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A comment on The brave new world of robots and lost jobs. Parent comment

Re:The brave new world of robots and lost jobs by yummyfajitas on Friday August 12, 2016 @09:17AM (#12275339)
First of all, this is a non-sequitur. Market prices can go up or down while scarcity still exists. Scarcity is simply a situation where a lot of people want a good or service, but not all of them can have it.

Secondly, your claims about market prices are not even directionally correct. Real wages have dropped because compensation has shifted from wages to benefits. (This effect is larger at the bottom, since non-wage benefits are a fixed cost while wages are variable.) Real compensation per hour has only gone up.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB

The labor share of GDP is down mainly because investment income (primarily from housing) has increased faster than labor income.

https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/deciphering-the-fall...

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

Also, significant chunks of the economy have moved into non-labor personal income as the government has shifted from infrastructure/public goods to wealth redistribution.

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Re:The brave new world of robots and lost jobs by jbooth on Friday August 12, 2016 @09:38AM (#12275493)
If we're talking about economics, I'd say that a 'scarcity' which isn't pushing wages up isn't a scarcity worth thinking about. Money talks.
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Re:The brave new world of robots and lost jobs by yummyfajitas on Friday August 12, 2016 @09:51AM (#12275586)
Compensation per hour is being pushed up. What's so special about taxable wages as opposed to non-taxable benefits?

If taxable wages are preferable to non-taxable benefits, should we eliminate the various laws (e.g. Obamacare, 401k) that push employers to provide benefits rather than wages?

Also, there are many market distortions that won't push wages up but will still create scarcity. For example, we could simply ban food vendors/cigarette walas/etc, or we could impose various occupational licensing rules that raise wages for some while lowering them for others. Why are those not worth thinking about?

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