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posted by martyb on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the some-wages-went-up dept.

https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/6503418-151/study-minimum-wage-increases-in-6-cities-working:

The minimum wage increases that started four years ago in Seattle are spreading across the country, but economists continue to study — and disagree about — the impact.

The latest look at increased wage floors in six U.S. cities, including Seattle, finds that food-service workers saw increases in pay and no widespread job losses. That reinforces the conclusions the same group of University of California, Berkeley, researchers reached in 2017 after studying just in Seattle.

This time, the Berkeley researchers examined Seattle; San Francisco; Oakland, California; San Jose, California; Chicago; and Washington, D.C., where minimum wages at the end of 2016 ranged from $10 to $13.

"We find that they are working just as the policymakers and voters who enacted these policies intended," said Sylvia Allegretto, co-author of the report and co-chair of Berkeley's Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. "So far they are raising the earnings of low-wage workers without causing significant employment losses."

abstract https://www.nber.org/papers/w25043


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by aclarke on Thursday September 27 2018, @05:56PM (8 children)

    by aclarke (2049) on Thursday September 27 2018, @05:56PM (#740905) Homepage

    Take a look at https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/. [leapmanifesto.org] Many of the proposals for universal basic income are suggested in concert with societal changes to decouple our sense of self-worth from the jobs we do to make money.

    Someone on UBI doesn't have to be "unemployed". They could consider themselves freed to work on the projects that are actually important to them: caring for an ailing loved one, improving public gardens, etc.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:24PM (7 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:24PM (#741074)

    Someone on UBI doesn't have to be "unemployed". They could consider themselves freed to work on the projects that are actually important to them: caring for an ailing loved one, improving public gardens, etc.

    I had / have a fat stack of cash in the bank when I started contract work; someone without a big bank account has months, maybe years added to their "runway" if they have UBI or some kinda grant or whatever.

    It can be weird talking to startup kids who have like 6 months runway until they run out of cash. I have about 10 years right now. Unfortunately I have a lot longer than 10 years until I retire. But I do have plenty of (HIGHLY variable) income so as long as my runway length increases by more than a year per calendar year, I guess I'm "winning".

    I a lot of shitty little small businesses die because the owner wants to do things like eat. UBI means we're going to have a lot more shitty little small businesses, something to think about. People who emotionally want to run a cupcake store or whatever BS get flushed today if they can't actually run a cupcake store, but UBI means they'll literally never close, with likely weird consequences.

    Right now if I hire an electrician who's been in business a couple years to wire my new AC unit, I can assume he's competent and frankly not worry about it. In a world where "hobby electricians" literally can never go out of business due to UBI, if I hire some idiot who mostly watches Judge Judy reruns on TV all day and hasn't actually installed anything ever, I'm gonna get screwed as a consumer.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:35PM (6 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:35PM (#741083)

      Ohh a specific example of shitty small businesses.

      Maybe 20 years ago my wife and I hired a wedding photographer. Right now the only way you can be a wedding photographer is if you have your shit together enough to get some cash flow. She (the photographer) was an insane marijuana addict and it was ... difficult to get our pixs and album, although it worked out in the end because as I mentioned, she can't remain a wedding photographer for long unless she's at least minimally competent. And she was VERY minimally competent. Actually the pixs looked great, its just her attention to little details, like getting the pixs to us, for example, that were completely lacking. She actually had some talent at photography, just not project mismanagement.

      Now imagine flaky pot smoker wanna-be photographer lady not having a hungry munchies belly to motivate her to finish our album and get our last check so she can buy more cheetos and weed...

      And then scale that across all manner of service occupations "ah hell yeah I can be a barber, sure I never cut no hair before, but on paper I've been a barber for 25 years now"

      This could kill the marketplace for some occupations. I imagine fine arts like music and painting will be completely non-functional marketplaces post-UBI.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday September 28 2018, @02:35AM (3 children)

        by deimtee (3272) on Friday September 28 2018, @02:35AM (#741166) Journal

        I think local reputation management would come into play. You might have to subscribe to a service that tracks and recommends good local services. You would need to know and trust the service.
        Could be very interesting, these services would be devastated by any breach of your trust. Having local organisations whose paramount goal is the maintenance of their integrity would allow some significant shifts in things like insurance, escrow, contracts. Think of something like Heinlein's Fair Witnesses.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @11:20AM (2 children)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @11:20AM (#741276)

          You would need to know and trust the service.

          All attempts to date have turned into spam channels and/or extortion rackets or worse. Not claiming its impossible, but its going to be a steep road to climb.

          Fiction is a Fair Witness, reality is more like Yelp.

          Could be very interesting, these services would be devastated by any breach of your trust.

          Again, so far, not so much, which is the problem.

          My gut level guess is the recent trend toward identity politics and multiculturalism shows the way; a lot of tribalism in our future. Thats how low-trust societies already work out in the rest of the world. I got an old army buddy who is an electrician who lives 200 miles away but he has an uncle who knows a guy who can install my electrical wiring, etc. You'll note there's not much space for market competition or advertising in that business model. A weird effect of UBI might be collapse of advertising-funded everything along with a bizarre slight decline in quality of living because of economic friction.

          • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 28 2018, @02:37PM (1 child)

            by deimtee (3272) on Friday September 28 2018, @02:37PM (#741341) Journal

            I don't think we seriously disagree here.
            Your example is almost what I meant by local. A mix of known personally and web-of-trust. Eventually people like the uncle will form the nucleus that becomes a reputation company.
            These will of necessity stay small and local. Almost 'tribal' you could say. I am not going to bother subscribing to a service 500 kms away. -----------
            On the other hand, there is the drive to expand. Reputation companies will rate each other, have 'roaming agreements' for travelers and have an incentive to build their own higher level web of trust. It is really hard to guess which drive will dominate.

            --
            If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
            • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @07:21PM

              by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @07:21PM (#741491)

              Interesting analogy to what I think you're trying to propose... General Contractor.

              I donno if I want a GC to merely buy a chezburger from the food store, but maybe we'll need them regardless if we want them. The story of the economy is loving and leaving middlemen. Our economy on a long enough scale is a shitty TV sitcom about a divorced 40-something loud woman constantly falling in love with and breaking up with middle-men in countless no-commit relationships. I'm not sure if that implies our TV is shitty or our economy is shitty. Or both, of course.

              Another interesting analogy is tour guide, although the tour guide and the tourists would both be locals, although that sounds weird.

      • (Score: 2) by aclarke on Friday September 28 2018, @02:01PM (1 child)

        by aclarke (2049) on Friday September 28 2018, @02:01PM (#741322) Homepage

        There will always be negatives and adjustments to any big change. However, the problems you've mentioned are already problems now, and there are already partial solutions now.

        Electricians at least in Ontario have to be licensed. In order to get licensed they need qualifications. I can get a rubbish electrician who is licensed and "qualified" already, but at least there's a minimum bar for many trades like this. As I'm part of a community, I ask around for recommendations before hiring a tradesperson. If I feel the work is within my capabilities, at least I'm still legally allowed to perform it myself.

        Wedding photographers are already part-time in many cases. They're office workers or whoever deciding to do something they're passionate about part-time on evenings and weekends. Universal basic income isn't really going to change that equation much.

        In all cases though, people tend to start off as bad at something and improve with practice. With or without guaranteed/minimum/universal/basic income.

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @07:15PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @07:15PM (#741489)

          They're office workers or whoever deciding to do something they're passionate about part-time on evenings and weekends.

          I would mostly agree with most of your assessment with an exception:

          Right now to run a viable business, as in, your wife and kids get a place to sleep and eat, you need at least minimal functional whole package. So my wedding photographer who admittedly had a serious skill for the act of photography but would rather smoke it up than do the drudge work of putting together albums and stuff, had to finish the job, but in UBI land she can just kinda smoke weed until I guess we sue her for the negatives and do all the work ourselves. Really the best case outcome would be stoner UBI photographer lady meets a UBI project manager who has nothing to manage other than stoner photo chick, kinda a match made in paradise... which brings up the next interesting idea that technically owners of a business can work for arbitrarily low wages ignoring minimum wage, so the long term effect of UBI is likely to be businesses where the owners are not paid terribly well, after all, UBI gets them food and a place to live...