How is that picky at all? Over 70% of homes in the US have broadband access, so he is not picking a rare factor when choosing a home. And for someone who uses the Internet regularly, having broadband speeds is a very important consideration.

I know I would never live in a home without access to non-satellite broadband. I also wouldn't live in an area with bad schools, high crime, excessive road noise, and those with a number of other undesirable factors. That still leaves me with quite a few options.

The scenario you describe is a very rare one, if you are being truthful that is. Very few areas with $900/month three story housing have enough property taxes to fund good schools (those that do are probably funded by large private companies in the area). Such an area is also likely to have neighbors of a low socio-economic status, and will therefore have a hard time supporting many cultural options in the area. There are probably places like the one you describe, but they are far more rare than areas with bad Internet service.

Drinking 100 gallons of water per day is bad for you because it dilutes the sodium in your body. And yes, drinking just one glass of water will dilute sodium in your body as well, just to a lesser degree (just like increasing minimum wage damages the economy just to a lesser degree). The analogy obviously breaks down because you need water to survive, but that is why I used a logical extreme instead of an analogy because analogies that can be applied broadly are rare. I am not really sure why you feel your ridiculous analogy says anything about my logical statement.

In a completely closed system, increasing the minimum wage would have no effect other than shifting which products and services are most successful, and shifting income from the wealthy to the poor. But automation and a global marketplace mean that not all of the increased costs are given to the workers. Some of them are funneled into automation and into other economies with lower minimum wage. The automation at least gives the benefit of hiring engineers, but far less engineers are hired than the large number of low wage workers who are fired.

The jobs lost overseas are just lost. And not only low wage jobs are lost, because as the cost of living increases on the engineers then those jobs start to go away as well.

What they actually say is that rising the product from $7 to $7.25 will increase the profit per widget sold. They also acknowledge that increasing the price will reduce the number of widgets sold, just like it would if they increased the price to $700. They then weight the benefit and the risk and determine a fair price. So I guess I agree completely with your analogy, since it is basically the same as mine.

If you take away drawing conclusions from the second derivative of noisy data then you would destroy the entire economics profession. Then we would have to rely on common sense ideas such as if you raise someone's wages without raising their usefulness, you hurt their job prospects and raise prices for everyone else in the economy. You make the lives of 9 people marginally better but you destroy the life of the 10th guy who can't find work now.

They are almost certainly not good jobs. They are probably some of the worst and lowest paid jobs in the country. But that just points out why job growth is a stupid metric to look at anyway. I would like to see an alternative employment figure of "households that make at least twice the poverty level" alongside any unemployment figures.

Growth in median wages would also be a statistic that is more meaningful for most people than job growth. Most people who complain about not being able to find a job could find one if they were willing to work for minimum wage. When people complain about an economy they usually are complaining because they can't keep up whatever standard of living they are familiar with.

Remember that minimum wage does not just affect minimum wage workers and their employers. It affects everyone who pays for services done by people working minimum wage. And those who pay for services done by people who pay for services done by people working minimum wage. And those who pay for services done by people who pay for services done by people who pay for services done by people working minimum wage. And so on.

It all ripples through the economy. High minimum wages eventually make everything more expensive, not just a McDonald's hamburger. That hamburger may only increase by 2 cents, but the ripple effects end up being much greater.

The bottom line is that if raising minimum wage from $7 to $700 will have a bad effect on the economy, then so will increasing $7 to $7.25. A drastically smaller bad effect, but a bad effect none the less. You then weigh that slightly weaker economy with the human element of caring for your fellow man, and come up with a reasonable minimum wage.

Yes, I admit that I wasn't willing to put in the time to do statistically significant original research on this matter. I was merely pointing out that there are better ways of measuring it and did a quick calculation that is at least better than the one done for this story.

The reality is that it would take significant research to actually determine the effect of raising minimum wage. And with only 50 states with an insane number of independent variables, I am not sure how anything statistically significant could ever be "proven". The closest thing we have is the CBO estimates, which neither this story nor my back of napkin calculations refute in any way.

Well, it should be noted that only 5 of the states that raised the minimum wage this year have a Gross State Product per person above the national average (Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado). The other 8 have below average economies, but are still gaining jobs at a faster rate. Also if you look at the job growth in 2013, these 13 states may have outperformed the average by 0.065% but they are on track to beat the average by 0.3554% this year.

So it looks like these states do not have the healthiest job situations, but still performed better than those who did not raise the minimum wage (by this ridiculous metric that is).

A better metric is comparing how job growth is growing or stalling. The four states with the highest minimum wages are California, D.C., Oregon, and Washington, who all have minimum wages about $9 per hour. Of those four areas, job growth has slowed by 27% on average year over year (comparing June 2013 - May 2014 to June 2012 - May 2013). If you look at the four states with the lowest minimum wage (Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, Wyoming), their job growth has grown by 26% on average year over year. So if you want to compare the trend of job growth increasing or decreasing, it looks like raising the minimum wage does hurt significantly.

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No, sounds like her uncle worked for one of those grocery stores like Dominicks that are dropping like flies because their costs are too high.

What for? Do you think no employee should ever be let go for performance reasons?

Its important to remember that Microsoft is only losing about 5% of its non-Nokia jobs. That makes these cuts have far less impact to the company as a whole. I work in a small consulting company of about 40 people, so this would be the same as us letting go two members of our staff because of a restructuring. That wouldn't be insignificant, but it obviously wouldn't be a major shift for our company.

As I see it Microsoft really only has one major problem, and that is to find a way to capitalize on their R&D budget. They have the fifth largest R&D budget of any private company in the world. This far surpases companies like Apple and Google which are far better commonly known for their innovative products than Microsoft. If they could actually make use of this R&D Microsoft would be in great shape regardless of what eventually happens to Windows, Office, or XBox.

Microsoft engineers are clearly being funded well enough to help Microsoft grow in the future, they just need better leadership to take advantage of their work instead of just writing salary checks.

First off, $45 per hour is not too high. After factoring in benefits that probably equates to a salary of about $65k per year. So while I agree that making less than $65k per year is low for all but junior developers (or those working in very low cost areas), I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that most developers are underpaid. The average salary of a developer is about $90k per year, which is an incredibly high salary. And this is an average salary. From my experience your average developer doesn't spend much more time outside of work improving their skills than your average professional outside the field.

Perhaps the top 10% of developers spend far more time learning outside of work than the top 10% of non-developer professionals, but they also tend to get paid much more (and are usually in consulting or are entrepreneurs). I was able to get past the 6-digit salary hurdle in under 10 years in the field (in a low cost of living area), and that was after making many stupid career damaging mistakes in my early 20s. And I didn't even need to take many risks to get there.

Almost the only jobs that allow you to make this kind of money without significant training are ones where you are essentially gambling with your career. I have quite a few friends / colleagues in sales and management, and plain old luck has a huge impact in which ones fail and which ones win out big. On the other hand every single skilled developer I know has done exceptional in their career.

Nothing in that article you posted provides any examples of Tesla not being neutral. Identifying that unions could hurt profitability is not being negative towards unions, it is just being honest. If I list on a project plan that there is a risk one of my team leads could leave the company therefore causing delays, I am not being negative towards those employees. I am only identifying that it is possible they could hamper the project.

There is a single statement the article makes which claims the operating management has been opposed to unions, but no examples are provided.

I don't believe that is true. Upper management may be a very secure position because they do require the skills I mentioned (especially communication skills), but management is not the only secure career tract. In fact, the road towards upper management is not a very secure career tract at all. I don't know any friends who had successful careers before 2007 who isn't doing well in their career, but I know three middle management guys who haven't found a decent job in years.

And I should have clarified that people who are secure have secure careers, not secure jobs. NOBODY has a secure job, but many people have secure careers.

If you are really worried about computers taking jobs, then going to trade school is a horrible idea. We have no idea what technology will make obsolete over the next 40 years, so learning a specific trade will always run the risk of the trade being automated. Wireless power could put 75% of electricians out of work. Automated HUD displays in your Google Glasses 5.0 that explain EXACTLY how to do any home improvement project could put 75% of other handymen out of work as well, especially if median wages drop and everyone is forced to do more home improvement projects themselves. Lawyers and Doctors could have huge portions of their jobs automated by information retrieval and data mining, requiring a mere fraction of the number we have today. Garbage men, truck drivers, farmers, etc. could be replaced by automated vehicles. This possibilities are endless.

The only people who are reasonably safe are those with strong problem solving and communication skills. That is it. A very small percentage of people with strong creative skills will be the last to lose their jobs before we either get replaced as a species or start living our lives in blissful leisure while our robot butlers do everything.