Second ('Third') Trump Presidency Thread

mqt said:
If he actually gets convicted of human trafficking by a court, I’d like to believe the Dems would have the good sense to just let him serve his sentence and deport him, or at the very least memory hole the whole affair, but you’re probably right about the whole thing.

For what it’s worth, I still support the focus on his case even if he turns out to be a gang member. We simply cannot merely take the government’s word for criminal proceedings and ignore court orders to imprison people.
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Human trafficking is a weird charge. They have charged prostitutes for human trafficking each other for carpooling to work. If this guy is convicted but he was bringing consenting people then I think a pardon is likely.
 
Not that I want to be associated with Hawley and minimum wage increases, but the cost of capital (including robots) is not zero.

What happens, however, is that relative factor prices will drive certain changes. The Industrial Revolution, to cite a famous example, happened in England and not elsewhere, because the price of labor was high in England (compared to other countries at the time) and the price of coal was low. That set of factor prices favored the technological innovations that we associate with the Industrial Revolution.

We have a high wage economy (a good thang!). But it incentives labor-saving technological change (also a good thang!). Minimum wage laws affect that but only marginally given that the minimum wage is irrelevant for most of the labor force.

The whole minimum wage thang is mostly interesting as a form of virtue or ideological signaling. Its practical effect is tiny.
 
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nsacpi said:
Not that I want to be associated with Hawley and minimum wage increases, but the cost of capital (including robots) is not zero.

What happens, however, is that relative factor prices will drive certain changes. The Industrial Revolution, to cite a famous example, happened in England and not elsewhere, because the price of labor was high in England (compared to other countries at the time) and the price of coal was low. That set of factor prices favored the technological innovations that we associate with the Industrial Revolution.

We have a high wage economy (a good thang!). But it incentives labor-saving technological change (also a good thang!). Minimum wage laws affect that but only marginally given that the minimum wage is irrelevant for most of the labor force.

The whole minimum wage thang is mostly interesting as a form of virtue or ideological signaling. Its practical effect is tiny.
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It costs around $300k to raise someone to 18 in the US (let’s call that human capital). The cost to build a robot will be less than that.

I agree with much of what you said. Minimum wage increases are likely a net negative but not the end of the world.
 
chop2chip said:
It costs around $300k to raise someone to 18 in the US (let’s call that human capital). The cost to build a robot will be less than that.

I agree with much of what you said. Minimum wage increases are likely a net negative but not the end of the world.
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Yes, but the $300K is not born by the employer. Is is mostly born by the parents and topped off by the state in the form of subsidies for various public goods such as education.
 
chop2chip said:
It costs around $300k to raise someone to 18 in the US (let’s call that human capital). The cost to build a robot will be less than that.

I agree with much of what you said. Minimum wage increases are likely a net negative but not the end of the world.
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I have an alternate solution for this particular issue actually.
 
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