Posted on 07/17/2021 3:40:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Biden administration has discovered a back door into raising the effective minimum wage. Paying lucrative supplemental unemployment benefits, which is effectively subsidizing leisure, increases the opportunity cost of working and thereby places upward pressure on wages as employers seek to incentivize would-be employees to move off the couch and into the workforce. No minimum-wage legislation and political combat with the Republicans is required to implement this policy. The federal government need only keep the spigot open on supplemental unemployment benefits, and employers seeking to attract workers will have no choice but to increase the wages offered to compete. The long-run effects of this policy are deeply concerning precisely because they are so harmful to workers.
Firms in competitive markets are profit-maximizers and therefore cost-minimizers. Workers compete not only with one another for jobs, but also with technology (capital). When a cost-minimizing business employs its inputs optimally, the last (marginal) worker hired contributes to revenue an amount that is just equal to its wages and benefits. Hence, when government policies force an increase in the effective minimum wage, businesses naturally seek to insulate themselves from the wage hike. This "insulation" manifests itself in two different forms — a reduction in the amount of labor hired and an increase in the amount of capital employed. Robotics, for example, represent long-term capital investments, so market-wage corrections would not be expected to instantaneously restore labor demand to previous levels. Once these (sunk cost) investments are made, employers will continue to utilize robotics (machine labor) rather than human labor even if market wages should fall. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates knows something about automation, and he admonishes that increasing the minimum wage can destroy jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The minimum wage really IS $0.
You must really live in the woods. They have been around in stores; not all mind you for 20 years or so. Walmart has them, Kroger does. Home Depot does, and I don’t know what other stores do, as I don’t get around much anymore
… something there that I've never seen before in convenience stores in this area: self-scan checkouts.
And the guy who pumps gasoline in my 4 wheeler makes $0 pumping gas. Because I have to his job.
I walked into a regional convenience store chain in my neck of the woods and saw something there that I’ve never seen before in convenience stores in this area: self-scan checkouts.
The minimum wage really IS $0.
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And it will continue to happen at an ever increasing rate as the technology becomes less expensive and the forced/artificial raise in wages accelerates.
IOW, necessity is the mother of invention. Another bit of reality the Left and their clueless constituency are unable to grasp.
So you have to scratch your own paint around the gas door?
Thus the abundance of sex toys.
And high-tech ones at that!
Correct! Nothing is exempt.
They’ve been in our big box stores for years, too, but I’ve never seen one in a convenience store around here. I would think the shrinkage issues would make it a non-starter. But if human labor has gotten so expensive that the shrinkage losses look like the lesser of two evils...
Holy ****.
And the last time I knew, gasoline tended to be a loss leader at a lot of convenience stores with gas pumps.
If they can’t make a profit on the other stuff thanks to five finger discounts, goodbye convenience stores...
I haven’t seen them in convivence stores either, but than they are usually small anyway and only have one register.
New Jersey has a law that you can not pump your own gas. I wonder how that is on Truck stops, where truckers go to? I have to ask my son who used to be a trucker.
In most areas this makes a lot of sense. The personnel cost savings will more than make up for any additional shrink. In the enlightened BLM neighborhoods the store owners will continue putting their clerks behind bullet proof windows, transacting business as if they were a bank drive thru. In the “enlightened neighborhoods” most of the convenience stores are operated by the owner. If they have an open door policy, along with the expense of shrink, quite frequently the store also suffers the expense of store damage and employee medical costs associated with trying to stop an “enlightened” shoplifter. In other words, black inner shoppers will continue to pay the high costs associated with community support for the “enlightened BLM” types regardless of any technological advances.
Pricesat those stores is nearly confiscatory, so honest customers are covering the costs of shrinkage.
I was using one of the self-scan checkouts a while back and I noticed the person next to me putting two items into a bag for every one scanned. I guess the increase in theft is offset by the reduction in salaries.
Oregon has the same law. If you go to the cardlock pumps, you can pump your own.
Upward pressure on wages is both long overdue and rough justice for the business community’s support for illegal immigration. Due in large part to illegal immigration, for the last two decades, the returns on capital have gone up even as labor compensation has stagnated for the middle and working classes. And I am furious enough over illegal immigration to chuckle at the business community now suffering upward wage pressure and fearing impending tax increases.
Dims and large corporations working together in a very fascist-like way. Eliminate those pesky small businesses so big business can make more profit, and government can regulate more easily.
It’s a match made in hell, and we’re fast heading there.
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