor wages and the price of automation), you are ultimately talking about everyone working more for less.
      - randallsquared 14y ago
        > None of them like doing those shitty jobs so much that they'll turn down a wage rise, or a funded unemployment, or a higher-paying job, to "protect" their particular employer. No, but I'm sure they like them better than not doing anything, since they have the choice to not do anything right now. If the minimum wage is raised above what they are capable of producing in value, they will no longer have the choice at all.
        warfangle 14y ago
        It wouldn't be a choice between a cardboard box and tedium if we'd give the human race a fucking chance to do its thing.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    So you say $0 per hour is better than $7 per hour? Somehow hard to believe.
- jbooth 14y ago
  Its actually pretty reasonable to posit that raising the minimum wage will have no effect on employment. Take a look at S&P 500 profits over the last few years. Then look at real household income. If you want to get crazy, look at productivity measures. Profits are going up while income is falling in real terms. It stands to reason that there's a buck to spare there.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    Oddly enough it may not be true - the share of GDP captured is roughly 40% for corporations - and has dropped for wages. That is whilst the share of GDP for companies has remained roughly same for past few decades, wages share has dropped. This means that the share of wealth going to wage earners and working stiffs is dropping - but is not being captured by company profits. Where is it going? To self employed dividend earners - basically there are more one person bands now, freelancers etc. Some will be tax efficient schemes for bankers, but most are, well, us on HN. I cannot find the link - will see in the morning.
    - jbooth 14y ago
      I was talking about the last 5 years, as opposed to the last 30. Although household income has been declining in real terms for the last 30. I'd be interested to see your link. I was under the impression that most growth has been captured by larger corporations rather than free-lancers, and if they refer to 'self-employed dividend earners' that could easily be people collecting dividends and capital gains on stock. But that's all speculation -- hit me up with the link if you get a chance.
    - zeroonetwothree 14y ago
      It's actually been remarkably similar over the past 50 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share
  - argonaut 14y ago
    This is terrible reasoning. A million different variables go into real household income, productivity, and corporate profits. Just because corporations are making profits does not necessarily mean a significant number of people making minimum wage won't be fired when the minimum wage is raised. It's not like you have managers sitting around saying, "Well, we're making money... so we can afford to pay a worker $9/hour even though their output is only worth $8/hour." If it does not make economic sense to retain a worker, a company will fire that worker.
Dove 14y ago
I don't think it's nonsense. The things that are wrong with a $1000 minimum wage are the same things that are wrong with a $10 minimum wage. They're just happening to different people. Setting a $1000 minimum wage would destroy essentially all jobs. There's nothing I or most people could do that's worth that much. Nothing at all. With my job gone, my income is zero and the products and services I contributed to society don't exist. Such a law would make me permanently poor, and would make society incrementally poorer. This is what I think happens to people whose natural output is below the minimum wage. Because their skills and education justify $6/hr but not $9, they aren't allowed to make that $6. They and society are $6/hr poorer for it. I believe firmly that people should be allowed to work if they want to, on whatever terms they find agreeable and can get. If you want to help them beyond that, I'm sure they'll think that's swell. But it shouldn't come in the form of destroying their job.
- superuser2 14y ago
  You're ignoring the fact that if you made $1000/hr, you could afford (and thus would be charged) higher prices for everything else, and so would everyone. Thus you would be producing $1000/hr, it's just that a thousand then would mean less than it does now. That's inflation. So long as people spend and the economy grows faster than that, we're better off than we were.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    Hyperinflation would destroy everyone's savings and destroy the ability of anyone to invest. This is a ridiculous line of reasoning anyways.
  - superuser2 14y ago
    It's hyperinflation if you're increasing to $1000/hr, which is why no one is seriously suggesting that. Otherwise it's a little bit of inflation, and one that would be overshadowed by the resulting growth.
  - Dove 14y ago
    Inflation doesn't work that way. You can't legislate it into existence, and you can't legislate it away. If you could, it would be an easy problem to solve. Inflation occurs when you add to the money supply more than you add to the economy. The California gold rush caused inflation. Countries with hyperinflation have governments that are printing money at incredible rates. That's completely orthogonal to minimum wage. If you say I must have a $1000/hr job, it's in current dollars. Even if my employer wanted to pay me more, he can't -- he doesn't have the money to! Even if everyone wanted to switch over to doing that, they couldn't; there isn't enough money in the system! If everyone woke up tomorrow and agreed that a dollar was worth 1000x less, they'd all be 1000x poorer and nobody could afford anything. No, the minimum wage doesn't change the value of a dollar. It just changes who's allowed to earn one.
WalterBright 14y ago
If raising the minimum wage to $12 is good for the economy, and raising it to $1000 is bad, then there's an inflection point where it switches from good to bad. Therefore, the theory that raising the minimum wage is good for the economy is incomplete at best.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  No, it's not. This is just straw man reasoning that doesn't belong on HN. Obviously, it's not a smooth linear curve, so a raise to $10/hour is not just a weaker form of a raise to $1000 hour. One is healthy and the other wrecks the economy. There is not an inflection point, only a straw man here.
  - darkarmani 14y ago
    What's the strawman part of it? Raising the minimum wage is a strawman? Who decides which one wrecks the economy?
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Absolutely. Totally incomplete. My point is not that "higher is better". My point is that some adjustments to some adjustable parameters may be beneficial in some contexts. Generalize further than that at your own risk.
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    Do you have an example of when $X/hour person would benefit from setting mandatory minimum wage to $(X+1)/hour?
    - ncallaway 14y ago
      Yes. If the job actually produces more than $(X+1)/hour worth of productivity to the employer. The employer, unable to continue their advantageous position of paying $X/hour (it being illegal), but finding the job still worth retaining (it generating more than $(X+1)/hour) retains the employee. The employee's salary goes from $X/hour to $(X+1)/hour. Or did I totally misunderstand your question?
aprime 14y ago
Reductio ad absurdum is a perfectly valid form of argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
tatsuke95 14y ago
>"Ridiculous arguments are ridiculous." So where is the line where it is no longer ridiculous, then? $999? $500? $10? Labour is an input cost of production; when the input prices rise, so do output prices to compensate. I'd vote for no minimum wage but with a minimum income subsidized by the government.

Then let's raise it to $1000 an hour. We'll all be rich Ridiculous arguments are ridiculous. The rest of your point is more than strong enough to stand on its own without that kind of nonsense.

jstalin 14y ago

That's my point. Obviously, increasing the minimum wage to $1000 is ridiculous. But so is the idea that raising the minimum wage by $1 has no consequence, as some claim. The higher cost you impose on employers for low skill jobs, the more likely it will be that employers will attempt to hire fewer of those workers or reject unskilled candidates. It's simple logic. For instance, the hamburger-making machine will replace teenagers who need a job at McDonald's. [1] Why wouldn't an employer just purchase a machine that will reduce costs, create a consistent product, and not call in sick if it can do so at an equivalent or lower cost than an unskilled teen who would be required to earn $10 or $12 an hour? [1]: http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/ http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/ EDIT: 5.2% of US workers earn at or below the minimum wage, 50% of those are under 25: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm

avar 14y ago
Why do you think a hamburger making machine is a bad thing? Automation in the long term is good for the economy, if it wasn't for automation those same teenagers would be manually plowing fields instead of flipping burgers. If anything raising the minimum wage a bit should spur a lot of automation industries, and those same teenagers would be more likely to get an entry level job there, instead of at a menial job.
- cema 14y ago
  I guess the point is that, as the min wage grows, certain considerations that were not viable before become viable now, and as a consequence people who otherwise may have been considered for a job would no more, or would lose the job, or the job itself would disappear.
  - Klinky 14y ago
    ...yet when industry eliminates redundancies and increases automation, resulting in lost jobs, it's viewed as efficiency.
    - cema 14y ago
      It does have other consequences, certainly.
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  Automation in the long term is a good thing. However forcing automation by legal system is suboptimal for economy. Even in the long term.
- chaostheory 14y ago
  It's not a bad thing for us. It's a bad for the people that minimum wage is supposedly trying to help. Increase minimum wage, decrease low skilled jobs, and increase mechanization.
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    It is a bad thing for us (software developers) too: yes, we would get a contract to automate these low-skilled guys jobs, but then who's going to pay for these low-skilled guys' unemployment? Besides, our automated solutions would still deliver higher-than-before prices, because if automation was cheaper, then low-skilled jobs would have been automated away without government's legal help.
- tsotha 14y ago
  >Why do you think a hamburger making machine is a bad thing? It's a bad thing if you pay the bills by making hamburgers.
seanmcdirmid 14y ago
It's simple fallacious logic FTFY. I don't normally do this, but since you are relying on classic straw man for your argument, I thought I might as well make it obvious that your whole argument is suspect logically.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Getting rid of low-skill, unproductive jobs that are nothing but drudgery to the sorry people stuck doing them is a Good Thing.
- crusso 14y ago
  That's extraordinarily elitist and insensitive to some people desperate to work, isn't it?
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Not really, no. I know loads of people with low-wage jobs. None of them like doing those shitty jobs so much that they'll turn down a wage rise, or a funded unemployment, or a higher-paying job, to "protect" their particular employer. Nobody wants to work more for less, and when you talk about a system that keeps productivity down (ie: a race to the bottom between labor wages and the price of automation), you are ultimately talking about everyone working more for less.
    - randallsquared 14y ago
      > None of them like doing those shitty jobs so much that they'll turn down a wage rise, or a funded unemployment, or a higher-paying job, to "protect" their particular employer. No, but I'm sure they like them better than not doing anything, since they have the choice to not do anything right now. If the minimum wage is raised above what they are capable of producing in value, they will no longer have the choice at all.
      - warfangle 14y ago
        It wouldn't be a choice between a cardboard box and tedium if we'd give the human race a fucking chance to do its thing.
- smsm42 14y ago
  So you say $0 per hour is better than $7 per hour? Somehow hard to believe.
jbooth 14y ago
Its actually pretty reasonable to posit that raising the minimum wage will have no effect on employment. Take a look at S&P 500 profits over the last few years. Then look at real household income. If you want to get crazy, look at productivity measures. Profits are going up while income is falling in real terms. It stands to reason that there's a buck to spare there.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Oddly enough it may not be true - the share of GDP captured is roughly 40% for corporations - and has dropped for wages. That is whilst the share of GDP for companies has remained roughly same for past few decades, wages share has dropped. This means that the share of wealth going to wage earners and working stiffs is dropping - but is not being captured by company profits. Where is it going? To self employed dividend earners - basically there are more one person bands now, freelancers etc. Some will be tax efficient schemes for bankers, but most are, well, us on HN. I cannot find the link - will see in the morning.
  - jbooth 14y ago
    I was talking about the last 5 years, as opposed to the last 30. Although household income has been declining in real terms for the last 30. I'd be interested to see your link. I was under the impression that most growth has been captured by larger corporations rather than free-lancers, and if they refer to 'self-employed dividend earners' that could easily be people collecting dividends and capital gains on stock. But that's all speculation -- hit me up with the link if you get a chance.
  - zeroonetwothree 14y ago
    It's actually been remarkably similar over the past 50 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share
- argonaut 14y ago
  This is terrible reasoning. A million different variables go into real household income, productivity, and corporate profits. Just because corporations are making profits does not necessarily mean a significant number of people making minimum wage won't be fired when the minimum wage is raised. It's not like you have managers sitting around saying, "Well, we're making money... so we can afford to pay a worker $9/hour even though their output is only worth $8/hour." If it does not make economic sense to retain a worker, a company will fire that worker.

Dove 14y ago

I don't think it's nonsense. The things that are wrong with a $1000 minimum wage are the same things that are wrong with a $10 minimum wage. They're just happening to different people. Setting a $1000 minimum wage would destroy essentially all jobs. There's nothing I or most people could do that's worth that much. Nothing at all. With my job gone, my income is zero and the products and services I contributed to society don't exist. Such a law would make me permanently poor, and would make society incrementally poorer. This is what I think happens to people whose natural output is below the minimum wage. Because their skills and education justify $6/hr but not $9, they aren't allowed to make that $6. They and society are $6/hr poorer for it. I believe firmly that people should be allowed to work if they want to, on whatever terms they find agreeable and can get. If you want to help them beyond that, I'm sure they'll think that's swell. But it shouldn't come in the form of destroying their job.

superuser2 14y ago
You're ignoring the fact that if you made $1000/hr, you could afford (and thus would be charged) higher prices for everything else, and so would everyone. Thus you would be producing $1000/hr, it's just that a thousand then would mean less than it does now. That's inflation. So long as people spend and the economy grows faster than that, we're better off than we were.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  Hyperinflation would destroy everyone's savings and destroy the ability of anyone to invest. This is a ridiculous line of reasoning anyways.
- superuser2 14y ago
  It's hyperinflation if you're increasing to $1000/hr, which is why no one is seriously suggesting that. Otherwise it's a little bit of inflation, and one that would be overshadowed by the resulting growth.
- Dove 14y ago
  Inflation doesn't work that way. You can't legislate it into existence, and you can't legislate it away. If you could, it would be an easy problem to solve. Inflation occurs when you add to the money supply more than you add to the economy. The California gold rush caused inflation. Countries with hyperinflation have governments that are printing money at incredible rates. That's completely orthogonal to minimum wage. If you say I must have a $1000/hr job, it's in current dollars. Even if my employer wanted to pay me more, he can't -- he doesn't have the money to! Even if everyone wanted to switch over to doing that, they couldn't; there isn't enough money in the system! If everyone woke up tomorrow and agreed that a dollar was worth 1000x less, they'd all be 1000x poorer and nobody could afford anything. No, the minimum wage doesn't change the value of a dollar. It just changes who's allowed to earn one.

WalterBright 14y ago

If raising the minimum wage to $12 is good for the economy, and raising it to $1000 is bad, then there's an inflection point where it switches from good to bad. Therefore, the theory that raising the minimum wage is good for the economy is incomplete at best.

seanmcdirmid 14y ago
No, it's not. This is just straw man reasoning that doesn't belong on HN. Obviously, it's not a smooth linear curve, so a raise to $10/hour is not just a weaker form of a raise to $1000 hour. One is healthy and the other wrecks the economy. There is not an inflection point, only a straw man here.
- darkarmani 14y ago
  What's the strawman part of it? Raising the minimum wage is a strawman? Who decides which one wrecks the economy?
MartinCron 14y ago
Absolutely. Totally incomplete. My point is not that "higher is better". My point is that some adjustments to some adjustable parameters may be beneficial in some contexts. Generalize further than that at your own risk.
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  Do you have an example of when $X/hour person would benefit from setting mandatory minimum wage to $(X+1)/hour?
  - ncallaway 14y ago
    Yes. If the job actually produces more than $(X+1)/hour worth of productivity to the employer. The employer, unable to continue their advantageous position of paying $X/hour (it being illegal), but finding the job still worth retaining (it generating more than $(X+1)/hour) retains the employee. The employee's salary goes from $X/hour to $(X+1)/hour. Or did I totally misunderstand your question?

aprime 14y ago

Reductio ad absurdum is a perfectly valid form of argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

tatsuke95 14y ago

>"Ridiculous arguments are ridiculous." So where is the line where it is no longer ridiculous, then? $999? $500? $10? Labour is an input cost of production; when the input prices rise, so do output prices to compensate. I'd vote for no minimum wage but with a minimum income subsidized by the government.