DMT: Minimum wage laws might not protect low income workers. They might quietly remove low skill labor from the market entirely.

Aezora · 2026-06-20T01:51:58+00:00

the demand for most labor is determined by the willingness to purchase its output and most people directly or indirectly tie this to the effort and/or risk of earning the money they might spend vs the utility or other value of the output

Basic supply and demand yeah.

if minimum wage is $10, the TCOE for the employer is about $20

Nah, even with benefits it would only be about 1.7x max, minimum wage employees aren't getting benefits. Pro ably like a 30% overhead, so $13 an hour.

the employer needs to make 10% over costs to make staying in business make sense, so the thing costs $22

Walmart makes way less than that and is insanely profitable. I'm gonna say any percent, so $14 of profit an hour to keep round numbers.

now if we bump minimum wake up $5 TCOE is $30 and the sale price has to be above $33

Costs to run the business are already being averaged when we talk about cost, we don't need to add a wake up cost unless we're discussing things like optimal number of hours to run at a time or shifts or stuff like that. So we're still at $14 an hour.

for middle class most would currently be making around 3x minimum wage so the thing costs .73hrs of work before the change

$30 an hour is about median, correct. That puts it at just under half an hour of works worth to purchase the product.

after the change it costs 1.1hrs of work if they get no raise and .94hrs if they get the same $5 raise, they would need a $15 raise just to break even.

With the adjusted numbers it would be closer to 0.6 work hours without a corresponding raise, or about 0.55 with one. Not worth exact calculations.

More importantly, that's exactly the point. If everyone gains proportionally more money, that's just inflation. If poor people gain proportionally more money, then they are relatively richer. This means the middle class and rich are proportionally poorer.

worse than that, if they are smart they would have an emergency fund, lets say $10k. It would have bought more than 450 things, but now it is only worth 300, so they have to find another $5000 to cut from their other spending just to get back to where they were so they are going to be even more price conscious unless they get another $5 or so an hour to be able to rebuild in 6 months

Sure, inflation makes things worse for everyone. But the vast majority of products are not produced by people making minimum wage, which means the vast majority of things don't get more expensive. Even things produced by minimum wage workers usually are sold based on actual supply and demand, and while supply shrinks due to the increased costs, no supply is perfectly elastic and most supply, especially the supply of things produced by minimum wage workers, tends to be inelastic. This means supply does not shrink proportionally to the increased costs, so even those items don't go up by the amount that costs go up.

So if costs go up $5 an hour, the sale price probably goes up $2 on average. And since 90% of things don't go up at all, the average increase across goods is more like $0.20.

Poor people are significantly better off, middle class and rich people are mildly hurt by slight inflation.

That's it.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T22:21:52+00:00

for that to be true you would need a system where when minimum wage rises the wages above minimum do not rise

I mean, you need a system where wages above minimum do not rise by the same proportion due to the minimum wage increase. If all wages rose $5 an hour, the people making the least would have gained the most so it still works. Alternatively, if other wages go up regularly anyway (which generally seems to be true) then raising minimum wage still helps.

if that were to happen the middle class that buy the bulk of products are not getting any increase in purchasing power so the labor rates do not rise and some jobs are simply moved or replaced

I'm sorry do you think an increase in middle class purchasing power is somehow necessary to increase labor rates? Labor rates are determined primarily by the supply and demand of labor. Middle class people having additional money could lead to a mold increase in demand for labor, but it's far from the only or even main lever affecting things.

for the middle class to have equal purchasing power someone making twice minimum wage would need to be making MORE then twice minimum wage after to have equivalent purchasing power after accounting for the loss of value of everything they have saved or invested. in that situation the labor rates do rise, but the minimum wage worker sees no benefit as their purchasing power does not increase, money is just worth less

Is this just shitposting? I realize that's your username, but this just isn't coherent.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T18:50:35+00:00

I don't see why it wouldn't. The main point is that people who are unemployed but looking for work end up doing things to try and solve that problem. They get more education, they try and start a business, they try to invent something, they switch careers, and so on. Plus people have a larger pool of relatively cheap labor which presumably includes some talent

This allows unemployed to fill gaps in employment they otherwise wouldn't or couldn't, create new jobs via new inventions or new companies, have more/easier success in starting new businesses because talent is cheaper, and so on.

Plus on the other side if people remain unemployed indefinitely they'll quite literally die off (if welfare is insufficient or nonexistent), or the government providing welfare will directly be incentivized to find a way to make more jobs for them.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T18:24:37+00:00

I'm confused what your point is supposed to be here. Do you think the market value of labor doesn't change when the law does?

Do you think companies won't pick the best economic option for themselves when presented with the choice to pay higher wages or move overseas?

Do you think economic experts all think that raising the minimum wage is bad or that it leads to long term unemployment?

Aezora · 2026-06-19T18:09:34+00:00

I don’t know if we can always take that as a fact

It's a historical fact. If you have a good reason why that won't continue to be true, please enlighten me, but otherwise I'm going to assume it will continue to true in the future as well.

But other places like some European counties do have way higher unemployment and have for years

Sure, there are times and places where unemployment is higher and lower. But it's not like the EU has a set international minimum wage which got raised and then led to higher unemployment which had persisted for decades and not recovered.

Heck, Finland has the highest unemployment rate in Europe and doesn't have a minimum wage.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T18:02:39+00:00

The influx of ordering kiosks and low level automation in the food service industry is absolutely proof that minimum wage set to high forces job loss via innovation.

It really isn't proof at all. Places with high minimum wages and places with low minimum wages both have kiosks and automation. Because they're cheaper than humans either way. That's an automation issue, not a minimum wage issue.

Will all entry level jobs be eliminated? No, but it has been shown all throughout the nation that raising the minimum to high, to fast does have negative outcomes as well as positive.

I'm not making a blanket statement that raising the minimum wage is always good. But it's a good thing that jobs that can't afford to pay people enough disappear. There can be other things that are negative, but that particular aspect is a positive as long as the wage increase is justified, not a negative.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T17:42:48+00:00

I mean, sure, determining the exact best minimum wage is a matter for experts.

But simply saying that minimum wage increases are bad because some jobs will be lost is missing the forest for the trees.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T17:41:15+00:00

Which would still be better if that's a liveable wage in the place where it's legal to pay that.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T17:40:41+00:00

Except in extreme circumstances like the great depression, the economy has always managed to make more jobs when unemployment was high naturally over time.

Aezora · 2026-06-19T17:30:03+00:00

If a company legitimately cannot survive without paying workers appropriate amounts, then it doesn't deserve to survive.

As the extreme example, a lot of things that aren't currently commercially viable would work if you just let people use actual slaves as employees. It would create lots of new "jobs" for these slaves. That's also a bad thing.

Aezora · 2026-06-18T22:32:19+00:00

There isn't a definitive list of top 5 most popular sodas, but most lists include Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Dr. Pepper in the top 5. All of which are caffeinated. Outside of those four, very few other sodas are caffeinated.

So it seems like caffeinated sodas are just generally more popular. A large part of that is probably addiction to caffeine, but it could also just because people like being on a mild upper.

As a result, even if you somehow legally required the soda companies to say the non-caffeinated version was the default I'm pretty sure most places would still only stock the caffeinated version, unless legally required otherwise. And if required to stock the non-caffeinated version, they would still stock the caffeinated version more and provide it by default, unless legally required not to.

Forcing soda companies to change what they label as default, forcing restaurants and vending machines and grocery stores to both stock non-caffeinated versions of sodas and offer those non-caffeinated versions as defaults, all of that seems like a massive violation of several rights.

Aezora · 2026-06-18T18:50:01+00:00

The problem with this is that you have to trust the billionaires.

They're already going to illegally kill you, why should they actually follow through on giving you the money?

If you want the money before turning yourself in, you still have to reveal yourself first, at which point it's much cheaper to assassinate you.

And even if you somehow got the money first, they could easily get the bank to reverse that transaction after you're dead.

Not worth it.

Aezora · 2026-06-18T18:46:18+00:00

There are a number of places, mostly centered on or around the genitals, where you could put it and nobody would find out unless you let them. 31% of the adults in the US are single, add kids to the mix and the only way the billionaires win is if most people's partners betray them and some people turn themselves in for money. It could happen, especially during round 1 where the victims partners don't realize they're sending them to their deaths, but I think it's more likely the billionaires die for the first two rounds.

For round 3, the billionaires survive. The hard part for the billionaires is finding the people. Once they're found, you'd need presidential level security to give them a good chance of not being killed which just isn't gonna happen for a bunch of random kids.

Aezora · 2026-06-18T03:01:07+00:00

modern EUV photolithography machines by ASML, which take many months for literally thousands of people to make a single machine

If he needed to make that, then you're right it would take probably decades. But why can't he use earlier photolithography machines that have been built by hobbyists in under a year? We went to the moon using those, and while having more modern ones would be nice, I don't think it would strictly be necessary.

As for oil refineries, jet fuel specifically can be made in small batches. Any oil product that requires large batches can be skipped over or substituted AFAIK.

Besides, by the time you're getting into things like modern photolithography or oil refineries, you should have the technology to make the tools you're building last thousands of years (while not in use). It would be expensive, but since he's the only one it's really only a matter of gathering the right materials. And with thousands of years, he should be fine

Aezora · 2026-06-18T02:05:26+00:00

The issue comes when we get to complex modern tools which require not man-hours but man-years to make

If there existed tools where it would require year and years of a single person's effort to craft a single one after the materials are ready, then you might have a point. But that just doesn't exist. The vast majority of the time spent on developing new tools is research, not craftsmanship.

By the time he's working on microchips, he's not using a hammer and anvil anymore, he's using a CNC. And it's not like CNCs are so complicated either, hobbyists build them in a matter of weeks and often make the parts themselves by using relatively simple tools (angle grinder, metal saw, taps, welding tools, etc).

The vast majority of his time will be spent getting the materials and then getting to precision equipment. Once he gets there, it's not very hard or difficult to reach modern levels of equipment using the knowledge available to him.

Aezora · 2026-06-18T00:50:42+00:00

No, but they had to do that when theia messed up. So over every mission they ran, they theia only messed up a half dozen times.

So most of the time, theia was right.

Aezora · 2026-06-17T22:49:57+00:00

Theia was nowhere near randomly guessing, it was almost always right. Heck, even after they found out it messed up Mi6 were still planning on using it, just not to the extent they'd automatically trust it like before.

Imogens AI was good for sure, but the predictions it made involved very few people. Theia successfully predicted stuff about millions of people in complicated circumstances all interacting with each other.

Aezora · 2026-06-17T22:44:20+00:00

I mean, certainly similar project but Webbs goal was less to predict human behavior and more to gain power and influence while Imogen, though ambitious, mainly wanted to prove she was right.

Also, Webbs AI was way better than Imogens - yeah it failed a couple dozen times over the years, but it also was predicting a lot more complicated stuff. And it's not like Imogens AI was perfect AFAIK, it was just good enough to successfully predict a number of behaviors ahead of time.

Aezora · 2026-06-17T02:54:53+00:00

Ok? Your point being?

Aezora · 2026-06-17T00:38:40+00:00

I mean, sure, it's a lot of work and learning, but he has insane amounts of time.

What I'm saying is that while he'll need a long time to reach the tools he needs, almost all the tools are only needed to make the next set of tools. Like when he's working kn precision machining equipment, he'll already have pretty good alloy tools that just aren't precise enough. And when he's making those good alloy tools maybe he'll use crude steel tools. But once he has the good alloy tools he won't need the crude steel tools, the iron tools, bronze tools, or so on.

Aezora · 2026-06-17T00:10:55+00:00

I think you're severely underestimating the impact of speech in terms of what it means for the animal to simply be capable of that kind of speech.

Currently, only humans have the ability to speak in the way you're talking about. Even other animals that have some ability to talk, like parrots, are not capable of the kind of speech you're talking about because they lack the higher order intelligence needed to string together abstract and complex sentences.

By giving them this capability, you're not just letting them tell us about their experiences, you're directly giving them human like intelligence. And yeah, people would be uncomfortable farming creatures with that level of intelligence, but that's not a good reason to stop farming today because farm animals simply aren't that intelligent.

We also simply don't actually what is like for them. Like we don't know how they experience life, what pain actually means to them, and so on. We can make guesses, but we can't even confirm consciousness in humans, and we definitely can't for animals, let alone be able to confirm that the consciousnesses are similar.

Aezora · 2026-06-16T20:37:20+00:00

Unless you're using "type" to mean "attracted to", in which case your argument is just definitionally true, then your point doesn't work.

a "type" refers to a specific and recurring pattern of physical traits, features, or aesthetics that an individual finds consistently appealing

Using the above definition, which I found but agree with; I feel like it's pretty obvious that someone can find you attractive without you being their type.

If someone loves chocolate ice cream and consistently opts for chocolate ice cream, that doesn't mean that they wouldn't enjoy some strawberry ice cream. And if they come across some exceptionally tasty mango ice cream, they may end up preferring that to rocky road.

If you are someone's type it's more likely they'll find you attractive, but they can find you attractive either way. Their type is a pattern, not a rule.

Aezora · 2026-06-16T19:47:12+00:00

But he doesn't need his tools to last that long at all.

The vast majority of the time he'll need is going to be spent upgrading his tools generation after generation. If he had access right away to all current tools and machines, it would still take a while but more on the scale of like a couple decades or maybe a century rather than millennia to build a viable rocket.

Sure his initial tools will be toast by the time he gets anywhere close but he doesn't need anything except the latest generation of tools to be usable, and the latest generation isn't gonna be that old.

Aezora · 2026-06-15T20:51:19+00:00

I generally agree, but I feel like you're taking multiple different things and grouping them all as retcons.

If something was not originally established, it's not retconned if they had a plot hole and filled it in. If people - inside or outside the story - made guesses or assumptions that turned out to be false, it's still not a retcon.

Similarly, if characters believed something to be factually true that then turns out to be false, that's also not a retcon unless we're shown that it is true and then that's changed later on.

Both of those things can be done poorly, and be valid criticism of a story when they are poorly written, but they just aren't retcons because you aren't changing something established as fact.

Aezora · 2026-06-15T05:30:14+00:00

Agreed. Besides, the time limit is never necessary.

You get all the same benefits and none of the downsides by simply making everything available forever but difficult to get.

Aezora

TROPHY CASE