# 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:** 7
**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, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/121 "2016-11-22T20:11:43Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > 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. If basic income only covers the very basic necessities to live, dignified, but not actually comfortable, people will seek out ways of increasing their economic power in order to achieve comfort and beyond in their lifestyle. Those who don’t, and are content being a lump will not require much resources to maintain. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/122 "2016-11-22T20:50:54Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > 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. Mitch McConnell. Rand Paul. ---
**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, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/123 "2016-11-22T20:54:47Z")
OK, making that claim benefits Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and probably other politicians. But in reality, the jobs aren’t coming back. Certainly not in the numbers they once were. Because even if the regulations were not there and there was a market for Kentucky coal, the mines would rely much more on machinery than in decades past. ---
**Author:** ![Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pearl_Clutching_Provocateur)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/124 "2016-11-23T02:46:48Z")
> [@tim-n-va](#): > > 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. Why isn’t Obama retraining the coal workers now? Why was Solyndra allowed operate in California instead of West Virginia? Trump correctly pointed out that Clinton has been in Washington for 30 years and hasn’t done a damn thing to bring jobs to displaced coal miners. Why would she start after she was elected? Her primary goals were flooding the country with refugees and getting transgenders into bathrooms. ---
**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 23, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/125 "2016-11-23T02:53:00Z")
You were going along pretty good until that last sentence of utter nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/126 "2016-11-23T03:50:10Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > No wage floor > Basic income > Need based assistance > Vouchers for adult education in needed fields every decade or so of adult life > Free trade No wage floor? That’s nuts. That completely destroys the notion of the American Dream. Put the shoe on your own foot. Are you going to work harder at your own job while being paid less and while under the constant threat of being replaced? Mexican immigrants work for cheap because it’s more than they could possibly make in Mexico. Americans demand a house, a car, the latest model of iPhone. The entire culture is built around constant consumption. And you think this culture is sustainable when no one is getting paid? Is there some theory in here that if wages drop across the board prices will drop too? Basic income is a great idea and one I’d love to see. However, it won’t fly in Canada so forget it forever in the States, even if Trump and Putin are BFFs (As an aside I think it’s hilarious and tragic how Russia isn’t scary anymore but America will happily burn itself to the ground before taking a dollar from a rich person and daring to give it to a poor person). Basic income will never happen on a Republican watch and will probably never happen on a Democratic watch either because people are stupid and selfish and will always think that their neighbor in need deserves all the bad things that happen to them. If they were a real American they’d pull themselves up by their bootstraps, goddamnit! Need based assistance means giving things to black and brown folks so no chance of that for the next four years at least. See above for how if they deserved it they’d have already worked for it and earned it (Note for any TLDR people that this statement outrages: I do not share these attitudes, just acknowledging that they exist and are kind of baked into American culture). The Trump Administration’s idea of need based assistance will be along the lines that “these people” need jail or a bullet. I have nothing on vouchers for education except to note that any time I see them brought up it seems to be with a storm of controversy around them. But from your description I’m not sold. Every ten years or so give people a break on the cost (I am assuming it would not be the cost covered in full because that’s someone only goddamn communists do) so they can educate themselves? And if they embrace the opportunity good jobs will follow? Perhaps. Hopefully. But practically, logistically speaking… sounds impractical. Free trade is a non-starter. Trump is going to wipe his ass with a free trade deal on day one. America might not be able to build a real, practical wall to keep people out but crapping on free trade will certainly keep goods out. America at its best is resourceful and smart and innovative. America at its worst is greedy and racist and ignorant. America has chosen option two and will now get to discover first-hand if that is a growth market or not. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/127 "2016-11-23T04:33:53Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > So, serious question, to any and all who are on the side that the rural americans should be able to stay where they are, without learning or developing any new skills, how is this to be accomplished? How are we going to bring jobs to them? I am at a loss myself, and I have yet to have heard any sort of proposal that would address this issue. People in rural areas have cars. They can work anywhere. So you’re premise that jobs have to be local makes no sense. When I was laid off I worked multiple jobs that were 30 to 60 miles away. ---
**Author:** ![superhunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@superhunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/superhunter)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/128 "2016-11-23T05:44:04Z")
I believe that the reshoring policy can create more job opportunity. ---
**Author:** ![superhunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@superhunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/superhunter)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/129 "2016-11-23T05:46:47Z")
Hope new president can do something more better than former ones ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/130 "2016-11-23T05:54:53Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > People in rural areas have cars. They can work anywhere. So you’re premise that jobs have to be local makes no sense. > > When I was laid off I worked multiple jobs that were 30 to 60 miles away. :dubious: The scale of “local” is significantly bigger in most rural areas. Having a 60-mile or even 100-mile radius for job access is not at all the same as being able to work “anywhere”. Yes, if people in “job desert” rural areas want to go on living where they are, then there will have to be some way of creating new jobs for them _within the general area where they live_. It might be 50 miles away from their homes rather than 5 or 10, but that’s still “local” when compared to the job market in some far-distant city. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/131 "2016-11-23T06:02:55Z")
> [@superhunter](#): > > Hope new president can do something more better than former ones No harm in hoping. But unless you’ve got some kind of rational and realistic basis for your hope (and it’s not clear what rational and realistic basis there is for imagining that Donald Trump has either any coherent plan or any genuine desire to produce millions of well-paid, semi-skilled, rurally accessible and stable new jobs), then there’s no particular good in hoping either. > [@superhunter](#): > > I believe that the reshoring policy can create more job opportunity. At first I thought you were making a joke about infrastructure demands springing from climate-change-related sea-level rise (“re-shoring”, geddit?), and I was like lol. 🙂 But now I’m thinking you were seriously claiming that the incoming administration actually has some realistic and viable policy for re-introducing millions of good domestic manufacturing jobs—i.e., reverse offshoring—and I’m like _LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLL!!!_😃 ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/132 "2016-11-23T07:04:35Z")
Coal’s problem did not start with EPA/Environmental regs; it will not return even if you require all new cars to burn coal as its only power source. Coal lost when gas pipelines reached places where coal was being used. The very first home furnace I remember (1915) was a coal burner. One wall of the original coal bin remained. In 1952, that furnace had had a gas burner installed. The smoke had nothing to do with that decision. Banking a coal fire every damned night and hoping to God it stayed lit till morning was nobody’s idea of a good time. Having coal trains pull up along side of the power station and dumping a few hundred tons of coal which needed to be hoisted onto a conveyor into a boiler’s firebox wasn’t a good idea either. The only reason anybody still used coal was price. The one exception was the steel industry - Pittsburgh got steel mills because the coal in Appalachia made great coke for blast furnaces. [http://www.steel.org/making-steel/how-its-made/processes/processes-info/coke-production-for-blast-furnace-ironmaking.aspx](http://www.steel.org/making-steel/how-its-made/processes/processes-info/coke-production-for-blast-furnace-ironmaking.aspx) Have no idea if this is even a stable market; suspect it is not a high-growth industry. You don’t get to blame EPA and lie to people about “Freeing America From Commie-Pinko clean crap rules” and make them think the 1950’s technology will return and all those “pick up one bit and put it on another” factory jobs will return - and you sure as hell don’t tell them that coal mining will be 1944 again (WWII did make a lot of work…). ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/133 "2016-11-23T07:18:22Z")
The biggest reason people still had production-line jobs in 1980 (regardless of where those factories were) was because people can _ **See** _. They can place the work right-side up and facing the right way when machines couldn’t. The 1960’s saw the “electronic eye” - a crude PV array which could count widgets going by. It could not tell what color, if it was defective, etc. If you got clever, you could get it to tell size. You can believe the development of a real seeing robot was a very high priority. Now robots can feed the other robots. People exist to spot trouble and repair/replace robots and their pieces. Do you really think that particular Genie is going back into the bottle? I’m reasonably certain that that bit of reality is not subject to election results. ---
**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 23, 2016, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/134 "2016-11-23T07:24:40Z")
> [@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. Who you calling a Commie!?! This isn’t the Pit. All kidding aside, that is problematic. I used to be a lot more free market and had a blame the poor mentality to a larger degree than I do now. I still blame the poor to some extent, I got to keep my right wing street cred you know, but it’s not all intrinsic. There are tremendous extrinsic factors in people’s lives and in a world that has abundance government can institute rational policy that doesn’t destroy incentives yet mitigates the worst aspects of poverty. I think the right wing and the left wing could agree to those things labeled commie or otherwise if there was an honest dialogue on the global post industrial future. Advanced AI and robotics seem inevitable and that’s going to displace all sorts of jobs. Engineering, medicine, law, computer programming are all going to be done by machines at some point. Probably will start seeing some of that in under 15 years. > [@RickJay](#): > > 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. We wouldn’t be wasting man-hours on sewing jeans from those capable of more lucrative work. We would be utilizing idle man-hours that can’t compete in a global market when there is a local wage floor. It’s not fair to the poor to price them out of work. I’m all for need based assistance and basic income but we need to let people have some dignity and productivity. I’m not even talking about making people work 40 hrs a week or whatever in a mine. Do something get paid $2.35 hour or whatever. Collect a basic income. Still can’t feed the 12 kids here’s some food assistance. But at least by being out of the house and working one is improving their skills and keeping their mind somewhat sharp. And some productivity from the economically marginal is better than 0 productivity. Furthermore, how much mischief occurs from energetic young adults, men especially, who don’t have something productive to do? The reality is, and this isn’t kind to say but it’s the truth, but those two standard deviations to the left of 100 IQ need something to do with their lives. But they are competing with two standard deviations to the right of the 100 IQ in Asia. So let the market do what it does best and let government do what it does best. But this hodgepodge of irrational economic policy that includes nonsense like the minimum wage isn’t any help. > [@DWMarch](#): > > No wage floor? That’s nuts. That completely destroys the notion of the American Dream. Put the shoe on your own foot. Are you going to work harder at your own job while being paid less and while under the constant threat of being replaced? Mexican immigrants work for cheap because it’s more than they could possibly make in Mexico. Americans demand a house, a car, the latest model of iPhone. The entire culture is built around constant consumption. And you think this culture is sustainable when no one is getting paid? Is there some theory in here that if wages drop across the board prices will drop too? Octopusonomics is a package deal. I’m not advocating cutting the minimum wage with no other form of wealth redistribution. I believe that working on the demand side of the economy by getting currency into the hands of the poor is a good idea. But I also want to see people putting forth effort into the economy, at market value not government fiat value, and participating in the productive engine. > [@](#): > > Basic income is a great idea and one I’d love to see. However, it won’t fly in Canada so forget it forever in the States, even if Trump and Putin are BFFs (As an aside I think it’s hilarious and tragic how Russia isn’t scary anymore but America will happily burn itself to the ground before taking a dollar from a rich person and daring to give it to a poor person). Basic income will never happen on a Republican watch and will probably never happen on a Democratic watch either because people are stupid and selfish and will always think that their neighbor in need deserves all the bad things that happen to them. If they were a real American they’d pull themselves up by their bootstraps, goddamnit! Need to start educating people on the merits of sensible socialism and the dislocations in the near and mid future from strong AI. > [@](#): > > Need based assistance means giving things to black and brown folks so no chance of that for the next four years at least. See above for how if they deserved it they’d have already worked for it and earned it (Note for any TLDR people that this statement outrages: I do not share these attitudes, just acknowledging that they exist and are kind of baked into American culture). The Trump Administration’s idea of need based assistance will be along the lines that “these people” need jail or a bullet. > > I have nothing on vouchers for education except to note that any time I see them brought up it seems to be with a storm of controversy around them. But from your description I’m not sold. Every ten years or so give people a break on the cost (I am assuming it would not be the cost covered in full because that’s someone only goddamn communists do) so they can educate themselves? And if they embrace the opportunity good jobs will follow? Perhaps. Hopefully. But practically, logistically speaking… sounds impractical. Teach people that trade and economics is not zero sum and that brown, black, white, and purple people that have money means more consumers to buy things. More consumers to buy things means more demand for capital goods and factories. It’s a virtuous cycle. But people need the education. Claiming that the motivation to oppose certain policy is based on hate or bigotry just leads to recalcitrance. > [@](#): > > Free trade is a non-starter. Trump is going to wipe his ass with a free trade deal on day one. America might not be able to build a real, practical wall to keep people out but crapping on free trade will certainly keep goods out. > > America at its best is resourceful and smart and innovative. > America at its worst is greedy and racist and ignorant. > America has chosen option two and will now get to discover first-hand if that is a growth market or not. Hopefully Trump wasn’t serious. But you know what, the stuff I’m proposing is inevitable as automation and advanced AI progresses. Why not reap the benefit of more rational public planning now? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/135 "2016-11-23T11:39:15Z")
> [@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. If you eliminated minimum wage laws tomorrow, American workers would still not be competitive with workers from China, India and other countries because those countries have a much larger population at a much lower standard of living. The simple fact is that many Americans cannot afford to live at the unrestrained market wage for their low skill job. Now perhaps that is a signal to find a higher skilled job, but as you said, most people can’t be engineers and hedge fund managers. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/136 "2016-11-23T11:41:03Z")
> [@DWMarch](#): > > No wage floor? That’s nuts. That completely destroys the notion of the American Dream. Put the shoe on your own foot. Are you going to work harder at your own job while being paid less and while under the constant threat of being replaced? Mexican immigrants work for cheap because it’s more than they could possibly make in Mexico. Americans demand a house, a car, the latest model of iPhone. The entire culture is built around constant consumption. And you think this culture is sustainable when no one is getting paid? Is there some theory in here that if wages drop across the board prices will drop too? There are very few people getting paid at our current federal wage floor, and most of them are doing just fine. Questions like, “And you think this culture is sustainable when no one is getting paid?” are straw men. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/137 "2016-11-23T12:24:50Z")
There are a buttload of jobs that can be doe anywhere there is a broadband connection. And no high tech company wants to locate where they can only get dial-up speeds. There is a lot of fiber that got buried in the early aughts and has never seen data. Bringing high speed data to Mayberry may not be the solution, but it can’t hurt. ---
**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 23, 2016, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/138 "2016-11-23T15:29:20Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > There are very few people getting paid at our current federal wage floor, and most of them are doing just fine. Questions like, “And you think this culture is sustainable when no one is getting paid?” are straw men. As quite a number of them live in states with a higher minimum wage than the federal, that doesn’t really say much, as there are many who are making minimum wage, just not federal minimum wage. Do you consider someone making 5 cents over minimum wage to be getting paid at the floor? That $2 a week (assuming 40 hours) doesn’t really get them that far. I would look at the number of people making less than what is considered a living wage, at least $10 an hour, as the number of people to be looking at, not the number of people literally making $7.25 an hour. I would question whether “most of them are doing just fine.” as well. I’ve worked with people at the minimum wage end of the pay scale. They live lives of desperation, paycheck to paycheck, usually two jobs, and are barely hanging on. They have no luxuries, no vacations, no rest from the daily grind. They are one bad day from ruin. Car breaks down, they get sick, kid gets sick, cop decided to give them a hassle and make them late to work, or any number of things that people on the higher end of the scale can just absorb, maybe sacrificing a luxury or two, can completely destroy what little they have managed to secure for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/139 "2016-11-23T16:54:19Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > We wouldn’t be wasting man-hours on sewing jeans from those capable of more lucrative work. We would be utilizing idle man-hours that can’t compete in a global market when there is a local wage floor. It’s not fair to the poor to price them out of work. I’m all for need based assistance and basic income but we need to let people have some dignity and productivity. I’m not even talking about making people work 40 hrs a week or whatever in a mine. > > Do something get paid $2.35 hour or whatever. My question to you, though, is how many people do you think will show up for work at $2.13 an hour? My guess is next to nobody. I would not have worked for that kind of money when I was a teenager. People are not going to show up for an eight hour shift to make seventeen dollars. I wouldn’t. You can make better money than that doing fiverr work, or selling weed, or doing a little grey market handyman work. I bet you could go door to door offering to do literally any odd job and make more than $17 a day. You’re just not going to change the employment figures much with pittance wages. And I’m dubious that the problem is people with below-mean IQs. Have you read the story about the woman with a Ph.D in medieval history who’s on food stamps? IQ isn’t her problem (not as usually measured, anyway.) Again, I stress I don’t want to be a picky asshole. You’re proposing some cool and radical things and it may be I do not grasp the entirety of your platform. But I cannot get around the fact that people do value their time according to money. “Get out of the house and keep your mind active” isn’t going to make someone show up for work. Money makes them show up for work. ---
**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 23, 2016, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/140 "2016-11-23T17:10:51Z")
Agreed. IMO the “no minimum wage” thing is just a sop to the rightists’ idea of economic “freedom”. The freedom to be a serf that is. People, even poor people, value their time at something greater than $1/day. The whole goal of the **octopus** plan is to get \*away \*from “work or starve; at wages chosen by others with no thought to your needs.” Killing the MW is a giant step the wrong way in getting to his / my / our goal. When my bro was a kid he had the bright idea that we ought to reform basic welfare as it then was simply by requiring all recipients to show up at a designated place and be there all day. We’d equip large warehouses as waiting rooms with chairs, lights, AC and little else. Plus a timeclock and guards. Certainly no TV or in today’s era, WiFi. So welfare would be readily available based on need, but you’d have to put in 40 hours at the waiting room / warehouse to “earn” it. His childish view was this eliminated the temptation to simply live a life of retired ease and freedom on the public nickel. The warehouses wouldn’t be unpleasant, but neither would they be especially pleasant. As between clocking 40 hours a week sitting there or 40 laboring at Walmart for only slightly more money, he expected many people would choose Walmart. Thereby eliminating the moral hazard that the best = smartest deal is money for doing whatever you want all day including sitting at home watching whatever on TV. Pretty good idea for a kid. Smarter yet to add job training, etc. But at a minimum just requiring some effort to “earn” your support reduces the moral hazard a bunch. And keeps some fraction of miscreants off the street at least during daytime hours. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=8)