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Comment by timbo1642 | Hacker News Reader

Stupid people don't understand it will make all costs rise and we won't end up in the same situation, but a worse situation because there will be higher markups as well (just about every business did this after the covid shutdowns)

People are stupid and I'm convinced these people want to destroy the country. When you raise wages, things like automation will happen much faster and people will have to do more work and there will be a ton of layoffs

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Minimum wage was touted as a way to push out blacks, immigrants, and other undesirables with asymmetric access to education and capital when it was introduced in the US in the wake of the great depression. They wanted a floor high enough that only a nice white boy would earn and thus outlaw the lesser paid workers to the fringes where they can be further exploited.

Minimum wage still has this function today, a policy for smug elite to smash down the least fortunate while doing double speak to pretend like they are doing the poor a favor.

Maybe that’s what they want? Yes, a $50 min wage isn’t viable for many jobs, but those jobs could be automated anyways, especially with the wage pressure of employing real people making the capital investments work out. It would have to be coupled with some UBI, though, since a lot of people aren’t going to be able to provide labor that passes that threshold.

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