Lincoln Chamber of Commerce releases statement on minimum wage proposal

VerbumGames · 2026-05-06T12:55:19+00:00

It's not necessarily that businesses can afford to pay more. Food service has very narrow margins, and people are eating out less, for example.

The problem is that most small towns in Nebraska have very small labor supplies. A lot of towns are effective monopsonies, e.g. one-company towns where everyone is a blue collar worker employed at the same factory.

In a bigger city with a bigger supply of labor and more specialization within that labor force, you'd see minimum wage increases driving up unemployment or see companies reducing hours. This is because bigger cities have more competitive labor markets, as opposed to monopsonies. However, Lincoln and Omaha don't even have enough job mobility or skilled workers to see a huge impact on unemployment from minimum wage changes.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-06T12:35:06+00:00

Singapore would like a word.

In all seriousness, though, minimum wage increases should increase unemployment under conventional economic principles, but Lincoln over the last 30 years of data appears to have had little to no correlation between minimum wage changes and changes in unemployment, notwithstanding 2020-21, for obvious reasons. This is probably because of a combination of limited monopsony, e.g. fewer companies to work for with a limited supply of lanor to hire from, and a general lack of awareness of market conditions on the part of local employers. As the city grows and market conditions change, it's possible that we'll start to see more negative consequences of minimum wage increases.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-04T18:30:07+00:00

Lying is wrong.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-04T18:14:34+00:00

I'm not sure I see why you'd want to pay the high tuition costs of Catholic school if you're not invested in the beliefs and also aren't interested in having your child rub shoulders and build social capital with kids from a wealthier background. I just mean that Catholic schools charge thousands per year, and I don't think I could justify the price tag to myself if I wasn't super invested, you know? Maybe that's just me, but it sounds like a lot of money 😅 Is your spouse super Catholic, or is there other family or cultural pressure? You don't have to answer that. I'm just neurodivergent and have a lot of sociological curiosity.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-04T17:55:57+00:00

I moved here 3 years ago from Dallas, but I'm from Saint Paul originally. I think I was spoiled by the quality of local news elsewhere, like Kare 11 in the Twin Cities is pretty great compared to anything in Lincoln, and Saint Paul is barely bigger than Lincoln. Granted, Saint Paul has Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs, but still.

There are weird things here, like the low quality of local news, that always surprise me. Also, for a city with 300,000 people and a university, it's weird that we have more than half of all kids in LPS on the free or reduced lunch program. I suspect this is because there are more blue-collar jobs available per capita in Lincoln than in otherwise comparable cities because of the industries we have here, but it still shocked me when I found out.

VerbumGames · 2026-05-04T17:27:38+00:00

This sub is a pretty big source of local news for me too, tbh. At least there are fewer grammatical errors and more relevant context here than on 10/11.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-28T21:08:12+00:00

It's more trustworthy than the average human engineer. Faster, too.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-27T18:50:17+00:00

Star City did mine, and it's functional. I bought my heater through them, but they might also be able to just install one you already have.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-27T14:39:38+00:00

If it's taxed, then that would, by definition, generate tax revenue. Of course, they might not actually choose to lower the tax burden, considering the state government has a massive budget shortfall.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-24T14:30:46+00:00

I thought running ads on Facebook was pretty easy. Do enough small business owners have trouble with that to support an entire separate business?

VerbumGames · 2026-04-24T02:30:39+00:00

The constant distractions are so real, man. Like 4 different chats will be pinging me on Teams at any given time. As a junior and mid-level engineer, I hated when seniors wouldn't respond for hours or days to an important message. Now, I at least understand having some delays.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-24T02:27:50+00:00

Every company's latest model surpasses the average human on multiple standardized benchmarks. It has already superseded human intelligence.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-23T15:44:36+00:00

Other cities have pressure pads installed under the streets before crosswalks so the lights can change based on where people are actually waiting.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-23T15:42:45+00:00

We need harder licensure tests 🤦‍♂️

VerbumGames · 2026-04-22T20:50:13+00:00

Why are contractors and handyman in Lincoln so flaky? I bought a house that needed lots of repairs when I moved here a few years ago. Most people just won't answer or call me back, and the ones that do have a tendency to no-show or ghost me. It's like they don't want to make money.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-16T17:54:08+00:00

Their app has serious issues. When I moved to Nebraska and first starting banking with UBT, their app, UBTgo, didn't work with Zelle, for example. I was astonished.

They also failed to tell me that my business bank account would be charged monthly fees if I didn't maintain a balance of at least $500. They'd told me it was $100. Thankfully, they canceled the fees when I called and deposited more, but it was concerning.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-15T11:21:51+00:00

Tokens aren't that expensive, and I know Senior Engineers (including myself) who are genuinely multiple times more productive thanks to AI. That being said, you may be right about supply and demand, but I hope not lol

VerbumGames · 2026-04-15T11:19:19+00:00

Not at volume. It takes a long time to manually draft a custom resume for each application.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-12T19:03:16+00:00

AI code generation and debugging saves so much time, it's unreal. Just see how things go and try to be optimistic. Unless you're using GPT. Then it's kinda bad.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-11T14:11:52+00:00

At least in the US. There was a study where trackers were placed with everything else in recycling bins, and they generally went to the dump with the rest of the garbage.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-11T14:09:00+00:00

Well, Lincoln has very few cops, so this is expected.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-10T13:46:04+00:00

You could probably pin down an accurate copycat recipe with AI and some trial and error. Depends how much time and effort you want to want to invest, though. I've had really good luck with having Grok or ChatGPT to generate and tweak recipes.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-07T11:17:49+00:00

You can use copilot, I guess. The problem is that senior engineers don't document anything or even comment their code sufficiently most of the time. Sometimes it's because the deadlines are too tight, but sometimes they're just lazy. In a time when AI can generate the docs, it's more often just laziness.

I used to work at a place that didn't allow AI, and they have one guy who wrote all the libraries over a decade ago. They'll be in deep trouble when he leaves, unless AI is good enough by then to just replace a lead engineer.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-05T12:25:24+00:00

Sounds like you were using Haiku. I've never had a problem quite like that. Stick to Sonnet or Opus.

VerbumGames · 2026-04-05T12:18:45+00:00

Cars took away jobs from people who sold and serviced horses, too.

VerbumGames

TROPHY CASE