[amarkov]

Right, but this doesn't seem to describe what happened here. Before Amazon moved in, people in San Bernadino weren't working for efficient businesses paying great wages; they just didn't work.

How long should we have kept them unemployed to wait for a new high-paying business to show up?

[dv_dt]

If we systematically select businesses that pay subsistence wages, the concern is that better employment may never show up, and the overall economy becomes more and more unstable over time. But it's hard to know for sure and that is one of many different outcomes.

But still it's not an area you want to move forward with no introspection.

Edit: If low-workers are paid such a low margin that they have no personal buffer for uncertainties such as automation in warehouses, then we also guarantee that the government ends up paying for that transition (or we get unrest and/or economic malaise). If they're paid a higher margin, the economy ends up more efficient at flexibility transitioning from changes like warehouses becoming fully automated. (because offset workers can make individual transition choices that that make local sense instead of trying to apply slowly responding gov't policy).