# Let's bring those jobs back... How? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 19, 2016, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448 "2016-11-19T18:20:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/101 "2016-11-22T07:12:55Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > Just read a heart-rendering piece about a poor woman in E KY who is worried about her health insurance. > Note: When ACA was implemented, part of it was an expansion of Medicaid to cover all poor adults. Predictably, the Dem Governors implemented this; the GOP, doing its damnest to scuttle anything Obama, did not. > Now, back to KY: > When the Medicaid expansion was implemented, KY had a Dem Governor; they switched to GOP in 2014. First order of GOP Governor? Petition to scrap Medicaid expansion. > How did Appalachia vote? Solid Red. > The poor woman is worried about her insurance. > > You made your bed; sweet dreams, you ignorant bitch. This “bitch” is responsible for how other people vote? And why the misogynistic language? ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/102 "2016-11-22T07:22:23Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Can country areas survive without cars and trucks, and ag equipment, made in cities? No. Without computers, imported or made in cities? No. Without all the health care, designed and implemented in cities? No. > > Country areas depend heavily on cities for the products made in cities. If all cities were wiped out, the country areas would descend rapidly to bare subsistence living. Population density makes the networks more efficient in cities for certain industries. This is true. But it’s not a necessity. Try growing food for a city in a city. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/103 "2016-11-22T07:37:19Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Automation is a two edged sword. It lowers the cost of goods, but it also decreases the labor needed to make those goods, reducing the number of available jobs. > > In theory, this increases everyone’s standard of living, but there will always be those left behind in the march of progress. > > Addressing their needs is what this is about. > > While I agree completely, this election has told us that the white rural people will hold our country hostage until we find a way to bring them jobs. Not that I feel it is the best use of our resources, but it apparently needs to be done. No. Automation doesn’t really reduce the number of jobs. There are an infinite amount of jobs available. What we lack is the ability to match labor with the jobs labor is able to do because of short-sighted and destructive wage floors. That’s why the millions of jobs that people were trained to do or had the intellect to do migrated overseas. Then you combine the fact that you lose entitlement money as you earn money and you have further disincentives to work. Look, most people in the USA don’t have the brains to be an engineer, a physician, or a computer programmer. And we only need so much dead weight at the DMV. Therefore we need jobs that folks can work at and make some money. The American worker is not intrinsically more valuable than the Asian worker. I can’t understand why people don’t see the strategic error we are making just to buy votes from under-informed leftists who think wage floors work. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/104 "2016-11-22T07:58:42Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > No. Automation doesn’t really reduce the number of jobs. There are an infinite amount of jobs available. What we lack is the ability to match labor with the jobs labor is able to do because of short-sighted and destructive wage floors. That’s why the millions of jobs that people were trained to do or had the intellect to do migrated overseas. > > Then you combine the fact that you lose entitlement money as you earn money and you have further disincentives to work. Look, most people in the USA don’t have the brains to be an engineer, a physician, or a computer programmer. And we only need so much dead weight at the DMV. Therefore we need jobs that folks can work at and make some money. The American worker is not intrinsically more valuable than the Asian worker. I can’t understand why people don’t see the strategic error we are making just to buy votes from under-informed leftists who think wage floors work. Indeed, Trump said last year that American workers want t[oo much money](http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/12/politics/donald-trump-explains-wages-too-high-comment/). > [@](#): > > Donald Trump insisted on Thursday that the U.S. must keep wages low in order to compete with other countries, one day after he dug in on his assertion that “wages are too high” in America. > > “Whether it’s taxes or wages, if they’re too high we’re not going to be able to compete with other countries,” Trump said Thursday morning on Fox News. > Trump first said he believes wages are “too high” during Tuesday night’s Republican debate, undercutting the populist tone Trump has struck on the campaign trail as he’s called for protecting U.S. manufacturing jobs from outsourcing and immigration. Later, of course, he claimed that he said no such thing. Many of those good-paying jobs with benefits that we saw the good old boys in their city cafes bemoaning will _not_ come back. Not to where they live & not with their current skill sets. Trump & his guys may find work for them–if they’ll learn to get buy on less. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/105 "2016-11-22T08:36:48Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > No. Automation doesn’t really reduce the number of jobs. There are an infinite amount of jobs available. Not quite. The number of jobs, in the sense of the number of things a person could productively do – whether or not humans right now know what those jobs are, or have the resources to make such ventures feasible – is infinite. But the _number of available jobs_ in the sense of identified tasks right now, that someone has thought of, and has the capital and other resources to either do themselves or employ someone else to do, is finite. Automation could in theory decrease this finite value. It doesn’t tend to do so, in practice, because the boost to the economy plus increase in efficiency in doing some process usually more than compensates. But there’s no law that that must necessarily be the case. > [@](#): > > Look, most people in the USA don’t have the brains to be an engineer, a physician, or a computer programmer. I would dispute that. Education standards, culture and “brains” are different things. I have worked with professionals in areas including neurosurgery and video game programming. Most were not Doctor House. Most were just average at rapidly solving problems unrelated to their line of work. But they were still great at their job, because how well you’ve studied the material matters much more. Plus motivation, time discipline, communication skills etc. Now you might say that such an IME is not proof of anything. I’d agree. But the burden of proof would be on you if you wish to assert you need X IQ to do Y job. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/106 "2016-11-22T13:34:37Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > … > What we lack is the ability to match labor with the jobs labor is able to do because of short-sighted and destructive wage floors. That’s why the millions of jobs that people were trained to do or had the intellect to do migrated overseas. > … > Therefore we need jobs that folks can work at and make some money. The American worker is not intrinsically more valuable than the Asian worker. I can’t understand why people don’t see the strategic error we are making just to buy votes from under-informed leftists who think wage floors work. And once we’ve eliminated wage floors American workers are free to earn $1/day laboring in a sweatshop just like an Asian. Even assuming we tax those workers exactly zero, how will they afford groceries on $7 a week working every day? Much less electricity for their single-wide trailer? The deep problem is two-fold: 1. The cost of living in the US is higher than in e.g. Viet Nam. So the wages have to be higher just to equal Viet Nam-level living conditions for workers. But anyone suggesting vast swaths of America live that poorly/cheaply would be doomed as an opinion leader, much less a politician. 2. At a large scale, one can only be paid as much as one’s value-add to the economy. There are certainly room for a few people to be exceptional and capture money in excess to their value-add. Real estate agents being my favorite whipping boy for that; there are others. One’s value-add is really how much \*more \*value you can create per unit of money than the competing people/tech. Right now cabbies can earn WAG $15K/year because automated cars don’t yet exist. Once they have to compete against automated cars, they can’t earn more than the annual cost of upkeep on the automation. Which may be pennies per annum. The nature of the economy has shifted with the tech and the 50% of Americans who necessarily are below average in IQ or below average in motivation or below average in education or below average in work ethic/culture face the reality of competing against the impossible. This isn’t a new issue. See [John Henry (folklore) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)) There are two solutions, one for the near and one for the far term. Near term paid retraining and paid relocation are mandatory. Or else we’ll breed a new multigenerational dysfunctional culture like the worst of ghetto culture today. Farmers and their hands can keep farming. Folks in small towns wondering what to do after the mill closed need to move and retrain. Period. There’s probably still work for a cafe and a hardware / feed store and maybe a gas station. The rest need to go. Long term, we need to reorganize the economy. Entrepreneurs don’t set out to create jobs. They set out to create value-adding thingies that take in inputs and fashion them into outputs able to be sold for more than the cost of inputs. And they pocket the difference. Called “profit”. Historically one of the inputs these thingies needed was people. Lots of them. And the pyramid was shaped to need lots of toiling drones and a relatively few real aggressive creative types near the top. And a proportionate number of middling folks in the middle. The “pyramid” looks kinda like an Eiffel Tower squashed to be half as tall as the real one. The base is wide, but the pinnacle isn’t too narrow. And there’s a smooth exponential curve on the way up. With the advent of machinery the new pyramid looks more like a very skinny knitting needle. There’s a small flat button on the bottom, and a point waaay up on top where the fatcats live. And nearly nothing in the middle. What if all corporations had to pay their taxes in shares, not in cash? Every year they fork over some percentage of their shares to the Feds. And the shares ended up in some giant mutual fund which paid dividends to everyone. Folks could not sell their shares; they’d just get their dividend checks. The Feds wouldn’t meddle in management, they’d just collect the dividends and share them out per capita. Replace SS which is essentially a Ponzi scheme with folks collectively actually owning a share of the means of production. Not as a retirement plan, but as a life income. In a world where semi-skilled or unskilled labor is almost valueless (at least in the First world) and capital is the only source of significant income, we need some way for every First worlder to have some capital. Or else we live in a world with widespread subsistence poverty and Croesus-like wealth for a tiny few and very little so-called middle class in the middle. The US in 60 years can look like the Philippines does now. Or we can do something to change the trajectory. The political objections are obvious. As are the practical ones. But if we are to pass through an era of rapid change in the economy and in the value and uses of labor, much as they did in the early industrial era, without widespread political violence and dislocation, we need to be smarter than they were then. We avoided a Great Depression in 2008 because we learned from 1929. Can we learn from history and do something smarter this time? Damned if I know. ---
**Author:** ![ganthet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de0a6/32.png) [@ganthet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ganthet)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/107 "2016-11-22T14:00:00Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > No. Automation doesn’t really reduce the number of jobs. There are an infinite amount of jobs available. What we lack is the ability to match labor with the jobs labor is able to do because of short-sighted and destructive wage floors. That’s why the millions of jobs that people were trained to do or had the intellect to do migrated overseas. Given that there are minimum wage schemes, either nationally, locally, or through government agreements with organized labor in several sectors [throughout the West and beyond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country), what data are you using to support your conclusion that minimum wage laws are short-sighted, destructive, and causing millions of Americans to migrate overseas? Beyond your gut feeling that validates your political beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/108 "2016-11-22T14:26:11Z")
Minimum wage in the United States is far below the market price of any sort of skilled labor, and in a lot of places so close to the market price of ANY kind of labor that it hardly matters. There is little evidence to support the idea the minimum wage is causing massive job loss. ---
**Author:** ![tim-n-va](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim-n-va/32/3001_2.png) [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/109 "2016-11-22T14:49:53Z")
> [@](#): > > Imagine a harness maker, seeing the first Model-T drive through his town. An astute politician might note their concern and say, “If we start using these horseless carriages, we are going to put a lot of harness makers out of work. We need to come up with a plan to retrain them to be auto mechanics or gas station attendants.” A political opponent might campaign on restoring the livery business saying “My opponent said ‘we are going to put a lot of harness makers out of work’”. Update that to be a coal miner and you have this election. And the coal states voted for the one who promised to bring back the coal industry instead of the one who said we needed to retrain people. All of the previous generation in my family worked in the coal industry. I have sympathy for their situation but for my peace of mind, I just tell myself that we will have the leader we deserve. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/110 "2016-11-22T15:40:16Z")
Agree completely with the sentiment. There is the small distinction that the movement from horses to cars was done by individuals for individual reasons; a bottom-up change if ever there was one. The move away from coal was/is being done as a direct result of top-down regulation by the level of government least responsive to localized concerns. This is of course the classic political problem. Coal use hurts everyone while paying a few shareholders fantastically and many workers pretty well versus their skill and education level. Banning or carbon-taxing coal has the opposite effect. It’s trading diffuse harm and concentrated benefit for diffuse benefit and concentrated harm. Which is pretty much the definition of “political nonstarter” for many people. It’s to the Democrats undying discredit that all environmanetal or trade-related regs don’t include remediation on the jobs front as well as on the landscape or investment front. And it’s to Republican’s undying discredit that they’d be even more hostile to any/all such regs if they did include the “welfare” provisions I suggest are absolutely necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/111 "2016-11-22T15:50:22Z")
I think you’re incorrect in ascribing the entirety of the collapse of the coal industry to government regulation. Sure, that may be part of it, but it’s also that natural gas has gotten cheaper. And coal from the western states (and from Australia) is easier to export to China and, because of low freight train costs, cheaper domestically. And there are [other factors](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/opinion/the-coal-industry-isnt-coming-back.html) as well, such as automation that reduces employment even in mines still operating. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/112 "2016-11-22T15:55:53Z")
Agreed that regulation is not the sole, or perhaps even the primary, cause. But it’s certainly the most politically resonant one. It’s easy for demagogues to hide the reality of the changes you mention behind the ogre of “that mean old EPA is killing yet more good jobs!” ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/113 "2016-11-22T15:58:34Z")
It does no one in Kentucky or elsewhere in coal country any good to claim reducing environmental regulations on coal is going to bring the jobs back. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/114 "2016-11-22T15:59:05Z")
How is the situation of the US coal mining industry different from the UK coal mining industry in the 80s? Didn’t the UK coal mining industry drastically decrease in size because Maggie refused to keep subsidizing it/bailing it out? ---
**Author:** ![tim-n-va](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim-n-va/32/3001_2.png) [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/115 "2016-11-22T16:23:52Z")
It is a complex issue. If you look back in the time frame it take to convert a plant from coal to natural gas and then back to the time it takes a well to come on line and affect prices, you could argue that the spike in drilling permits during the Bush administration did more damage to the coal industry than Obama’s EPA regulations. But, it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker so lets just go with 'cause Obama… ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/116 "2016-11-22T18:20:30Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > And once we’ve eliminated wage floors American workers are free to earn $1/day laboring in a sweatshop just like an Asian. > > Even assuming we tax those workers exactly zero, how will they afford groceries on $7 a week working every day? Much less electricity for their single-wide trailer? > The deep problem is two-fold: > > 1. The cost of living in the US is higher than in e.g. Viet Nam. So the wages have to be higher just to equal Viet Nam-level living conditions for workers. But anyone suggesting vast swaths of America live that poorly/cheaply would be doomed as an opinion leader, much less a politician. > > 2. At a large scale, one can only be paid as much as one’s value-add to the economy. There are certainly room for a few people to be exceptional and capture money in excess to their value-add. Real estate agents being my favorite whipping boy for that; there are others. > > One’s value-add is really how much \*more \*value you can create per unit of money than the competing people/tech. Right now cabbies can earn WAG $15K/year because automated cars don’t yet exist. Once they have to compete against automated cars, they can’t earn more than the annual cost of upkeep on the automation. Which may be pennies per annum. > > The nature of the economy has shifted with the tech and the 50% of Americans who necessarily are below average in IQ or below average in motivation or below average in education or below average in work ethic/culture face the reality of competing against the impossible. > > This isn’t a new issue. See [John Henry (folklore) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)) > There are two solutions, one for the near and one for the far term. > > Near term paid retraining and paid relocation are mandatory. Or else we’ll breed a new multigenerational dysfunctional culture like the worst of ghetto culture today. Farmers and their hands can keep farming. Folks in small towns wondering what to do after the mill closed need to move and retrain. Period. There’s probably still work for a cafe and a hardware / feed store and maybe a gas station. The rest need to go. > Long term, we need to reorganize the economy. Entrepreneurs don’t set out to create jobs. They set out to create value-adding thingies that take in inputs and fashion them into outputs able to be sold for more than the cost of inputs. And they pocket the difference. Called “profit”. > > Historically one of the inputs these thingies needed was people. Lots of them. And the pyramid was shaped to need lots of toiling drones and a relatively few real aggressive creative types near the top. And a proportionate number of middling folks in the middle. The “pyramid” looks kinda like an Eiffel Tower squashed to be half as tall as the real one. The base is wide, but the pinnacle isn’t too narrow. And there’s a smooth exponential curve on the way up. > > With the advent of machinery the new pyramid looks more like a very skinny knitting needle. There’s a small flat button on the bottom, and a point waaay up on top where the fatcats live. And nearly nothing in the middle. > What if all corporations had to pay their taxes in shares, not in cash? Every year they fork over some percentage of their shares to the Feds. And the shares ended up in some giant mutual fund which paid dividends to everyone. Folks could not sell their shares; they’d just get their dividend checks. The Feds wouldn’t meddle in management, they’d just collect the dividends and share them out per capita. > > Replace SS which is essentially a Ponzi scheme with folks collectively actually owning a share of the means of production. Not as a retirement plan, but as a life income. > > In a world where semi-skilled or unskilled labor is almost valueless (at least in the First world) and capital is the only source of significant income, we need some way for every First worlder to have some capital. Or else we live in a world with widespread subsistence poverty and Croesus-like wealth for a tiny few and very little so-called middle class in the middle. > > The US in 60 years can look like the Philippines does now. Or we can do something to change the trajectory. > The political objections are obvious. As are the practical ones. But if we are to pass through an era of rapid change in the economy and in the value and uses of labor, much as they did in the early industrial era, without widespread political violence and dislocation, we need to be smarter than they were then. We avoided a Great Depression in 2008 because we learned from 1929. Can we learn from history and do something smarter this time? > > Damned if I know. That was a very fine post and I agree with most of it. Octopusonomics is the following: No wage floor Basic income Need based assistance Vouchers for adult education in needed fields every decade or so of adult life Free trade Bam! Basically it’s the acknowledgment of what you are getting at in your post. The necessity for human labor in industrialized production is becoming smaller leading to less value for that labor. But people still need food, shelter, and healthcare. So we don’t have a productivity problem. We have a redistribution problem. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/117 "2016-11-22T18:21:48Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Minimum wage in the United States is far below the market price of any sort of skilled labor, and in a lot of places so close to the market price of ANY kind of labor that it hardly matters. > > There is little evidence to support the idea the minimum wage is causing massive job loss. Asian manufacturing and not full employment proves otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/118 "2016-11-22T19:52:55Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > That was a very fine post and I agree with most of it. > > Octopusonomics is the following: > > No wage floor > Basic income > Need based assistance > Vouchers for adult education in needed fields every decade or so of adult life > Free trade > > Bam! > > Basically it’s the acknowledgment of what you are getting at in your post. The necessity for human labor in industrialized production is becoming smaller leading to less value for that labor. But people still need food, shelter, and healthcare. So we don’t have a productivity problem. We have a redistribution problem. We agree a great deal more than at first appeared. Which is all to the good. The challenge is that right now we’re in danger of implementing this instead: No wage floor - Sure thing; sounds Great. [del]Basic income[/del] - No way; too Commie. [del]Need based assistance [/del] - No way; too Commie. [del]Vouchers for adult education in needed fields every decade or so of adult life [/del] - No way; too Commie. Free trade - - Sure thing; sounds Great. Or maybe Raise the Drawbridge and to Hell with the completely predictable and inevitable consequences. Which won’t work nearly as well as your proposal. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/119 "2016-11-22T19:54:19Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > We agree a great deal more than at first appeared. Which is all to the good. > > The challenge is that right now we’re in danger of implementing this instead: > No wage floor - Sure thing; sounds Great. > [del]Basic income[/del] - No way; too Commie. > [del]Need based assistance [/del] - No way; too Commie. > [del]Vouchers for adult education in needed fields every decade or so of adult life [/del] - No way; too Commie. > Free trade - - Sure thing; sounds Great. Or maybe Raise the Drawbridge and to Hell with the completely predictable and inevitable consequences. > Which won’t work nearly as well as your proposal. Sure it will, Trump and friends will make tons of money off of a program like that . It’ll be Yuuge. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/120 "2016-11-22T20:07:48Z")
No, they don’t. Neither of those things has anything at all to do with the effect of minimum wage on employment: 1. Starting with your second point, the fact that unemployment is not quite frictional (but still very low) does not prove the cause of that is the minimum wage. If you have evidence it does by all means present it, but then you’re going to have trouble explaining why the unemployment rate goes up and down while minimum wage stays the same for long period of time with the odd jump. Unemployment is caused by either a lack of jobs or a failure in the labor market. People in former coal mining hotposts in West Virginia who won’t leave Coalsville to get different jobs elsewhere aren’t unemployed because of the minimum wage, they’re unemployed because they are not where the jobs are. 1. Asian manufacturing what? The fact that people in Malaysia are cheaper is interesting but American workers don’t compete with Malaysian workers, for the most part. (If wages drove unemployment, why does California have a lower unemployment rate than West Virginia?) They compete with AMERICAN workers. Comparative advantage, you see. Reducing wages in the United States isn’t going to make it more competitive. You might pull back some jobs sewing jeans, but you’ll do yourself few favours by having an advanced industrial/technological country waste its time on jeans. Now, I have to stress that you’re putting forward some radical and innovative ideas overall, though, and who knows, maybe a basic income has an effect on this I haven’t completely accounted for. Of course, establishing a basic income AND eliminating minimum wage could put you in a situation where people are given next to no marginal enticement to work - if I can get by on the Basic Income why am I busting my ass for peanuts? Still, at least it’s an idea. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=7)