What labor has value below the required amount to exist as a human? I think the reasoning is - if it's worth being done, it's worth paying someone a meager living wage to have it done.

While I agree in principle, the counter-argument is that you're just going to end up with that job going overseas or getting automated. Basically, if you need something done and it's only worth $10/hour to you to have it done, but no one near you will do it for less than $15/hour, either 1) it won't get done and that $10/hour economic input is lost, or 2) you'll find a way to get it done for $10/hour or less via means other than employing a local human.

And when outsourcing happens, you tax the fuck out of that business transaction, and with the proceeds pay your unemployed laborers a livable minimum income. You think Chinese labor is cheap for no reason? There are tons of gov't subsidies, from straight up handouts to nonexistant labor laws (which are a form of subsidy to big business at the expense of workers, a reverse tax).

The same should apply to automation. The inordinate inequality of wealth which is bound to happen with automation should be alleviated through heavy taxation. Or if tax is too dirty a word, ownership of such dual capital/labor should be partly socialized--i.e. newly created AI/robot companies must put up a % of their shares to the public who receive equal amounts.

Actually you get 3) the cost of the output of that process goes up, leading to a small price rise to the end user.

I think this is only true in a closed system. In an open, globalized world like we have today, the price of the output doesn't have to go up if another place with cheaper labor can produce the same output for cheaper. Thus is many cases you end up with a situation where you can't raise the price of your output because your customers will just buy the foreign-produced version.

Unless that cost was "digestible" by the system, but had simply been previously going to C-level and board members' salaries. Then companies which continue to pay execs exorbitantly, and companies which give their execs a 0.001% pay cut or otherwise reduce inefficiencies to absorb the cost increase will compete.

That's the point: there is almost certainly work being done now for $10/hr that is not economically worth being done if the lower limit by statute is $15/hr.

If someone is capable of holding down that $10/hr job but not capable of landing a $15/hr job, they are harmed by an increase in minimum wage in two ways: 1. The direct loss of job, income, status. 2. They are now shopping in an economy where the goods/services they purchase are likely to be marginally more expensive.

>If someone is not capable That mindset continues to be disgusting to me. Humans are some of the most impressive creatures on Earth; baring actual disability, you can teach them to do all sorts of things.

I'm going to love watching the tech scene's existential panic over the next 2 decades as the population increasingly realizes that making CRUD apps and junk SAS is a job many Americans are more than capable of doing.

"Capable" isn't a binary, lifelong condition. The remedy for incapability is generally considered to be education.

The dirty secret is that there's a whole class of jobs, mostly decently paying white collar jobs, that have most of the training on the job.

Hell most of the jobs that only require an undergraduate degree involve extensive on the job training; college is used as a weak signal for aptitude, interest, and class not really capability (this is the entire business model around coding boot-camps).

I got about 3 days of on-the-job training, pitched at showing generally skilled programmers the company's specific tools, practices, and environment. The rest was just being thrown into the normal day-to-day work, with the expectation that I'd ask more questions and make slower progress at first.

You can't just throw a laid-off factory worker into that position, though I agree, you can probable prepare him to handle it more efficiently than a 4-year BS degree program, which is what bootcamps are looking to capitalize on.

It matters a great deal to the employee to have been put in a situation like that before (homework & hobby projects) and developed a decent intuition & familiarity. It matters a great deal to the employer to know that that the candidate has done something like this before and will be substantially likely to succeed. There's a little more going on here than class signaling.

All labor which could be done by people in, say, Vietnam or Laos, has value below the required amount to exist as a human in USA. So, more and more of it.