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> Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults?

Because its effect would be a transfer of jobs from working class adults to middle class kids.




Do you think so? While companies are incentivized to hire kids, the kids don't get any more incentive to do these jobs though (wage stays the same), and neither would the supply of them grow.


There is, hypothetically, a market price for these jobs. It is below the minimum wage (otherwise there isn't much point in the minimum wage). It is set by the pairwise negotiations of companies, customers and employees.

If there is an avenue for the market to reach equilibrium (eg, by hiring children cheaply) then the market is going to try and take it. It will just create a class of jobs that adults can't get employed in because they cost too much to hire.

It isn't a question of what the kids would like, it is a question of what choices consumers and employers will offer them. If wages were set solely by employee's incentives then they'd all be paid much more than current market wages.


Do the kids become more incentivized to work if their parents income decreases?

I would say yes


Result: a class of families consisting of unemployable parents supported by the state and their own working children :(


I would say maybe it’s not a dream society if we’re creating a class of helots to maximize teenage labor force participation.


I sincerely doubt that.

1) Kids are unlikely to be as effective. 2) There's not that many kids.

It's all just motivated reasoning to argue against a significant minimum wage.


> 1) Kids are unlikely to be as effective. 2) There's not that many kids.

Neither of those even support the argument that a change from equal minimum wage would have the effect of moving jobs from adults to kids.

The first would be a good argument for a smaller displacement effect from allowing teens to work with equal minimum wage to adults conpared to not allowing them to work at all than would occur at equal effectiveness, the second semana yo be a sortear of an argument about the magnitude of effect but without a definition of what “that many” meand in context is only a sketch.

> It's all just motivated reasoning to argue against a significant minimum wage.

it's not an argument against ‘a significant minimim wage’ at all.


> Because its effect would be a transfer of jobs from working class adults to middle class kids.

Then corps would have to rewrite the application algorithms that serially discriminate against 1st time job applicants.


> Then corps would have to rewrite the application algorithms that serially discriminate against 1st time job applicants.

Places that hire people at minimum wage mostly wouldn't have that problem for those positions


I know of no major corporations w/ a web application system, that do not discriminate against those w/o a job history. Pay does not seem to be a factor in this equation.


Why don't we ask the guy in Australia instead of declaring the results absque facta.




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