California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

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Weetabix
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California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by Weetabix »

California has reached a deal to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr. The article says it's not finalized yet.

If I recall correctly, SEATAC airport did this a while back, and it resulted in a worse overall condition for many of the workers - lower tips, companies stopped supplying "free lunch," etc.

My question: What will happen to the economy and to currently lower-wage individuals in the future?

Fire away!
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dfwmtx
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by dfwmtx »

Step 1: get companies to raise minimum wage to $15.
Step 2: companies automate as many minimum wage jobs as possible to avoid paying high minimum wages.
Step 3: agitate for more welfare for those who lack the education/training/skills/character/etc to get a job that's not automated. There's already folks talking about this, and even a few places in Europe where it's being done as an experiment.
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Weetabix
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by Weetabix »

I used to know a hydrologist who was strong on theory and kind of weak on practicality.

He was asked to design erosion protection under an existing bridge to protect the abutments from scour. So he modeled the existing conditions and got the flow velocity. Designed a riprap blanket to protect from that velocity. Ran the model again with the riprap in place.

Uh oh! With a smaller opening, the velocity increased. So he designed a riprap blanket with larger stone. Ran the model again with the new riprap in place.

Uh oh! With a smaller opening, the velocity increased. So he designed a riprap blanket with larger stone. Ran the model again with the new riprap in place.

Uh oh! With a smaller opening, the velocity increased. So he designed a riprap blanket with larger stone. Ran the model again with the new riprap in place.

Pretty soon, he had one large stone filling the opening under the bridge. No erosion, but no flow, either.

Sometimes, these minimum wage agitators remind me of that guy. "Let's just raise minimum wage to $1,000,000/hour, and we'll all only have to work one hour a year!" :roll:
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BDK
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by BDK »

There are times, when I think there need to be cash incentives for vasectomies for... Well those likely to make unfit fathers/impregnate unfit mothers.

It bothers the heck out of me, but it's either that or aggressively removing children at early ages from unfit homes.

The first and most moral step is to rework adoption laws.

That, and a social change. Plenty of Americans used to be domestics/gardeners/etc - there's nothing dishonorable about it, and it's about the work that many of the currently unemployed may be suited for - though I think a large amount may simply be unfit for anything requiring honesty and the ability to show up
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randy
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by randy »

Weetabix wrote:My question: What will happen to the economy...
Sounds like a golden time to get qualified in repair and maintenance of the automated systems that will be replacing a lot of low skills jobs.
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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dfwmtx
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by dfwmtx »

I keep wondering what will finally drive the last of the Hollywood film industry out of the state. Maybe this will be it.
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"I am Chaos, I am alive...and I tell you that you are free!" -Eris Discordia
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Kommander
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by Kommander »

dfwmtx wrote:Step 1: get companies to raise minimum wage to $15.
Step 2: companies automate as many minimum wage jobs as possible to avoid paying high minimum wages.
Step 3: agitate for more welfare for those who lack the education/training/skills/character/etc to get a job that's not automated. There's already folks talking about this, and even a few places in Europe where it's being done as an experiment.
This would be a post scarcity economy, it's what they have on Star Trek. In this kind of economy there simply are not enough jobs for everyone dure to automation, so the government provides a comfortable living standard for all it citizens. We essentially get an economic free lunch via robots, allowing people to spend all their time exploring space, creating art, but mostly just sitting on their ass.

Of course Star Trek didn't show the absolute clusterfuck that actually successful establishing this kind of economy would be. There is also the fact that if we don't unfuck our economy long term we might find our future closer to Fallout than Star Trek.
Aesop
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by Aesop »

dfwmtx wrote:I keep wondering what will finally drive the last of the Hollywood film industry out of the state. Maybe this will be it.
The lowest wages in the film industry are Production Assistants, who are entry-level gophers who have and will continue to work for far less than minimum wage, as they are the only employees not covered by union and guild contracts (which start around double minimum wage, and go up to 4 or 6 times that as base rates, BTW), and contract for fixed day rates, which when averaged over their 20-hour days, put them at the minimum wage - from about 1980. That will not change in the slightest. The conga-line of bright young kids from Kansas and Iowa who want to work in the movies almost stretches form here to there, several times over, in real time and space, and has since forever. It would be easier to keep illegals out of the US than to stop people wanting to work in Hollywood.

This won't do jack or shit to "the biz", except indirectly. If anything, the increasing cost will drive union rates higher to cover COL increases, and make your ticket prices higher.

And 50% of the film part of the industry has already been lured away by Keynesian tax offers from out of state, which works for about a minute.
Then the locals get savvy, start demanding Hollywood union wages for far less than Hollywood-caliber work, and pretty soon, producers say "Why the fuck should we go to _________, when those bastards charge us the same rate as the guys in Hollywood? (Because the AFL-CIO is happy to organize them out of state too, that's why!) "We might as well stay in town, where I can at least get a decent deli/piroshki/latte'/dimsum/whatever at 2AM, and sleep in my own bed."

The historically illiterate or agnostic would do well to note that the movie industry came to Hollywood in the first place because Edison & Co. thought they owned the entire technology of the movie business, sued the hell out of anyone - especially those whose names ended in -steen or -stein - who made movies in NFY and NJ, and a bunch of European Jews got tired of rigged eastern courts, and east coast trade unions, so they got on a train, got off in Phoenix (where it was raining for once in 20 years), continued to Hollywood by way of Union Station, saw the 300+ days of sunshine, the conveniently close mountains, deserts, ocean, and the cheap real estate, and said "Boys, this is it! Let's make movies here!" You can run from higher wages, but you can't hide. Notably, they haven't moved since, despite yearly cries they're trying to. The world is too interconnected to make that work anymore. Now, you go somewhere else because you get the scenic backdrop for free - if you can film there at all without getting either killed, or just financially ass-raped, by the locals. Hollywood wins again.

The problem with the film business isn't that it's in Hollywood, it's that it's driven by the people who live there.
You want to fix that? Get a laptop, an NLE editing program, and an HD camera, and make your own damned movies. Market them, make piles of money, and you can pick and choose what you make.

Oh, and stop going to shitty leftist propaganda movies. They mostly make what sells. Unfortunately, they plow the profits to subsidize the leftist shit that doesn't sell, which is how capitalism works in a free country. So we're back to make your own damn movie, and plow the profits into what you want.

And stop discouraging your kids from going into the arts (and academia). Politics is downstream from culture, and the arts are culture.
Imagine if William F. Buckley, Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, or George Will were studio executives and college presidents, instead of pundits, and tell me what America would look like now, culturally. Infiltrate, subvert, and dominate. it's how Reagan took over the GOP, and it's worked for the Left for decades. Learn it, live it, love it.

But I digress.
A few notes on the actual vote:

1) This was passed by the (overwhelmingly supermajority Democrap) legislature, to stave off a ballot initiative than would have been on the November presidential election ballot (that might then not have passed) that was set to drive the wages from $10 straight to $15/hr, overnight. The bill passed instead raises wages 50 cents for each of the next two years, and then $1/yr for the next four, to get from the recent $10 to an eventual $15/hr min wage. So it's better, in that it isn't as overnight-horrible as the asinine ballot initiative would have been. It also recognizes that wages have stagnated versus prices, and that $15 now buys what $8 used to hereabouts, 5-10 years ago.

2) This isn't the horror the SeaTac plan was, because it was one city, and people could vote with their feet to shop and patronize outside city limits. In CA, the alternative is to go another state away. Businesses have largely done so, and what's left here is here because it can't move. Cf. Detroit for how that works out in the long run.

3) When you have a fiat currency that devalues against world prices year in and year out, prices increase whether you wish it or not. Wages should as well, unless you like the income disparity of the Middle Ages. I'm not saying $15 is where minimum wage should be, here or anywhere in the US, or that now was a good time, but you play under the economic system you have, not the one you wish you had.

4) This will trickle downstream to all of you, as you get your food from here. Businesses will, indeed, automate more, which throws more people onto unemployment. We can't afford that now, and the crushing future obligations of this state's pensions system will shortly destroy the whole edifice with more certainty than atomic bombs. Those of us with some perspicacity are making preparations for that day, among other options. The same is largely true of the US Gov.'s obligations regarding Social Security, Medicare, and the national debt.

5) Laugh now; this exact situation is coming to your state soon enough, and then the whole country, whether you like it or not.
There may yet be a few fiscally responsible states left, but everyone is still in the U.S.
I wouldn't be holding my breath for Secession 2.0 to save you when the storm comes.
Last edited by Aesop on Fri Apr 01, 2016 10:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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scipioafricanus
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by scipioafricanus »

There is a whole element of Star Trek that was similar to Fallout's resource wars, so it wasn't all roses. Then I think first contact happened with the Vulcans.

SA
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Kommander
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Re: California raises minimum wage to $15/hour

Post by Kommander »

scipioafricanus wrote:There is a whole element of Star Trek that was similar to Fallout's resource wars, so it wasn't all roses. Then I think first contact happened with the Vulcans.

SA
You'll have to forgive me as my knowledge of Star Trek is not very deep, though I do hope we don't have to nuke ourselves into near oblivion and then be rescued by space elves.
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