(April 16, 2015 at 4:59 pm)Heywood Wrote: The government has priced human labor out of the market by imposing a minimum wage.
Are we sure of this? Minimum wage workers comprise less than 5% of the hourly-paid workforce, and only about 2.5% of the total workforce when salary people are included. If we abolished minimum wage as some conservative economists propose, how many workers would flock to new jobs paying less than the $7.25 current rate, or if employed now, would stay on after their boss cut their pay to take advantage of the abolition? We know of course a few would, especially those who have no option but to take whatever deal they are offered. Yet we consider the loss of a small number of potential subminimum jobs an acceptable price for having "fair labor standards." Not that the subminimum jobs disappear anyhow: There's always paying cash under the table.
*See BLS Minimum Wage at
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2013/ted_20130325.htm
(April 17, 2015 at 7:11 am)Brian37 Wrote: Technology especially over the past 100 years has constantly replace humans...
The Luddites of Nottingham thought along this line back in 1811 but I don't buy it. I'm glad automation has done away with breathing cotton dust all day at looms until you choke to death. There's nothing wrong with using tech to do jobs formerly done by hands, provided that alternative employment is found for the displaced workers.
Our arrangements for displaced workers are in fact less than ideal. However it is equally true that attempts to find work for them are made, both formally through government programs and by workers themselves. Generally what we're sad about is the decline of high-paid unions such as the United Auto Workers whose members had to take lower-paid jobs after their plants closed. The classic Rust Belt story. Balanced against that is the fact that everyone else, including the poor, had to pay higher prices for crappy cars before foreign competition and robots got strong.
