This gets back to your Atlas Shrugged quotes from another post.  The government, run by these (admittedly well intentioned) thoughtless advocates, will eventually just pass a real life version of Directive 10-289.   Cause remember kids, you don't need to think through the ramifications of your beliefs/policies/choices, you can just use the power of government to fix the problems caused by your last good idea at a later date!  Brilliant!

I prefer the DIY approach. It tastes better and is never the same way twice. Lets see a machine do that.

Horn & Hardart Automat had 1/2 a city block of those "POB"s. People in the kitchen behind filling the boxes. A lot of folks miss H&H's.

Oops double post.

The big problem I see is that there's no longer "entry level" jobs.  Those jobs are either being automated or shipped overseas. Ever increasing costs to employ someone create incentives to automate or outsource.  As a result, those people never develop basic skills that they need to eventually build a career.

People routinely take for granted skills that many "entry level" people haven't developed.  For example - showing up to work on time.  You'd be surprised how many people fail this.  Showing up to work at all.  Developing the discipline to do a tedious job well. 

My first job was working for an excavation company. I literally cleaned shit off the "shovels" (large trucks with a mechanical shovel used to repair sewers). I made minimum wage (which was $3.35 at the time) and even then, I wasn't worth it because I did everything half-assed.  But I learned a lot of basic skills (showing up, doing a job I hated).  Self discipline is like a muscle. You have to work at it to develop it.

Today, there are many jobs that have been automated out of existence that deprive people of those entry level opportunities to develop skills. And a lot of those jobs would make sense if we could pay some teenager or young adult $4 an hour to do it.  But no, people insist on concepts like "living wage".  There is no scenario where cleaning shit off a shovel is worth $15 an hour.  At that point, it would make more sense for the company to invest in a power wash system or something and eliminate that job entirely.

As a result, we are rapidly creating a stratified economy with a huge gulf between the richest and the poorest. The sad thing is, this stratification can be thrown at the feet of progressives who are too economically ignorant to understand what they've done. 

Jafo dreams of $15 an hour .....

When I started work it was a 40 hour week and my income was $44.....and 4 of that was tax.

I was still at Tech [in 3rd year] .... but the job was Arch Drafting for a small building-design co.

Back then, first-year students would do stuff like working at the Pancake Parlour....[fast food places practically didn't exist in Oz in '72].

The truly 'sad' thing about Maccas replacing people with machines is that one of their recent CEOs [an Aussie] actually started out as a burger flipper rug-rat earning eff-all ....and yet became the head of one of the biggest companies on the planet.

[He might have still been CEO now, except he died young from cancer].

Might be a simple/meagre starting, but absolutely ANYTHING can come from it.

Feel good laws like the minimum wage distort the system in such a way that it hurts the poor and it hurts small businesses.  They never hurt the corporation.  That's the whole damn point.  Your "give everyone a living wage" idea is just the minimum wage written another way, with a twist maybe, but the same thing.  Those laws will never hurt you're evil corporations.  Ever.  Corporations can absorb those costs. They can afford lobbyists.  They can afford the specialty lawyers that know the tax code loopholes and know how the healthcare laws work and what have you.  They can afford the research and the large scale purchases to automate away any costs that can be automated.  

Small businesses, who account for roughly 50% of the US economy, can't absorb those costs.  Small business are forced to lay off workers, surrendering further market to the large corporations.  

This is exactly what Brad meant by:

Feel good ideas built around vague notions of "helping people" on top of a lack of understanding of economic fundamentals are what got us into this problem in the first place. Those minimum wage jobs don't exist because they're too expensive to maintain.  They're too expensive to maintain because of government intervention.  And they're getting ever more expensive with regulatory burden, regulatory complexity and a potentially rising minimum wages adding to businesses's costs.  Major companies absorb this cost and keep on trucking making money.  Small businesses, who also face continually increasing taxes that the big corporations don't face because of the way the screwed up US tax code works, can't keep trucking, can't afford the burden and then must lay people off.  In you're scenario you're screwing the poor and you're screwing the local guy but benefiting the big corporation because the competition in their markets just got easier.  

Regulation and government intervention (which is what you're idea is) always, always, always ends up benefiting big companies in favor of little companies.  Now that doesn't mean all regulation is bad, but it's why regulations should be passed with care and not in 1500 page documents passed 7 days after they are written and then only at the greatest need.  

This all goes back to my first response here.  The solution to government action that causes problems is never to cease the government action, it's to try and take new actions to cover up the mistakes of the old ones.  Welcome to ever increasing government and ever-stifled small business growth and ever growing stratification.  

And, to respond to your actual idea, every increase in the minimum wage ever has shown that all you get is a short term increase in purchasing power of those affected by the higher wages.  The economy absorbs the mandated higher wage relatively quickly and goes right back to the purchasing power levels of the pre-wage hike state.  

Stratification is the problem, but the cause isn't corporations and it isn't a lack of a living wage.  It's a terrible education system that fails to actually prepare people for the modern day version of Brad's entry-level job, a tax code that is nearly 17,000 pages long and impossible to apply fairly and a regulatory state that is literally impossible for one person to understand, let alone comply with.  All of those lead to an economy stuck in the mud and generating no jobs, like ours has been for 5 years and a citizenry that is either on the path to getting ahead or that is stuck perpetually behind because their government education failed to prepare them for their life after school and the economy has been pushed into such a state that you can't just go out and "make it" anymore like so many of our parents and grandparents did.  Those "make it" jobs have all been regulated away. 

$15.00 an hour! Hell I was making less than that as a college degree'd Computer Technician when I first started! I could see taking minimum wage up to lets say $8.00 an hour, but $15.00 an hour to flip burgers is insane!

The problem with this line of reasoning is that you're acting as if "corporations" are some evil Neal Stephenson villain. Corporations will always act in the best interest of their shareholders within the rules of the system.  Any that don't should be and generally will be punished.  It's the exact same thing with individuals.  They will always act in a general self-interested manner, which isn't the same as selfish.  The rules of the system are set by the government.  If the system is out of whack for some reason (ie, stratification, above average unemployment, slower than average growth), it's the government that is ultimately to blame because they control the rules.  

Poorly thought out rules poorly implemented in perpetuity piled on top of the occasionally well thought out and well implemented rule lead to a system where no one can compete except for the big guys who know how to work the system and can absorb the costs of the system.  In fact this sort of environment ultimately favors big corporations because it severely hinders any potentially industry disrupting upstart companies from getting into the marketplace because they simply can't afford it.  That's not the corporation's fault.  They're just reacting to the landscape set by the government.  It's the government's fault for implementing ever more complex rules in the name of "fairness" (an arbitrary concept that can never be defined universally).  The activist government you favor benefits no one except government employees and large corporations.  Everyone else is society gets screwed.  

Another sickening example of

Rich getting Richer

I guess many Folks that do work there to sustain living since it’s not just an

"Entry level job" anymore for the low and middle class as well as kids that

Urgently need the job because they study will be happy to be replaced by a

Machine.

What I don´t understand is the long-time concept in that whole thing.

Soon if the salary drops again for the low earner as well as the middle class 

earner, there will be hardly any money left to buy stuff anymore.

If there is no money to spend, products won´t be bought criminality is likely to 

receive a boost. If nothing is/can be- bought from the majority of the earners there won’t be any profit at all.

The whole concept of replacing human work with a machine is nothing else than 

misanthropic. Even though some call it efficient i call it unsocial thinking or 

greedy bullshit.

Every time it happens there should be a "greed award" handed out along with a 

Insulting title that has to be displayed alongside with the company name.
 

Sure if someone is currently rich it is easy to smile about stuff like that and point the 

finger because it doesn’t affect them but if the low and the middle class breaks away 

someday it´ll be rich working lonely for the superrich.

I would like to get some more info from some why they think 15USD would be too much:

Frogboy for example you said that you cleaned fluid remaining´s from sewers... I

truly do not understand how you can say that someone that has to work with

Feces/Bacteria and do the job that nobody else wants to do because its gross smelly

and dirty is not worth 15USD the hour.
I would even say it should be more... Why do you think otherwise?
 

If someone is able to earn 15k USD+ on a single day for singing for dancing acting oir politics

then why should someone that has to flip burgers and be possibly insulted by customers all day not have a pay of 15USD/h?
Where is the Justice balance?
I know it is not existent since if it would we would have a more even income overall.

The fact is that the money from a fulltime job isn´t enough anymore for the majority that is why most of the folks run 2 jobs or even more just to

survive... And this hasn´t always to do with education some folks work on "entry

jobs" because they have no choice or are not granted the opportunity to prove

they can do more-many are overqualified for the job they do and are treated like

shit...Even though they do a good Job
 

Throwing all of them into one cup and say everyone is late or "if they actually show up to work"  or to say they do a half ass job isn’t fair.
And you should not categorize - since it has a classifying smell to it...
 

 
@Jafo and Lightstar: You guys said back in the days you´ve worked as a computer technician or as Architectural Draftsman? for only 1 dollar/h ok LS a little more – How did you survive haha
But lets be real for a second, it should be obvious that the dollar back then had much more value than the dollar today…You should have noticed that if you go and buy your food pay your taxes. And something tells me you guys are just making fun.

What im trying to say is some honest folks do work hard, give their very best simply because it is their own way of living or the way to hold/keep respect for themselves, some of them want to be able to be proud of what they have done over the day when the sun settles (  so they can pad themselves on the shoulder )

something you do not get any more from your boss or super rarely. At least I have never seen a manager at McDonalds do that to an employee.
 

If someone can explain me exactly why it would be economically wrong or unbearable to give better payment to entry level jobs or (low-mid earner class) please do so since I´m eager to know.
(But keep in mind that making such an investment would contribute into more interest / better skillset ( that was here written down as being on time and encouraged to do a good job) better service overall and possibly result in more customers/profit and it would carry a big part in balancing shit out in general.
And why would you be against a pay raise for people that have literally nothing, something like this would improve their quality of life immense, especially if you are not far from away from the equal pay class ??- simply support something like this for them and be happy if they receive it. 
Even if the Gov would force something like this- i know many company´s that are inuslted by that especially timework but those are mainly the guys that abuse and make money...If these company´s would be giving a freehand when they already have a position that has nothing to worrie about shit would get more unequal and people would work for barely nothing in the end. IM not saying every company has that  kind of relation to the employee´s but most of them do if you take a short look at the income table.

I sometimes think it is just jealousy that the high rollers are left out and do not get a pay raise?
Or companys crying croc tears - while they profit from such an investment in the end.
Some may do because the numbers were smaller when they have worked back in the day.

Fuck the wheel and the plow and the cotton gin and harvesting equipment.  I do my shit by hand.  Goodbye polio vaccine and smallpox vaccine and life expectancy into the 80s.  We are on the verge of having cancer beat using all of these fancy machines instead of old school alchemists, but we need jobs.  Get rid of the machines, find an alchemist somewhere.  Hell, scrap it all right now.  We'll get rid of 90% of the world's population in nothing flat due to lack of medication and starvation.  But everyone will have a job!  Let's go back to a time when we didn't replace any human work with machines.  People who lived to be 40 were "old aged" and infant mortality was 50% or higher.  That was the good old days before machines when greed didn't exist and the world operated on complete justice and fairness.  

Screw machines and the unprecedented wealth and comfort and life their use has generated for billions of people.  I want vague concepts like fairness and social justice to govern everything.  

This is exactly the sort of progressive nonsense that gets legislated into law and then in turn hurts the lives of the poor and middle class because no one bothers to think through the ramifications. Let's not think things through and just say "machines are bad".  Someone make a law saying no automation! That's the ticket and will solve all the problems our last round of good ideas created.

I was half kidding with my Directive 10-289 joke in the beginning, but here we are with people basically advocating for it.  

When I was 14 I took a summer job at a bike shop, it payed $3.75 an hour, I worked on bikes and swept the place up.

I could not see a bike shop today hiring a kid in high school for a summer job if they had to pay $15 bucks an hour and supply health benefits on top. so much for the lil guy trying to break in to the job market..

I can see our news papers delivered by the paper boy jumping to $8 a week delivery.

My first "paycheck" job (I had sold papers before then) I earned $42.  And I thought that was a fortune!

But then penny gum was still a penny.