Your Reaction to Biden's Speech Before Congress (April 28, 2021)

[pbaldy]

The other downside to raising the minimum wage is that companies will hire fewer people...or none at all:

Kroger To Close 2 Long Beach Stores Following City-Mandated Pandemic Pay Increase

The chain decided to close the stores after the Long Beach City Council in Southern California passed an ordinance requiring large grocery outlets to increase wages by $4 an hour due to the pandemic.

www.npr.org

Everybody talks about how it helps the people who still have jobs. Unmentioned are the people who lose jobs or never get hired in the first place.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Isn't McDonald's putting in kiosks to take orders so they can avoid hiring people? When you import cheap foreign labor, you push entry level wages down. Increasing the minimum wage is the Socialist's best effort to fix something they broke. However, in the real world, businesses that employ minimum wage employees, automate whatever they can or they go out of business. So, Walmart and Amazon thrive because their profit margin has lots of room for wage increases, but the local Mom and Pop stores are driven out of business.

 

[pbaldy]

Isn't McDonald's putting in kiosks to take orders so they can avoid hiring people?

Yes, for some time now, and other chains as well. Similar to that is grocery stores adding self-checkout kiosks. Practically any company I call now has a maddening automated system you have to navigate before you talk to a human. Those replaced the first level of call takers.

It isn't just the minimum wage itself. There are numerous taxes and such that are based on the wages: Social Security and Medicare, workers compensation and of course unemployment come to mind. A $1 increase in minimum wage might cost the employer $1.15 or more.

 

[Isaac]

I wonder if we are going to have to become like Japan. Everyone highly skilled and that's the only jobs that there are. Everything that minimum wage people do is NASA-level automated. Or at least that's the impression I get? Is it true?

I think I heard of a place where you step in to get food and it takes your biometrics, then suggests appropriate food for you to eat based on that. It caused a minor controversy, in the nature of "offends me", of course, but that shows you how high tech things are! Everything people do here is vended there, it seems like.

While I am very skeptical of minimum wages and their constant increasing, and I know this is a bit different what I'm saying here, it does sometimes seem like we will have no choice but to follow suit with the countries that have simply graduated away from cheap labor type of employment.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The Japanese never welcomed immigrants the way we do. When their birth rate dropped and they were not producing enough young, unskilled workers to take the menial jobs, they turned to automation.