they said with a minimum wage increase all these services workers would be replaced by robots, self service kiosks, etc
yet business are desperate for workers now. Those threats, at the moment at least, seem pretty idle.
I don't know what a living wage is anymore, but I"m 100% against flooding our economy with immigrants who can be exploited to work the lowest possible wages.
I don't think an economy where a guy with a high school education can get a job that pays enough to keep him in a small apartment and driving a used car is a bad thing.
A minor derailment of the topic but I'll never understand why Trump was decried as racist. The people that benefited the most from his policies were young African American males and citizen latinos. They saw job opportunities and wage increases no other presidency offered them. And it was because he cut back on the annexation of America by Mexico.
IF the Free Market is allowed to operate, then as labor becomes more expensive and difficult to secure, then robotics will eventually replace them. Low skilled, repetitive tasks are ideal for automation.
No truckers to drive the trucks, more automated long haul 18 wheelers will fill the void.
No burger flippers, automation will fill the void.
No cashiers or stock boys, automation will fill the void.
At the end of the day, there will be an entire low skilled generation that will be replaced. So goes the snowflake generation.
I'm not arguing we are going there, but what I'm saying is the at the moment those arguments for the issues of raising minimum wage just aren't happening
we always hear that if they raise minimum wage there will be fewer jobs in the market place for workers. And I won't say that isn't going to happen in some fields but it also operates on the premise that small business operate with excess labor capacity. I can't imagine any business making the decision to have workers come in and work when they aren't needed. Raising minimum wage doesn't change the equation of that you need x amount of workers to run a business
and here we are in the midst of the biggest worker shortage I have seen in my lifetime, and its been ongoing during the pandemic for at least 12 months, yet I don't see any wholesale changes to automation. What I see is business changing their hours to the times they can have workers.2 -3 years down the road that automation may kick in but I think it would also decline as the worker shortage went away.
When people talk about what a guy making a burger should be paid, its not really based on the economic reality of supply and demand. Right now there aren't enough workers so a guy flipping burgers is worth much more than minimum wage to a business owner. Flipping a burger is no more effort than putting lug nuts on a car on an assembly line so why is the auto worker paid $23 an hour and the burger flipper is paid whatever? The stigma that a burger flipper has to be paid the lowest possible wage is just based on the idea that anyone can do it, but when there aren't enough anyone's, they have to be paid more to do it.
I agree about the free market, but IMO, wages have been kept artificially down for years with the glut of immigration and the idea that no one wants to pay $3 for a tomato or $12 for a hamburger.. In times of a bad economy, there should be a glut of workers and wages drop, but what we've seen during good economies is that wages don't increase at the lowest levels because that worker void was filled to some degree by legal and illegal immigration.
I do agree that there shouldn't be a minimum wage tied to a living wage. The marketplace should dictate the wages earned, but also with a government willing to control the supply of immigrant labor and minimizing job killing regulations.
