Mike Lester for May 21, 2015

Before robots, this socialist doubling of minimum wage requirements will result in less jobs, since small businesses will have to layoff workers, higher prices on everything for those lucky enough to have jobs and an even bigger Welfare State than Obammas current records highs.Sounds peachy!

Btw great toon with the shrinking audience.

The dumbing down of cartooning will soon lead to robotic scribbles taking over.

" … It would take an employee making $10 a hour a more than two months working each day to earn as much as the average CEO in the industry makes in a single hour. …"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/04/06/how-much-ceos-earn-hourly/25353423/

I have commented on this before. We will have to consider a guaranteed minimum income as human labor becomes displaced. The Swiss, of all people, voted on a national referendum on a guaranteed minimum income not too long ago and around 40% voted yes. The Swiss are much more practical than the Americans, though, and we will be the last to adopt this sort of a measure as the real nature of unemployment becomes more apparent. It’s not just the ill educated, though. Middle class jobs like lawyer and accountant will become computerized as well. The biggest changes will accelerate when computers, using natural language interfaces, begin to access data on the web to self program. The pace of the learning will become exponential. As a species, we are far too irrational in our evolutionarily-developed biology to respond to this challenge with any sort of coherent strategy. Just look at all the ignorant comments made on this forum. Interesting times.

Mike, Try living on minimum wage for a year. The buying power of the working class is what drives our economy. When the working class can no longer afford to buy over priced goods the economy will collapse.

So, our choices as a country are to allow people to work for poverty wages or to replace them with robots? The rich are so important that we cannot protect the working class? The sad part is that there are people who are saying that it is morally wrong to ensure that minimum wage is a living wage, but that it is morally correct to allow people to be paid poverty wages.

Txclix makes a good point in that technology is gradually displacing workers in both the low income and middle income levels. How many bank tellers were replaced by ATM’s, how many sales and real estate people were replaced by on line sales and searches. Clearly companies will continue to use the technology to be more competitive. This is a sea change in our society. Raising the minimum wage is probably a necessary stop gap measure.

What we really need to think about is how to provide productive careers for these people who are displaced by technology? The best thing for our society is to figure out how to take those who are disadvantaged by this and figure out how to turn them into a valuable resource for our society. If a person is working they pay taxes and don’t need support from social programs. A win, win.

So, if we lower min. wage, then everyone will have jobs? Do anyone really want to go back to $1 per hour? How about no min. wage and everyone works for free? How about letting only kids work, since they are cheaper than adults? How about letting only single people work, since they are cheaper than married people? How about only letting women work, since they are cheaper than men? How about only letting little girls work, since they are cheaper than adult married men? And, are talking about skilled or unskilled labor? Professional or non-professional labor? So, should a hospital hire a female child as an er doctor, because she is cheaper than her adult male counterpart?

I think I’ve been explaining the problem with a minimum wage increase using the wrong backdrop. People like you are assuming that business can afford to pay their people more because of the record profits that you are seeing coming from big corporate America. Here’s the problem: It’s not big corporate America that I’m worried about.How will you explain the hike in minimum wage to $15 an hour to a small business owner that employs maybe… 5 other people? Clearly, their profit margins cannot absorb that kind of increase. There is more than anecdotal evidence that supports small businesses will eventually be the victims of a minimum wage increase. What will end up happening is the business owners will lay off workers and work those hours themselves and just not pay themselves (because they can do that as owners). So it will not only cost jobs, but it will also degrade the quality of life for the small business owners. And just in case you say, “well, the small business owners can close up shop and get unemployment,” you would only be partially correct. Small business owners only get 4 weeks of unemployment coverage when they close up shop. Minimum wage was designed for workers who had no skills, no work experience, and no expenses. It was not designed to be a career wage. After all, why would you pay a 40-something parent the same as a 16-year-old kid who has no job history whatsoever?

So, does that job still exist in the US? If so, is it held by an H1 visa person? (H1 might be wrong, but you probably know the correct designation)

Or has it been outsourced to India, like tons of other computer jobs?

Democrats are destroying the small business backbone of our economy.

There are plenty of jobs robots can not do or do yet. Robots can not take a pile of laundry and fold it very quickly. A small child can fold a towel in about 7 seconds. So far the fastest a robot can fold a towel is a little over 20 minutes. Robots can do things that are on/off clearly defined. They have a hard time when something is off. They can not learn new tasks fast or at all. They are not adaptable. A human can go from serving a customer, to baking, assembly work, to sweeping the floor. You need a different robot for all those tasks.

" Wages are tied to production" .Are you sure?http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-the-gap-between-worker-pay-and-productivity-is-so-problematic/385931/

in a lot of small businesses the lowest paid employee [per hour] is the owner // dear orator it is clear that you do not understand free market capitalism // i sold my accounting firm at right time [ as computers started getting advanced ] the small accounting offices are being wiped out // min wage started under fdr and if up dated for inflation it would be just above $4 per hour

The most recent vote for the $15/hr doesn’t fully kick in for five years, and the cost of living there, makes it poverty wages, or below, buying power-wise. In other areas, that $10/hr may well be enough to get by. It’s the reason that minium should be keyed to cost of living based on SMSA’s for example, as even my state, there’s wide variations from city to rural environments.

A very spoiled and entitled society we live in. Immigrants can live on minimum wage with sacrifice and hard work. What’s hurting the lower class is not low wages, its education (which is free in this country but not properly used). Why do you have immigrants prosper int his country after one generation and you have people born here and been here for generations cannot prosper without help. People want immediate gratification, no sacrifice, no struggle. You can give these people everything to succeed but they will not because it wasn’t earned.

I do listen to National Public Radio plus a strong dose of curiosity. More people should do both and become more informed.Not that many are going to read this but on bias:Surveys and follow-up focus groups conducted by the Tarrance Group and Lake Snell Perry & Associates have indicated that, “The majority of the U.S. adult population does not believe that the news and information programming on public broadcasting is biased. The plurality of Americans indicate that there is no apparent bias one way or the other, while approximately two-in-ten detect a liberal bias and approximately one-in-ten detect a conservative bias.”If anything I read a detailed study that found that NPR was slightly biased conservative in their reporting which they attributed to fighting the perception of a liberal bias.

Conservatives LOVE the “slippery slope” argument. They use it over and over and over…

One problem with that argument: Computer gear went Down in price more as a factor of Economies of Scale (i.e. Everybody ran out an Bought them) than any other factor..Factory Robots will not have that advantage so they will continue to be a High Cost item.Especially since, unlike computers, each job requires Custom Made accessories for the robot..You can take a computer out of a Bank and install it on a factory floor, drop in the right set of programs and it works fine..Take that ATM out of the Bank and it has few other uses. Well, maybe you could reprogram it to deal Blackjack if you made the Cards the same size & weight as $20 Bills.…

“The Republicans want to pay you $5 an hour.”..No, Rad-ish. The Republicans want to pay YOU $5 an hour. Everyone else is worth more.

And, like I asked in my original post (which no-one bothered to answer), why are we going to be paying a 16 year-old kid who has no skills the same as a 40-something parent who has 20 years in the work force? Because if you’re a 40-something parent that’s making minimum wage now, you’re horribly, horribly wrong.

@oceantrvlr I loved on less than minimum wage for nearly two years with a wife and child. We lived in a burned out station wagon, while I worked three jobs and finished my degree (without student loans, they didn’t exist) Now I am the owner of several successful businesses and drag in top 1% income. The difference is I did NOT want to stay at a minimum wage job the rest of my life, it was NOT a way to earn a living, it was a way to keep food on the table while I prepared for a REAL life. .That is ALL such entry level jobs are EVER supposed to be. Anyone trying to keep an entry level job as a career has MANY more issues than minimum wage..@vwdualnomand Just because there is no minimum wage it does NOT follow that “everyone works for free”. Such hysterics do little to promote discussion..@Hiram Bingham Higher wages mean the employer has less capital for increased production, or he must reduce his overhead on other ways … like fewer employees working longer hours with fewer benefits. THAT reality hits LONG before the higher incomes start being spent..Every year I have the budget to hire about a dozen unskilled, untrained, inexperienced high school graduates into entry level positions paying minimum wage ($7.25). Over the next three months they are trained, in various functions. During that time they provide NO BENEFIT to me or the business, they are a drain on our profitability. However, by the end of that three months, we know which individuals have the ability and work ethics to succeed in this business (and which don’t), that is about 3 or 4 kids on average. Those individuals are given wage adjustments every quarter for the next several years as they become more knowledgeable and skilled in the work requirements. By the middle of their second year they are making somewhere above $16/hr, and by the end of their fifth year they are making over $20 and have the potential for making well over $100K a year before they are 40 years old. .The rest, who have a decent work ethic but lack the unique abilities we need, are given the opportunity to enter our construction training program and work toward a skilled labor position that can also be quite lucrative..Jumping minimum wage to $15 means I only have the budget to hire 5 of these unskilled, untrained and inexperienced teenagers, leaving SEVEN to seek a minimum wage DEAD-END job flipping burgers.

Thank you for the compliment. I will look forward to your response.

@ Painter: If you’re still reading this (I don’t log in on the weekends), this is why I cannot stand the concept of a federalized minimum wage. Everything should be based on locale. Just like the cost of living in Manhattan is much higher than in Fargo, the minimum wage should go along with it. Painting with a broad brush only causes problems on both ends of the spectrum. You have people in Manhattan claiming poverty even at $15 an hour, and you have businesses struggling to pay their people at $15 an hour in Fargo. Minimum wage should be indexed against not only inflation, but also cost of living in an area. The Military already has this calculated, as you get COLA’s attached to housing provisions. And then it should be UNTOUCHED. No more tinkering. We should walk back through history and identify the initial minimum wage, index it against inflation, and then add the COLA multiplier and boom. Done. Leave it be. That way everyone in each area is getting provided the same proportionate income. That way people in Manhattan may be making $18 an hour and those in Fargo are making $8, but the local economic standing is the same.When you have politicians tinkering with the system, they are currying favor and trying to score political points. They aren’t actually solving the problem, and frequently are making it worse.

The problem I have with this comment: “One of the big reason I see for minimum wage even a bare federal one is to get more working people off government welfare and food stamps.”Is that you still have the public paying these social programs, just in a different way. Instead of taxpayers having it taken from them through the tax code, they have it taken from them at the register; companies will respond simply by raising their prices. It’s a vicious cycle that will never end. And artificially pushing up the minimum wage will compress the spending potential of middle-class workers (who won’t get an equivalent raise). After all, dollars only have a set spending power value. I remember I used to buy gasoline at just over $1. Now, it’s over $3.50. Same gasoline, just costs more. Kind of begs the question why.As to military families needing food stamps, that strikes me as unusual. I am a Sergeant of Marines, and when I was still in, I was pulling home roughly 3k a month after taxes while on active duty, after all my housing allowances, my increase in pay for my dependents, and I had free health care. That to me signals one of two things: Either they are abusing the system (because their income is reported as lower than it realistically is), or they have a dependent that is a dependopotomus, refusing to get a job to contribute to the household (which may only need a part-time job to supplement it). The reason I don’t want a federal minimum wage is it makes WASHINGTON responsible for setting the floor, which means they can still play politics with it. They can force up the minimum wage in the “lowest of places,” to force up the minimum wage elsewhere. If they left it to the states (like the Constitution said it should be), then you don’t have politicians playing favorites with the pet programs just to get re-elected. Ah well, nothing you or I will ever solve here. lol