I'm not sure this makes sense. Did I not include these people? Wage as a function of distance, right? I didn't say that everyone gets paid the same. And is it not more advantageous for the employer to be able to select from a larger pool of candidates?
> Imagine it goes up to a livable $40/hr. Now these high school kids are competing with people with college degrees for the same job.
Do they? This doesn't mean that every job that pays under $40/hr (which is pretty high! You must be living in the Bay) becomes $40/hr and jobs higher do not go up as well. But rather now those companies have to compete (you can compete in ways more than wage, especially if it is $40/hr!). High school kids may have to compete with people with college degrees for things like McDonalds, but now an engineering firm like Boeing (who pays less than $40/hr for starting salaries in most locations) has to compete with McDonalds. The competition doesn't work only in one direction.
Of course, I'm sure that there's a upperbound to how well this works though, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was under $80k/yr
> Imagine it goes up to a livable $40/hr. Now these high school kids are competing with people with college degrees for the same job.
Do they? This doesn't mean that every job that pays under $40/hr (which is pretty high! You must be living in the Bay) becomes $40/hr and jobs higher do not go up as well. But rather now those companies have to compete (you can compete in ways more than wage, especially if it is $40/hr!). High school kids may have to compete with people with college degrees for things like McDonalds, but now an engineering firm like Boeing (who pays less than $40/hr for starting salaries in most locations) has to compete with McDonalds. The competition doesn't work only in one direction.
Of course, I'm sure that there's a upperbound to how well this works though, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was under $80k/yr