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For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

• gremlinsinc 7y ago
  I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months and depression hits hard when money is tight. There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecurity, stress, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
  • leetcrew 7y ago
    my guess is an effective system of healthcare and/or UBI would decrease the suicide rate somewhat, because people wouldn't feel so helpless. I'm not sure that max wage algorithm creates a healthy incentive though. it would seem to encourage hiring more employees than necessary just to increase the executive's compensation. I think people can often tell when their job isn't really necessary and it probably doesn't feel very good.
    • lazyasciiart 7y ago
      It doesn't encourage hiring more employees - how would that affect the average employee pay? You just have to pay more to the ones you have.
      • leetcrew 7y ago
        > w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. maybe I misread this and GP meant increasing the fraction of US employees?
        • gremlinsinc 7y ago
          I meant some claim CEO pay tied to worker might encourage layoffs. If you have 10 workers average pay 100k and you last off your lowest paid worker the average goes up, and you're paying less out of pocket. By having bonuses showing that you're not trying to game the system by laying people off it encourages job growth. That and the idea of pay cap is to ensure business growth over CEO enrichment. How does it hurt the companies bottom line if the CEO can only earn 10 Mill not 50m? When it gives 40 surplus for new devs or r and d people to grow new products and income opportunities.
      • Noos 7y ago
        yeah, it would actually decrease the number of employees if employee cost is significant enough to not be absorbed by raising the price. It might also decrease it by forcing a robustness check on existing businesses. A lot of them manage but couldn't absorb a financial hit; this would be a minor crisis but one that could just push marginal businesses over the edge.
    • austincheney 7y ago
      Suicidal ideation is a mental health illness. Financial desperation is stressful, but that stress is not an indication of mental health distress. I don’t see these two things as having any correlation and I am not aware of any related evidence adjoining those two. If finances are a factor in suicidal ideation then it’s a secondary consideration in addition to more prominent concerns.
      • everly 7y ago
        I find it hard to believe that you can’t see any correlation but here you go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24121465/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24121465/ https://www.allure.com/story/suicide-debt-link https://www.allure.com/story/suicide-debt-link
        • austincheney 7y ago
          False correlation. Take this damning quote from your second link: > Data analysis from a 2013 study published in the journal Clinical Psychology Review shows that those who died by suicide were eight times more likely to be in debt. Correlation does not imply causation. To illustrate the silliness when the related items are transposed the statement becomes absurdly false even though the logic remains identical: persons in debt are 8 times more likely to be suicidal. Nobody is claiming that because it’s preposterous and there is no such data. Stress is not a mental health illness. Having debt is also not a mental health illness.
          • madddiagnosis 7y ago
            Having debt may not be a mental health illness, but mental health illnesses are significantly exacerbated by debt. I was discharged from a mental health ward 3 weeks ago after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. My brother was murdered a year ago and I've been struggling with depression since. I lose my job a few months ago and money has been tight in my household, to the point where I began to see myself as nothing buta financial anchor weighing down my partner. Freeing her from having to manage my debts was the primary justification for my suicide attempt. My mental health illness (mixed anxiety and Depressive disorder) is not caused by debt, but the affective symptoms (in this case suicidal ideation) were. Or to put it another way: the easy way out of debt allows people to rationalize an an otherwise irrational decision. (°) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/03/aggressive-debt-collectors-raise-risk-of-suicide https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/201... NatCen analysed detailed NHS data about adults’ mental health undertaken for the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute. It found that 13% of people in problem debt – about 420,000 a year – think about suicide and 4% of them – more than 100,000 people – try to end their life. Suicide attempts in people with debt are around 400x more likely than those without debts (it's around .01% in the UK yearly), which surely counteracts the idea that nobody is claiming that people in debt are more likely to be suicidal? Having debt certainly isn't a mental illness, but we can't ignore the effect having debt has on people with mental illnesses. Edit: sorry for any typos or grammatical errors, my medication causes difficulties typing and recognising errors (°) Of course, it may actually be rational, since her financial security would be significantly improved by the removal of debt and the extra mouth to feed - but rationality does not necessarily imply correctness.
    • Frondo 7y ago
      I like the incentive that a maximum wage introduces: increase the pay of your staff and subcontractors hired by your company to raise your wage ceiling. I can't see a drawback, aside from someone at that ceiling simply wanting to raise their salary without raising those working for them.
  • emptybits 7y ago
    Re/ medicare for all ... Canada has universal health care yet a very similar suicide rate to the USA.[1] Canada doesn't have a livable minimum wage either. Each province sets its own. There is talk of UBI experiments. [1] https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-canada-suicide-edition.html https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-can...
    • solinent 7y ago
      Our model (Canada) doesn't include free ambulances or drugs, it's better to compare to the European model. We do have good welfare programs here however, and drugs are much cheaper anyways.
      • plumednom 7y ago
        Any good model does it's best to prevent ambulances. The kink in the USA is that if you cannot afford to go to a family doctor, you call 911, they send you an ambulance, you get a free ride to the general hospital emergency room where you then sit for 5 hours to be told you have bronchitis. That taxi ride cost the taxpayers about $2500, and then the hospital writes off another $1500 (which is what the emergency room would charge you for 10 minutes of doctor time. Really). I moved from San Francisco to Istanbul a few years ago, and now every time I hear an ambulance or a firetruck I am blown away by the fact that I heard one. In SF you don't hear them because they're going 24/7, mostly for stupid reasons (certainly not fires). Ambulance frequent fliers also really gum up the works. Take for example Bruce Myers, an alcoholic drug addict who gets picked up in an ambulance on average 90 times per year. There's another drunk in San Francisco who averages 300 times per year and has cost the city $10m. Pretty much every single aspect of healthcare in America is broken.
    • zeroxfe 7y ago
      That's 2011 data. Most recent data is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... * Global rate: 10.5 per 100,000 people * Canada rate: 10.4 per 100,000 people * US rate: 13.7 per 100,000 people
  • lukifer 7y ago
    > UBI would also probably help. As the only candidate currently running on a UBI platform, Andrew Yang has argued that one of its benefits would be a reduction in economic anxiety, with ancillary benefits to health in the form of stress reduction and improved executive function, as well as lower rates of depression, suicide, and drug addiction.
    • hanniabu 7y ago
      I can attest to this. I've been in both situations where I was very financially comfortable and where I've been in more financially risk situations on and off. You definitely have higher stress, anxiety, and develop negative habits at financially risky times. And for reference the were longer time frames: 5 years well off, 3 years poor, 2 well off, 2 poor
    • claudeganon 7y ago
      Without other universal floors on things like housing and healthcare, UBI is just going to be eaten up by those costs. An indirect sop to these sectors isn’t going to do much to improve the average person’s quality of life.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • lukifer 7y ago
        I agree that universal health care should be solved independently from UBI (Yang supports opt-in Medicare For All). Housing is a more complicated story; there's certainly a theory that landlords will simply raise rents in proportion to their tenants new ability to pay more. On the other hand, a stable income boost might make the housing market more fluid, giving renters more options to move when the rent goes up. I personally favor LVT to discourage rent-seeking, and there's a lot that could be done by removing zoning and building restrictions (multi-family conversions, etc) to make housing more competitive.
    • Miner49er 7y ago
      For the middle class maybe. His implementation will leave the poorest worse off.
  • claudeganon 7y ago
    There’s something obviously wrong with the U.S. because suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young people and has jumped 50+ percent since the Great Recession: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/suicide-young-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/suicide-young-peo...
    • whiddershins 7y ago
      What would you prefer the second-leading cause of death be for young people? I am being serious. Some things have to be the top causes of death for young people and the list definitionally can’t include the aspirational “old age.”
      • claudeganon 7y ago
        This seems like an odd question. Obviously we should prefer accidental death among young people vs. that which is self-inflicted, while hoping that the overall number of deaths diminishes, regardless of circumstance. But I don’t think a spike in youth suicide is something we should hand waive away in any case.
        • burfog 7y ago
          We can have get accidental death up to second place by banning railings, air bags, helmets, and tire tread patterns. In other words, was there really a spike in youth suicide or did it just climb in rank because we reduced other causes of death? Something must be first, something must be second, and so on.
          • claudeganon 7y ago
            Teen/young adult suicides are now occurring at the highest rate since we’ve been keeping statistics (1960): https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-suicide-rates-rising-teens-young-adults-20190618-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-suicide-rates-rising-... So there’s unequivocally a spike. The only argument you could really make is that suicide rates have been rising across the US since 1999, up in most states and up by 30% in half of all states, making youth suicide of a part with the broader trend. But I don’t think this is any less disheartening. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html
  • pkaye 7y ago
    There is nearly a 2x difference in rate between white and native americans vs blacks, asians and hispanics. I'm wondering if there is a good understanding of that difference. I don't think it is just economic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Age_adjusted_US_suicide_rate_by_race_1981-2016.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/...
    • DaniFong 7y ago
      That stood out to me as well, indeed the numbers vary a lot nationally and ethnically. How are you supposed to study it, though? Not exactly a good situation for an exit poll. Imaginably the government could be in a position to grant a gift, and help, to offer a moment of respite from whatever is causing the most distress -- that might help some people...
      • whatshisface 7y ago
        You could give the survey to random people, and when somebody dies, you go back and find their most recent survey. That's their exit poll.
        • DaniFong 7y ago
          yeah, that could work if it was wide scale enough. apparently google and facebook already have some kind of tech that estimates if people are vulnerable to suicidal ideation based on searches ("hey google, how do I kill myself painlessly?" gives the national suicide prevention hotline -- good)
    • luckydata 7y ago
      Because if you're told you're supposed to "make it" since birth, and you don't, you feel like a piece of shit. Marginalized communities have been told the other story, every little thing is a win. Difference in expectations is huge, and source of all sort of bad things (like racial resentment etc...). Solution: make this country slightly less "dog eat dog" and you'll solve a LOT of social issues almost overnight.
  • amelius 7y ago
    I think a max wage totally makes sense, because nobody is more than a modest constant times more productive than anyone else, and anything created by a person is always built on existing knowledge and constructs created by society. Also, risk does not really exist anymore these days (with minimum wages, financial constructs around bankruptcy, etc.)
    • natalyarostova 7y ago
      A max wage is insane government overreach. If I want to make a deal with someone else where I’ll work to do something and in return they pay me a portion of the surplus value I create, there is no justification, moral or economic, to cap that amount. Moreover, price ceilings have a rich and long empirical and theoretical argument against their existence in the economics literature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling Finally, by what measure do you feel able to assert that no one is more productive than someone else based on some constant? How much more productive was the team of the Manhattan project than some other team of physicists?
      • aaron_m04 7y ago
        Cases like the Manhattan project team are rare. Cases like grossly overpaid managers and executives in FIRE industries are common.
        • ggreer 7y ago
          If managers and executives are so overpaid, why aren't top firms outcompeted by companies that offer lower wages for such positions? Lower wages would allow those companies to offer the same services at lower prices and take over the market.
          • susijdjdjxa 7y ago
            I think the “outcompeted” argument proves too much. Nobody does anything wrong, otherwise they would be outcompeted.
  • gjs278 7y ago
    have you considered getting a job
  • eplanit 7y ago
    There is no statistical support of these ideas, though. Suicide rates in countries with Socialist economies are higher than in the U.S. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
    • ixwt 7y ago
      This is disingenuous. It doesn't classify by Socialist, but by country. Russia is #3 on global suicides, and when I think of socialist healthcare, my first thought isn't Russia. Many of the countries I think of as socialist healthcare (UK, Denmark, Canada, to name a few), they all come up below the US in suicides.
      • Kiro 7y ago
        The minimum wage in Denmark is 0.
        • kick 7y ago
          Non-sequitur. Denmark has incredibly high tax rates and a welfare state that runs laps around any North American country.
          • SSSDFRO 7y ago
            Partially because their min wage is 0
      • int_19h 7y ago
        Russia does have free public healthcare. It's not a stellar system, but it works.
    • DanBC 7y ago
      I feel like everyone posting the link to that article needs to also post this quote from it in their comment. > The WHO statistics are based on the official reports from each respective country, therefore are no more accurate than the record-keeping in the specific country, and revisions (updates) are usually performed as well. > In much of the world, suicide is stigmatized and condemned for religious or cultural reasons. In some countries, suicidal behaviour is a criminal offence punishable by law. Suicide is therefore often a secretive act surrounded by taboo, and may be unrecognized, misclassified or deliberately hidden in official records of death.[3] It is very hard to compare rates of suicide across countries.
  • mjevans 7y ago
    (a) Maximum Wage and/or wealth tax is the best way to fight inequality. Raising the floor without modifying how much or how quickly those at the top earn only makes those barely above the bottom relatively poorer.
    • silexia 7y ago
      The wealth tax is the best way to fight inequality. A maximum wage would just discourage our best entrepreneurs. I agree that raising the floor without changing anything else doesn't do much.
  • thebean11 7y ago
    > (avg of contractors + employees * 150) Hmm, this seems suspiciously biased towards certain types of business (for example, tech CEOs would make way more than retail CEOs)
  • andrei_says_ 7y ago
    Have been reading Rutger Bregman’s book and UBI seems to be an incredible money saver and immense benefit. It would take however a big jump in consciousness to do something like this because who would take the shorty jobs paying 1/3 living wage if no one is afraid Of homelessness?
    • rubinelli 7y ago
      If nobody is taking that job for a salary that is economically viable, then it shouldn't exist. We shouldn't make people waste their finite time on this Earth doing pointless jobs under the threat of homelessness or starvation.
      • gremlinsinc 7y ago
        You mean slavery should be abolished?
      • andrei_says_ 7y ago
        In an employers’ market with no unions and no regulation ensuring a livable wage, many corporations write business plans relying on precisely this kinds of jobs.
    • MiroF 7y ago
      I think there are better policies than a UBI, but in face the "problem" you are indicating seems more like a benefit than a flaw.
  • paul_milovanov 7y ago
    guys, guys... minimum wage, maximum wage... we got to go deeper! uniform constant wage!!!
  • JDiculous 7y ago
    Don't forget student loans. Having six figures in student loans simply from getting a masters degree is enough to make one almost consider abandoning the U.S, especially when you consider that the older generation who caused this never experienced it themselves. My most depressing times were when I was unemployed (not to be confused with "funemployed") and not making any money.
  • plumednom 7y ago
    Damned commie. How would we commit genocide in Iran if we were giving all of those entitlements to taxpayers? How could we afford to give $30bn to Israel so they can buy arms from us? HOW COULD WE AFFORD OUR SECOND YACHT IF WE HAVE TO PAY A REASONABLE WAGE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Go back to Cuba, commie.
  • silexia 7y ago
    The best form of a maximum wage would be a simple wealth tax in place of the income tax. It doesn't discourage entrepreneurs continuing to work, but it doesn't allow wealth to accumulate in idle hands.
• m0zg 7y ago
  Doesn't seem plausible, _especially_ when unemployment is high. Retail is the land of the minimum wage jobs, and margins are fairly thin there as it is. Raising the minimum wage simply means some employees become former employees. If the unemployment is at historic lows as it is today, there's a good chance those former employees will be able to find another job, so I see how the conclusion of the paper could be plausible, although loss of a job is still a very stressful event regardless. When the unemployment rate is high (as it was in the studied date range), however, the effective wage becomes whatever unemployment pays, which isn't very much, and then it goes away entirely at some point. I don't see how this would reduce suicide. Seems to me like another study crafted to produce the outcome the author wanted. The hypothesis isn't really testable anyway.
• crooked-v 7y ago
  As the old saying goes: Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a jet ski. And you never see an unhappy person riding a jet ski.
  • winrid 7y ago
    Same with spicy food. Hard to be upset with some really spicy hot pot.
  • tempsy 7y ago
    making a living wage, and I would hardly call $1 above the current min wage a "living" wage, has nothing to do with having more money to buy things with and everything to do with feeling psychologically safe from spiraling into debt and possible homelessness. the lack of a psychological safety net is one of the most anxiety inducing things about American capitalism. we underestimate as a society how damaging it is because it's so hard to measure.
    • funklute 7y ago
      > we underestimate as a society how damaging it is because it's so hard to measure I'm not sure I agree with that. It has been known within public health for decades that poverty is an important predictor of life expectancy and quality of life. The real problem in the US appears to be a deep cultural belief in self-sufficiency, and an accompanying unwillingness to vote for politicians who support implementation of said safety nets.
      • theredbox 7y ago
        Well this is actually one of the biggest issues in Eastern Europe. The belief the state should take care of its citizens ( the safety net you are talking about ). The truth is only populist crooks get elected and only come up with shortsighted inefficient solutions (and half of the budget gets stolen).
        • lazyasciiart 7y ago
• ngngngng 7y ago
  I was reading the other day that typically mass shootings happen during a recession, and right now is a confusing time because the economy is supposedly doing fantastic, yet we keep having mass shootings. Could this have to do with the mounting inequality? It seems the standard indicators for the health of the economy are breaking because wealth just keeps pooling near the top. So what this study could be saying is, "make changes so that more people get the benefits of the booming economy."
  • hanniabu 7y ago
    The economy is only doing great for businesses. Common folk are barely recovered from the recession. So yes, I would say it's definitely due to inequality and a breakdown of indicators.
    • Domenic_S 7y ago
      > Common folk are barely recovered from the recession. By what measure?
      • sp332 7y ago
        % change in real mean wealth. https://psmag.com/economics/wealth-inequality-and-the-great-recession https://psmag.com/economics/wealth-inequality-and-the-great-...
        • Domenic_S 7y ago
          When you measure wealth as including home equity, as this article does, this is bound to happen in 2007. I'm not sure it tells us anything meaningful except that home prices were way out of whack and for many people their home is a substantial % of their wealth.
          • dole 7y ago
            Why wouldn't you include home equity into wealth? Perceptible gap widening since 2007: https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...
• cartercole 7y ago
  The minimum wage should be 0 - sincerely any good economist
  • tempsy 7y ago
    it might as well be - "gig" work is not bound by min wage laws. ask an instacart worker how that's worked out for them.
    • Ohn0 7y ago
      lol the minimum / livable wage is just another joke in lawmaking with vast loopholes.
  • keeganjw 7y ago
    The minimum wage should be livable - sincerely any good person
    • fennecfoxen 7y ago
      > The minimum wage should be livable - sincerely any good person Also unemployment should never happen, and if we simply declare how the economy should works, it will magically reorganize itself in a way that makes it so, and which doesn't do serious harm to anybody, and doesn't cripple our futures. And you are a monster for daring to entertain the notion that achieving goodness in the world is any more complicated than this, and you deserve to be shunned and hated.
    • MuffinFlavored 7y ago
      Livable to what extent? You should be able to afford food (what quality of food? do good people also believe everybody deserves to eat filet mignon/comparable on occasion?), transportation (which in some cases means car + gas + maintenance + insurance) + housing (what kind of housing? rent a room in a low cost area? have your own single family home?) + family (should you be encouraged to have 3 children aka mouths to feed if you are low income)? I don't know if I've been brainwashed growing up by fake news but... isn't the idea "work hard for a living", not "do the minimum and be rewarded?" (aka minimum wage)
• codingslave 7y ago
  Really doubt this. Instead I would look into the connection between anti depressants/anti psychotics and suicide. There's research of strong connections, but immunity is claimed by the drug companies, "because they were already depressed/mentally unhealthy when put on the drugs". Mental health professionals and managers at large drug companies need to start going to jail for over-prescribing psychiatric drugs. The next big culprit is other drug addiction, like fentanyl and heroin. Stemming the flow of cheap fentanyl dumped into the United States by China and throwing doctors in jail who over prescribe these drugs would do wonders for people.
  • seibelj 7y ago
    SSRIs saved my life, I don't like such wild claims. Don't be afraid of psychiatric drugs if you are hurting.
    • codingslave 7y ago
      Are you still on them?
      • seibelj 7y ago
        8 years and counting, same dose, 10mg lexapro / day
    • Pfhreak 7y ago
      +1, antidepressants are not magic and don't work for everyone, but they worked amazingly for me. I was put off for so long because I had read so many people saying that antidepressants were evil or bad or whatever. I wish I asked my doctor about them earlier. It's OK to take them. It's ok to not want to take them. I wish they were less stigmatized because they do help some people a lot.
    • samatman 7y ago
      These things are not mutually exclusive: > studies showed that children and adolescents taking antidepressants were almost twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts or to attempt suicide, compared to patients taking a sugar pill. http://www.center4research.org/antidepressants-increase-suicide-attempts-risks/ http://www.center4research.org/antidepressants-increase-suic...
• theredbox 7y ago
  Well America has a difficult problem to solve. And that is its workforce is insanely expensive. Or lets say the rest of the world is insanely poor compared to the americans. We often joked here in Eastern Europe that we would be better off leaving our current IT jobs and just go to the US to work at McDonalds.
• degenerate 7y ago
  Does anyone have access to the paper? Raising the minimum wage means less jobs will be available, as employers cut costs and perform layoffs. My assumption is the paper neglects to factors this into their analysis, but if they do, I'd love to read it. edit: paper shared below!
  • antoineMoPa 7y ago
    Do you have links to articles to backup your assumption?
    • degenerate 7y ago
      No I don't.
  • tempsy 7y ago
    please read any study on cities that have substantially raised min wage in recent years (like Seattle) and understand how wrong you are about there being "fewer jobs" as a result before making such ridiculous statements
    • theredbox 7y ago
      Can you point me to a study other than the one in Seattle? I have only read about Seattle but have not really researched it thoroughly.
    • inanutshellus 7y ago
      Seattle's raising of the minimum wage was arguably symbolic. Seattle--a world-class tech nexus point--raising its minimum wage affected a relatively small percent of businesses compared to a "normal" city, as businesses in Seattle would have long since needed to offer higher wages in order to keep employees. I'd be much more interested in seeing the effects of a $15 wage in Nowheresville, USA than in Seattle.
      • wyre 7y ago
• MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  What would increased minimum wage due to small business (<$50m/yr in revenue)? Wouldn't it force them to cut shifts/hours/consolidate positions?
  • jotm 7y ago
    For $1/hour? I'd hope it would force them to review their expenses. But you're right, it won't, they'll just cut hours.
    • Someone1234 7y ago
      If they could cut hours or staff numbers they already would have done so.
  • Pfhreak 7y ago
    Or raise prices, or accept less pay at the top.
    • earlINmeyerkeg 7y ago
      >accept less pay at the top. For a second there I thought you we're being serious!
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • marcosdumay 7y ago
    When everybody raises prices at the same time, business survive.
    • refurb 7y ago
      Only if demand is entirely in elastic. You can be damn sure if the cost of mobile phones suddenly doubled, a lot fewer phones would be purchased and companies would go out of business.
• burmer 7y ago
  Obligatory Mitchell and Webb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg
• jotm 7y ago
  > Kaufman is planning future work to see whether depression, a risk factor for suicide, also decreases with wage hikes It doesn't. A good working environment does. £1/hr more is nothing if you're on minimum wage working for Amazon Fulfillment or Facebook Moderation, being treated like a slave. Source: totally unscientific experience with factory work and workers.
• ComputerGuru 7y ago
  I’m all for fair pay, even if it means things (products or services) become more expensive. But therein is the problem: If the minimum wage is ten dollars an hour and you’re making twelve dollars an hour, that’s very different from minimum wage being twelve dollars and you’re making twelve dollars. Raising the minimum doesn’t just give minimum wage earners more money, it simultaneously devalues the money they receive. Does it devalue it at a rate proportionate to how much more they now make (on paper)? I don’t know. We almost certainly have to increase it (x+n)% to realize a benefit that on paper would come from an x% increase alone. Globalization and protectionism also play a role here, and are a critical factor in the answer (think global minimum wage vs local minimum wage).
  • LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    It does not devalue it if they're sharing demand for those products with people who make $50 an hour and a select few who make $1000 an hour - assuming those incomes don't go up proportional to the increase in minimum wage.
    • ComputerGuru 7y ago
      No, it definitely does. I’m not talking about the old “everyone’s income will just go up” defense. There is a “time added” cost that is a part of the price of any good or service (which may comprise only a part of the value added measure). Imagine a product that is created from raw materials so abundant as to be in and of themselves worthless. Its cost is purely the cost of the time (and effort, which is actually convertible into time) that went into it (amortizing the cost of tools and equipment, overhead, utilities, etc). This “time cost” is a component of any product or service for sale. If the wheel on your car used the same exact materials and the same exact manufacturing process but took ten times longer (just stretch every step out) it would cost more, and not only because they can make less of them. This time cost cannot be less than a factor directly proportionate to minimum wage (local minimum wage or global minimum wage depending on economic policy). In a sense, minimum wage is the cost of (human) time itself. You’re saying “regardless of the labor involved or otherwise, the skill involved or otherwise, the care involved or otherwise, the social skills involved or otherwise, the know-how involved or otherwise, this is the lowest you can pay someone to do something on an hourly basis (with many caveats, such as allowing employers to deduct the cost of services they provide their employees from said wage, etc). You can’t raise that cost without the cost of everything else shifting upwards by some extent with it. No one that understand economics debates that. The question is just how big this shift is.
• 0000011111 7y ago
  I see income inequality as a key issue here. I recently read the "Triumph of injustice" and came away with a changed view in our tax system. After reading the book, I now believe that any household with a net worth over $100 million should be subject to both an income and capital gains tax of 99%. In short folks with income come and or net worth at levels that surpass their ability to buy a life of finical security for several generations only increase income inequality. High historically high levels of income inequality have torn countries apart. https://wwnorton.com/books/the-triumph-of-injustice https://wwnorton.com/books/the-triumph-of-injustice
  • whatshisface 7y ago
    That would not create the semi-communist world you're hoping for: today's rich people are already rich, and the effect would be stopping anybody new from becoming rich.
    • Kye 7y ago
      >> "and the effect would be stopping anybody new from becoming rich." I read this as you thinking there's a problem with no more people getting rich. Can you expand on that? For example: how many people need to get rich to balance the economic, social, and political power of the people who already are? Is this the best way to achieve that balance?
      • taborj 7y ago
        How many things were invented or financed because someone wanted to get rich? What happens to those types of things when it's impossible to get rich? The answer is they don't happen here, they'll happen somewhere else. They may happen with the same people even, and then you're losing knowledge and experience to other countries, which is fine as long as those other countries choose to be friendly with you. In other words, you willfully put your country's advancement into the hands of other entities. You no longer control your future.
        • 7y ago
• LatteLazy 7y ago
  Correlation isn't causation. Its actively harmful to pretend it is because it diverts from real research and actual solutions and
• theredbox 7y ago
  I always thought about more of a hybrid model for the US. Something like a market socialism a la Singapore. I would try to commoditize housing,healthcare and food. It would be essential to make sure that these fundamental needs of people working for minimum wage are take care of.
• notadoc 7y ago
  Not too surprising. Suicide is a death of despair, which are closely linked to job loss, income loss, love loss, family loss, pain, etc. Easing any of those scenarios should help reduce suicide.
• mc32 7y ago
  Alternatively stop exporting jobs and outsourcing joining a race to the bottom. Stop buying cheap, disposable stuff and buy durable things affording locals a living wage. Minimum wages are only slightly better. In my mind minimum wages are wages to minimally support a teenager or similar who has no other responsibilities. People with responsibilities need actually decent jobs. Hollowing our decent paying blue collar jobs will drive some people to despair.
  • linuxftw 7y ago
    You mean domestic policies have been negatively impacting the labor force for decades now? Get outta town! It's almost like low-to-no tariffs and importing literal slave-produced goods has created economic incentives to produce things overseas.
    • mc32 7y ago
      I agree with Bernie and Trump on protecting American workers. Everyone else just goes along with the siren song of more better value add jobs that never materialized for the affected population. No one listened to the crazy Texan when he warned us. Now their supposed to be happy having access to $5 T-shirts which last a week and should be mad that tariffs could push that up but could make s better paying job viable for an employer who no longer gets undersold.
      • Consultant32452 7y ago
        It worked out great for the rich, which is exactly who was telling us about the Siren song. So in a very toxic way they weren't lying, they just weren't talking about (the metaphorical) you. If you haven't seen it, you might appreciate this article by Eric Weinstein. It details explicitly how the NSF went about betraying us. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-workers https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...
  • elfexec 7y ago
    > Alternatively stop exporting jobs and outsourcing joining a race to the bottom. Isn't that's just one half of the problem. Isn't the importing of labor the other half of the problem. We've exported jobs and imported labor. That's a double whammy for workers and can't help but put downward pressure on wages. But it's great for the wealthy elites. Exploit cheap labor overseas and cheapen labor at home.
• jessant 7y ago
  What about people who lose their jobs or don't get hired in the first place?
• djohnston 7y ago
  money won't make you happy, but being poor will make you miserable, especially in the US
  • criddell 7y ago
    It seems like you need to be pretty damned sure before you try this. If they were to raise the minimum wage and suicides don't drop, do you put the minimum wage back where it was?
• aaron695 7y ago
  This is dumb. We know sucides and death goes down the more money you get up to at least $120,000. They don't seem to have quantified anything? What's the cost per life saved here?
• totaldude87 7y ago
  wow, how about.. 1) NO taxes till $40k-50k for a family 2) Free healthcare 3) Not so crazy tution fees all these are doable.. just like raising minimum wage..
  • earlINmeyerkeg 7y ago
    >NO taxes till $40k-50k for a family You're talking about quite literally like 80% of the entire tax revenue generated by the government. Income taxes we're devised because an industrial nation cannot collect property taxes on non land owning tax payers. As the cities grew, governments realized that they could only tax the wealthy and prominent land owners so much before they had to generate it in another way.
    • harryh 7y ago
      You're talking about quite literally like 80% of the entire tax revenue generated by the government. This is wrong. $50k/yr is below median household income so we're talking about eliminating income taxes for the bottom half of taxpayers (less than that actually, but whatever). The bottom half pays roughly 3% of income taxes. Now, that number gets somewhat bigger when you take into account payroll taxes but it's nowhere close to 80%.
  • dlp211 7y ago
    1 is already mostly true at the federal level.
    • MiroF 7y ago
      not for payroll it isn't
      • jnordwick 7y ago
        Payroll tax is more akin to a government pension program in that your payment roll gets you money back when you retire. Counting as just another tax really cuts against years of government arguments to the contrary.
• earlINmeyerkeg 7y ago
  Aren't there studies that show the suicide rate among married men is drastically lower than unmarried men? I really don't think it has anything to do with income (or at least to a significant degree) than it does with loneliness. Men's self worth is tied to his friends and wealth. It's hard to share your wealth if everybody else makes the same as you. So making more poor people "less poor" still wouldn't solve the problem among men not acquiring prestige or status that attracts people to them. It makes it incredibly easy to feel like a loser and ponder "whats the point?"
• xupybd 7y ago
  New Zealand has a high minimum wage https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW New Zealand also has a terrible youth suicide rate. http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/health/suicide.html http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/health/suicide.html "New Zealand’s youth (15–24 years) suicide rate was the highest among the 34 OECD countries, ahead of Finland for males and Korea for females."
• ctdonath 7y ago
  Minimum wage: if you can't produce $X/hr in value, you're prohibited from producing at all. I suspect raising that cutoff would increase suicides.
  • sir_kin 7y ago
    Real world data disagrees with your suspicion. Might want to rethink your reasoning.
    • ctdonath 7y ago
      Point me to the data. Those who get higher wages may be happier, but those unemployed due to their work being ended for want of value would understandably despair. Seems like data easily shifted for sociopolitical benefit.
• alecco 7y ago
  Raising minimum wage will push automation even further, making currently productive people switch to be welfare-dependent. Financed by taxes on the tech industry. This is a recipe for dystopia.
  • dlp211 7y ago
    You have provided, and I'm not aware of any empirical evidence that this is true. There is also plenty of evidence to the contrary, see min wage increases in individual states, Australia, and NZ.
• 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 7y ago
  Something I think gets lost in discussions about mental health is that sometimes people’s lives are just really really shitty. It doesn’t take a genetic predisposition to get to a dark place when your life is falling apart.
• clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  Isn't it obvious that most of America's problems stem from life being shitty for very many people?
  • Clubber 7y ago
    Yes, but the specifics are important. It's different for different people. Perverted justice system, news hysteria, jobs that are either awful or great, bad medical system, seems like every institution trying to rob you, war culture, political corruption from all sides, corporate dominance, civil forfeiture, bad public schools, expensive college, government encroachment on basic liberties, mob mentality laws, decades of the above; that's just off the top of my head. It's amazing we aren't worse off.
• alexashka 7y ago
  When idiots try to use simple math to try to model complex phenomena, I can only assume they have idiotic simplistic goals in mind. Why do we need to prevent suicide? Maybe we need to remove the stigma around it so that people who got dealt a shit hand, aren't further burdened by getting shamed by everyone around them for wanting to end it. We have too many people, it'd be an improvement for those who want to live and those who don't, if those who do not, decided to spend a few months doing whatever they wanted that isn't harming anyone else, and proceeding to peacefully move on with it. It'd force shit parents, shit communities and shit people in general, to re-examine their way of life, if those around them would rather cease to exist, than co-exist with them. It'd be a massive move in the direction of honesty, dignity and respect for one another - something humans rarely engage in.
  • tombert 7y ago
    I used to think this way when I was a teenager, and I'm really glad that I grew out of it. When I turned ~20, I started getting really bad insomnia and depression, and there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think about suicide for years. At some level, I sort of planned around it (when I'm dead, x will happen). I was incredibly fortunate to have a good support network of friends and family that helped me through the worst of it, and thanks in no small part to medication (and probably some hormones balancing out as I've gotten older), I am still alive, and happy to be alive. It's not hard for me to imagine the alternate universe where no one tried to help me out of this depression, where there's no "stigma" around killing themselves, and I don't get the assistance I need to make me better; I'd be dead. Now, granted, maybe it's no big loss for me to be gone, I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't like me, but considering how it ended up being a "phase" for me with no undo button, I'm pretty glad that we don't encourage people to killing themselves. Just a note, I want to make it clear that I am ok with suicide in certain instances (like people with terminal diseases), but I really don't like the tone in this comment.
• droithomme 7y ago
  https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/home.htm In the US, 434,000 make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Another 1.3 million make wages below the federal minimum. The article mentions raising the minimum wage by 10%, or 73 cents an hour, which would save 1230 lives per year (plus a 10% increase in federal EITC as well). Assuming a 2000 hr work year, this increase in minimum wage would cost $633.64 million nationally for those making exactly minimum wage, and some larger value at least 3x that, if we also bring those 1.3 million making below minimum wage up to minimum wage + 10%. (It's unclear who is making below minimum wage, it might be family farmworkers? $2.13/hr service employees who aren't getting tips? Students exempt from the minimum wage? All of the above?) In any case the cost per life saved using this method at a minimum comes to $1,745,921, but probably around twice that. That might be a good value. Or it might be that there are other methods of saving those lives that would be more effective at lower cost, allowing even more lives to be saved.
• HomeDeLaPot 7y ago
  Does the effect last, or is it a short-term windfall effect?
• rkho 7y ago
  I'd also like to see the inclusion of compulsory personal finance and budgeting education in our education system, both during high school and college/university years. A lot of the stress that encompassed my life back when I was working in a retail environment came from worrying over bills which ballooned because of my own lack of budgeting. It's an important skill that everyone should be exposed to early on.
• pajeetLord666 7y ago
  "Reeeeee i want gibs or I'm gonna kill my self!" - Some sperg NEET, probably
• 987831973fkeji 7y ago
  Eh, I might kill myself in a year or two - more money would not change anything. The recent realization that I will never find a romantic partner despite being (relatively) rich, tall, good looking, sociable and sane has been crushing. At least if I had money problems I'd have something else to blame than myself.
• vmchale 7y ago
  infinite minimum wage = zero suicide