[wpietri]

Which is fine by me. We've been automating jobs out of existence since the industrial revolution, and should continue to do so. There are very few people doing a job now that was a job in 1750, but there's still plenty for people to do. That's because we keep turning boring, lower-value work over to machines and finding more interesting, higher-value work for people to do.

This does produce temporary dislocation. Once all the elevators were automated, elevator operators were all out of a job. [1] But I don't think that's an argument against automation. I think it's an argument for a strong safety net and generous retraining programs.

[1] Yes, this was once a job. There are even a few left: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/insider/manual-elevators-...

[nbardy]

I agreed its good to atomate jobs, but raising the minimum wage behind you is an anti competitive move I can't behind.

[wpietri]

Look at it the other way. Suppose they honestly believe that $15 is the right minimum wage. If they just raise it to $15 for their workers, why should they let other companies freeload?

Look at other sorts of pro-worker laws, like safety. If Amazon were lobbying for increased OSHA oversight of warehouses because they didn't want to compete with companies who treated worker bodies as disposable, would that be bad? I don't think so.