5 ms·

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 happ

by 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.
  - sergiosgc 14y ago
    It's not the money supply. It's the money flow, which you can model as a product of money supply and money circulation speed. A $1000USD minimum wage will increase circulation speed and from there induce inflation.
    - Dove 14y ago
      Let me get this straight. You think a minimum wage increase will increase the velocity of money, which will cause inflation, which is a good thing. That's the argument? Is that argument . . . original?
      - sergiosgc 14y ago
        Don't read too much into my comment. Your argumentation was based on the the fact that inflation only occurs when you add monetary mass. I just pointed that that's a naive view. Contrary to your statement, you can legislate inflation into existence by creating conditions for increased money flow. I did not say anything about the benefits of increasing minimum wage. In general it is known that the absence of minimum wage creates unsustainable imbalances of income society-wide. However, I don't know the US economy well enough for an informed opinion. Your current imbalance of income is huge, but that's only one data point.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
I agree with this. 1000/hr will make all jobs unfeasible - on the basis that a job is a way to earn money by offering greater value in labour than in wage. But what if we lived in a society where solar powered robots did everything and one guy earnt all the money for just pressing the power switch at 8am each day? How would we share out the bounties of wealth these robots made? Giving everyone a job at below cost might be one way. Not the best but it is a way. So I suggest that the coming world will have vast wealth, and fewer jobs - and we need to find new ways to make society fair for all. Because an unfair society is a Bad Thing. Edit: tried to be cleaerer
- tolmasky 14y ago
  I don't understand this view. Every time I see people spending hours of their time watching harlem shake videos or any other silly nonsense on the web, I am heartened that there are infinite jobs in entertaining each other and providing "non essential" services. OK sure, robots will take over construction and heavy lifting, leaving only a "super class" of surgeons and whatnot still able to get any of the jobs we recognize today. But I think we are far away from robots taking away other very human jobs. I pay for a twitch.tv subscription so I can see StarCraft games in 720p+. I literally pay other people to play video games. This is not some strange oddity, this is the future. Remember: once upon a time it was a full time job for just about everyone in a society to get food, take care of children, and just generally do the bare minimum to survive. I'm sure they look at the world we live in today as "post-scarcity" the same way we imagine a world of tomorrow where robots do all of our duties. When agriculture introduced surplus into our society, it didn't cause a collapse. It instead allowed art and science to be born. Just as those early humans would have scoffed at Michelangelo getting a paycheck for putting colors on walls, so to does this possible future seem frivolous to us. But it is no more frivolous than all the current people employed in our current economy convincing each other to buy things we don't need. If or when machines do everything we consider essential now, I assure you we will find new things to do with our time, some will be better than others at these new things, and thus we will pay each other to do them.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
john_fushi 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 $10 minimum wage. They're just happening to different people" You don't seem to consider elasticity. Basically, the main argument of the proponents of a higher minimum wage is that the hiring capacity is elastic enough that a raise in minimal wage's benefits far outweigh the resulting loss of jobs. Saying that raising the minimal wage to 10$ show the same problems than raising it to 1000$ is wrong in that it considers that, at best, the elasticity of the hiring capacity equals 1. However, we can expect it to be false if we consider that the minimal wage has, in effect, went down in the recent years and that it did not result in a hiring frenzy.

by Dove 14y ago

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.
- sergiosgc 14y ago
  It's not the money supply. It's the money flow, which you can model as a product of money supply and money circulation speed. A $1000USD minimum wage will increase circulation speed and from there induce inflation.
  - Dove 14y ago
    Let me get this straight. You think a minimum wage increase will increase the velocity of money, which will cause inflation, which is a good thing. That's the argument? Is that argument . . . original?
    - sergiosgc 14y ago
      Don't read too much into my comment. Your argumentation was based on the the fact that inflation only occurs when you add monetary mass. I just pointed that that's a naive view. Contrary to your statement, you can legislate inflation into existence by creating conditions for increased money flow. I did not say anything about the benefits of increasing minimum wage. In general it is known that the absence of minimum wage creates unsustainable imbalances of income society-wide. However, I don't know the US economy well enough for an informed opinion. Your current imbalance of income is huge, but that's only one data point.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

I agree with this. 1000/hr will make all jobs unfeasible - on the basis that a job is a way to earn money by offering greater value in labour than in wage. But what if we lived in a society where solar powered robots did everything and one guy earnt all the money for just pressing the power switch at 8am each day? How would we share out the bounties of wealth these robots made? Giving everyone a job at below cost might be one way. Not the best but it is a way. So I suggest that the coming world will have vast wealth, and fewer jobs - and we need to find new ways to make society fair for all. Because an unfair society is a Bad Thing. Edit: tried to be cleaerer

tolmasky 14y ago
I don't understand this view. Every time I see people spending hours of their time watching harlem shake videos or any other silly nonsense on the web, I am heartened that there are infinite jobs in entertaining each other and providing "non essential" services. OK sure, robots will take over construction and heavy lifting, leaving only a "super class" of surgeons and whatnot still able to get any of the jobs we recognize today. But I think we are far away from robots taking away other very human jobs. I pay for a twitch.tv subscription so I can see StarCraft games in 720p+. I literally pay other people to play video games. This is not some strange oddity, this is the future. Remember: once upon a time it was a full time job for just about everyone in a society to get food, take care of children, and just generally do the bare minimum to survive. I'm sure they look at the world we live in today as "post-scarcity" the same way we imagine a world of tomorrow where robots do all of our duties. When agriculture introduced surplus into our society, it didn't cause a collapse. It instead allowed art and science to be born. Just as those early humans would have scoffed at Michelangelo getting a paycheck for putting colors on walls, so to does this possible future seem frivolous to us. But it is no more frivolous than all the current people employed in our current economy convincing each other to buy things we don't need. If or when machines do everything we consider essential now, I assure you we will find new things to do with our time, some will be better than others at these new things, and thus we will pay each other to do them.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

john_fushi 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 $10 minimum wage. They're just happening to different people" You don't seem to consider elasticity. Basically, the main argument of the proponents of a higher minimum wage is that the hiring capacity is elastic enough that a raise in minimal wage's benefits far outweigh the resulting loss of jobs. Saying that raising the minimal wage to 10$ show the same problems than raising it to 1000$ is wrong in that it considers that, at best, the elasticity of the hiring capacity equals 1. However, we can expect it to be false if we consider that the minimal wage has, in effect, went down in the recent years and that it did not result in a hiring frenzy.