[lukasm]

Sadly, it is true. If you increase min wage in one country, the business will move to another. You would need to increase it everywhere. Assuming that's possible you would still need to deal with corruption.

What makes things worse (at least short term) it's automation. In 10 years robots will do this kind of job.

Historically, all nations developed with this brutal process. Many without minimum wage.

[mcv]

> What makes things worse (at least short term) it's automation. In 10 years robots will do this kind of job.

The problem isn't automation, it's that our economy is designed to make automation a bad thing. In a better system, automation would give us higher productivity and more free time. But we designed our system so that free time is a bad thing unless you're rich. People need jobs to eat, so there has to be enough work, so anything that reduces the amount of work, threatens people's livelihood.

That's the problem of our society in a nutshell. The gains of automation only go to the people at the top. They should be going to the people at the bottom.

[pluma]

I can't express how much I agree with this sentiment.

Automation reduces the requirement of human labour. It increases our productivity. That should be a good thing. I'm in the business of putting people out of their job[0] -- that should be something we strive for. A few decades ago we believed that technology would create a utopia by doing this because we would barely ever have to work yet be as productive as ever.

Sadly our culture has this perverse fetish for needless work. You must have a job to make money because you need to make money to survive. And if your job becomes easier and you have to work less to achieve the same levels of productivity, either your work must expand to fill the gap or your pay gets reduced to reflect the reduction in work.

If we paid by productivity, even unskilled labour would guarantee ample pay.

[0]: Anyone working in the tech industry is, ultimately. Although many products result in the creation of "non-jobs" (essentially, the commercial equivalent of bureaucracy), that's merely a stepping stone and at least partially a byproduct of the mentality that more jobs are a good thing.

[uniclaude]

Has there ever been a working system where this wasn't the case? I think I agree with you on this, but I lack of data points to back the argument.

[zhte415]

I'm not talking about T-shirts here, which are usually extremely price sensitive, but high-street brands that sell a shirt for $30 or a pair of trousers/pants for $50-100.

A change in cost for suppliers of these products doesn't move business from one country to another. And the margin a supplier makes varies greatly.

A lot of products sourced in high-street brands comes from a variety of the same global suppliers (some of which sub-contract, some do in-house, and some sub-sub contract). One month from one supplier, and another month from another (varying by continent, country, to in-country location), for a pretty much identical product. One supplier may make 10% margin, and another 25%. It is of concern to the purchaser that a supplier doesn't make much of a margin, as they're feared as being pushed under, but puzzlement that these suppliers stay in business for decades. What is more important is turn-around time. A high-street brand needs a design idea to go from cat-walk to hanger in weeks, not months. That means logistics have to be extremely tight - design sent (electronically), prototypes mocked and air-mailed back, BOM sourced and often imported (at least in part), and the super-price sensitive suppliers just can't deliver here, whatever the margin, let alone the Q+A. A day turnaround and assurance of delivery time can make a difference more important than 5-15% on the quote.

When it comes to cheap textile production, or production of the lowest quality product then yes, price sensitivity is important. But when it comes to delivering mid-level textile products logistics trump jumping to the lowest margin location (where lack of logistical facilities, bribes, un-predictable delays).

I agree things can often improve, but minimum wage has little to do with it. A functional port and road to a factory are far more important in being competitive than how much a worker costs (except for the cheapest of cheapest textile products).

[fnordfnordfnord]

>What makes things worse (at least short term) it's automation.

Automation isn't the boogey man, we are.

>In 10 years robots will do this kind of job.

That may not be true if there is a willing supply of practically free labor.

[pluma]

I'm reminded of the story about how the ancient Greek practically invented the steam engine but only used it as a toy because the wide availability of practically free labour (via slaves) meant the development of automation wouldn't have been economically viable.

The more jobs we automate, the more we devalue unskilled labour. I wished we would live in a world where this could universally be agreed upon to be a good thing.