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This, "if we have to pay more, then people will lose jobs", is a Republican boogie man. The absurd infinitum is that corporations would pay zero and use slaves if they could.

The pay-line above which a corporation will value automating over having an employee, is always moving for every job, and yes, they will automate jobs 'No-Matter-What-The-Minimum-Wage'. Jobs today that are minimum wage are already at risk for being automated and eliminated, changing the minimum wage only hastens or pushes out the time frame. It will happen.

Thus Increasing minimum wage is only forcing corporations to not use slaves. To keep the population above some starving threshold.

And of course, it pumps money back into economy since people have to spend their pay.



> corporations would pay zero and use slaves if they could

Honest question: why is this absurd? Slavery has been a widespread practice in history, and it is still ongoing in some places.

Corporations exist to make money. The brute mathematics of profit require costs to be reduced. To zero, if at all possible.


It is absurd because in order to make money the companies need people with money to buy their products. If everybody was a slave they wouldn't be able to buy anything.


Sure, can't argue with that. But there are plenty of stable points on the curve from 0% to 100% slavery.


Yes. That is true. There are a lot of stable points, and gov/corp configurations. Really, across history, there are a lot of different forms society can take.

I'm just reacting to the current push in the US to drive down the lower and middle classes, and funnel so much wealth to just a few. A lot of this is done by wage suppression, so that corps can have higher profit.




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