This is one of my favorite comedy routines that references this - Brian Regan:

Yes - flat percentages are not fair as 10% of a lower income individuals money goes to much more of their base subsistence than 10% of the higher income individual.

I thought they weren’t making these glass versions anymore. There was even a section of an America’s Test Kitchen episode where they talked about that. This is great - thanks! These things are super tough - my wife once tipped one out of a cabinet onto our glass cooktop range accidentally, blew a hole right through…

I thought they weren’t making these glass versions anymore. There was even a section of an America’s Test Kitchen…

Very good points, and local cost of living is a huge element in what is a ‘living’ wage through the country. Where I am, $15/hr is nearly enough to buy a decent starter home. You could pick up another part time job on top of that and be very comfortable, but that’s Kansas and not NYC.

Alright, let’s slow down here. Can we slow the projecting down? Maybe a bit? Just because I disagree with your approach to a problem does not mean that I run around belittling or staring down my nose at people that ‘don’t have sufficient aspirations’ to use your words and never my own.

I, too, want to take the long view of this but we just disagree fundamentally on what steps should be advocated to help resolve the plight of those in these low skill jobs. I don’t think $15/hr is the answer in part because that will cause further inflation and make that $15 less effective in the marketplace. The…

I would disagree - the technology to feed a primal cut of meat into a machine that can map it and make the most optimum sub-primals out of it exists and has existed for 15 years. It is substantially more expensive and less efficient overall for these machines to operate than to train and employ an individual to cut…

That was the key item at the end of my first comment. These jobs don’t pay well and aren’t good jobs and that won’t change with more money. The answer is developing a skill set for the job market and getting out of these jobs. That’s what worked for me and many of the other salaried posters commenting about this…

There’s a tipping point in the economical equation where automation is cheaper than keeping manual (for most jobs, there are certain jobs that are very challenging to fully automate such as meat packing as every animal could be slightly different and the costs of defects can be high). Where there are cost savings,…

I view it a bit differently. Paying staff to prep a grocery store to start the morning is an investment in the shopping experience, just as you say. If the cost of that investment gets too high the business will find another way to either radically supplant that experience (challenging and prone to acceptance…

Yes, these automations or reductions in staffing are under way. My opinion is not that they are solely driven by minimum wage but that a mandated minimum that is dramatically higher than current will accelerate these automations and reductions.

I agree that it won’t be widespread with a caveat; I think that if companies are suddenly forced to pay double the current minimum wage this automation will accelerate. If that comes to pass, you’ll see that 5 to 1 ratio swapped probably nearly overnight.

I’m not saying it will not happen, but it will happen faster if their hands are forced. And I don’t think people should ‘sit and grin’ - my answer was my last sentence: But more money for the bad job isn’t the answer, it’s developing a skill and job market that lets someone move on from the bad job.

I haven’t tried the Walmart service yet, but they have special parking spots that you drive to and pick up. I don’t know if you even have to go in the store. Our local Kroger affiliate just started the same thing as well in their grocery stores. You can see employees pulling special carts through the store with…

I agree in a fair wage for fair work, but $15 an hour for very low skilled labor is economic suicide. Companies will automate as many of these jobs out of existence as possible. We’ve seen it happen with grocery store checkout clerks subbing out for self check lines.

Just add some bug zappers to the top. It’ll be tremendous.

I just keep coming back to the thought with all of these notes that not one of these people emailing HamNo are telling Trump ‘I quit’. If they leave in protest they are quitting to their supervisor, their coworkers, and in Jordan’s case her patients.

I was going to say something akin to this. Even counting time spent as intern/postgrad/residency/whatever they call it in Psychology, it’s max six years. Doing the math, postgrad may have started as early as when Jordan was 22. Add six years to that and she’s 28, maybe 29 if she took until 23 to graduate (I know I…

I know, Ike. How about a spelling contest?

One quick thought on the whole “we live in a society...” line. These priorities would be the same if you were in an active shooter situation or if you were in the middle of a city that suddenly found itself in the middle of a war - be it a modern war or the sack of Troy. If you can run, get out, if you can’t, try to…