Tips for authoring fast-loading HTML pages - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/Tips_for_authoring_fast-loading_HTML_pages <comment><USER2> Really, the first concrete piece of advice is to strip whitespace and comments from HTML? That's like trying to save gas in your car by emptying out the glove compartment.

There are some good nuggets in here though - the image/table size is a good one, and it drives me crazy when pages thrash their layout as images load.

But if you want to make your site faster, start with [http://stevesouders.com/hpws/rules.php](http://stevesouders.com/hpws/rules.php). (Some of those techniques may become obsolete with HTTP/2, but that's a ways off yet from being widespread enough to matter too much).

<comment><USER3> All the blog post links "about this rule" point to developer.yahoo.com are are all bad and get redirected to www.yahoo.com. :(

<comment><USER2> Nice.

Looks like most of the content for those has been condensed at [https://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html](https://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html). Or if you Google the title you can find the original article (with a new URL on Yahoo).

I'm absolutely shocked that Yahoo reformatted their blog URLs, didn't set up redirects, and broke old links. Shocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These tips are well and good, but from my perspective this type of article doesn't address the whole problem.

It seems to me that an overwhelming problem is not developers building inefficient web pages, it is designers, producers, and marketers demanding we build inefficient web pages. No matter how hard we try to convince such that their requirements are generally not a good idea, they still keep pushing the same stuff.

We need a series of these type of articles intended for non-developers to explain why this efficiency train of thought is important. To stop this nonsense of "developers trying to impose upon the artistic expression of designers" crap.

Personally, I just would like designers to stop designing web pages as if they were magazine layouts and actually design web pages.

<comment><USER5> Honestly you can develop the fastest page ever but all it takes is adding tracking and advertising code and it will bog down to uselessness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some good advice, some bad:

\- image sprites are a terrible hack that adds a lot of complexity and maintenance effort to pages (though effective for loading/processing times)

\- the best feature of HTML tables is still the automatic (optimal) sizing of columns when the content can vary, so fixed column widths are not possible where tables are most useful

Some advice they forgot:

\- use a good caching reverse proxy (Varnish)

\- don't litter your pages with ads and tracking pixels, they incur a huge slowdown usually

\- don't use cookies if possible, at least not on the domains/paths all your static content is loaded from

\- don't use loaded web fonts (except _maybe_ icon fonts instead of inline images)

\- don't use huge JS libraries if you don't need but a few features

\- don't rely on JS libraries to lay out your page, having JS post-process your page after loading just so it looks as intended is a huge (visible) slowdown

<comment><USER7> Regarding image sprites, if you're using a CSS pre-processor, like Sass (with Compass), then auto-generating sprite images and associated classes is trivial and adds little to no complexity or maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps most of this is accurate, but the number one issue I see with webpages, almost universally, is the loading of innumerable javascripts, especially ones hosted offsite. As a no script user, I shouldn't have to allow random js from other domains I don't know or trust just to see your page like you intended. Most of the time if I see more than 2/3 loading I just close it out and consider it not worth the trouble.

</comment><comment><USER9> _moving inline script and CSS into external files_

 _By reducing the number of files that are referenced within a web page, you reduce the time required for these requests to be sent, and for their responses to be received._

Aren't these exact opposites of each other? I suppose which direction to take depends on the bottleneck - if request latency is high, it might be better to put everything inline, but if the bottleneck is parsing then separating things into external files could have the advantage.

<comment><USER10> Having js and ces in single, cacheable external files will speed up later page loads on the site.

<comment><USER5> Only to a degree, and then it starts making things worse. If your browser has to parse 20MB of CSS and JS (99.9% of which is not needed) to load a simple web page, it will be much slower than including only the necessary includes.

<comment><USER10> Yup. Once you have harder problems, you need harder solutions and you'll want to create a layered build with one cacheable file for common things used everywhere and then one separate file for each page's specific things. RequireJS and other front-end build tools are good at this: [http://requirejs.org/docs/1.0/docs/faq- optimization.html](http://requirejs.org/docs/1.0/docs/faq-optimization.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've found I get the biggest wins from tools such as InstantClick ([http://instantclick.io/](http://instantclick.io/)), although of course that doesn't improve the initial page-load speed at all (and should slow it down marginally.).

<comment><USER12> That's an approach I've considered before. Do you use InstantClick or another tool?

<comment><USER11> I use InstantClick on all new sites now. There's a bit of a cost integrating third-party javascripts but the wins are fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All of these are good tips. After implementing most or all of these our site was a lot faster.

This is how we did it: [http://retromocha.com/learn/how-we-made-our-website- fast/](http://retromocha.com/learn/how-we-made-our-website-fast/)

Most of the advice I've seen elsewhere like YSlow and Google Page Speed, so it's pretty common and available advice. I think most people just don't do anything with it on their own sites.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't it strange that in nearly every other optimization topic the first advice is: measure it first

Yesterday my boss asked if our website feels especially sluggish to me too. And I realized that I don't have good hard data to go by. What are the best practices to profile and monitor perceived load times?

<comment><USER15> Use real browsers - both with artificial testing environments like webpagetest.org and Real User Monitoring to see what your users actually experience. I won't recommend a specific RUM tool as there are a bunch of options but they all use JavaScript to get basic information and the new Navigation Timing API to get more detailed values:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Navigation_timing](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Navigation_timing)

… and the even newer Resource Timing API:

[http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2014/08/21/resource- timing-...](http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2014/08/21/resource-timing- practical-tips/)

One word of caution: ignore tools like Google Analytics which are designed by the statistically ignorant. If a tool uses the mean or an average rather than a median or n-th percentile, you cannot trust it to make decisions because real-world timing data has staggering outliers – 99.999% of your users may load a resource in less than a second but the two clients which reported 2 hour load times will skew the average so much that you'll think you're seeing a problem which doesn't actually exist.

I wrote about an example of this in 2012 and despite the assurances of people who work on Google Analytics and, I'm told, internal lobbying by people at Google who do understand this (e.g. Ilya Grigorik), nothing has changed in the last two years:

[http://chris.improbable.org/2012/5/18/google-analytics- decep...](http://chris.improbable.org/2012/5/18/google-analytics-deceptive- site-speed-report/)

(Yes, they do allow you to see the distribution but it hardly counts because it's a clumsy histogram to use and since you can't report on it, your boss is going to look at the averages which are displayed prominently everywhere else)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Page weight is by far the most important factor in page-load performance.

This is terrible advice, often how much the page weighs (whether it's 10kB or 500kB) has little to no effect on load time, the number of requests is often way more impactful.

<comment><USER15> I generally agree but the number of requests is also too simple a rule. You really need to look at the number of blocking requests and what they block – e.g. loading a large image might seem low-impact since browsers have progressive decoding but you often see cases where the load order goes like this:

1\. HTML starts trickling in

2\. Browser scans for resources and starts opening connections for stylesheets (great, since they block rendering) and other inline resources

3\. Since you followed everyone's advice and put your scripts at the bottom of the page, you now have 2MB of images saturating all of the available server connections so the JavaScript is waiting for a connection to complete and, of course, there's no way to progressively render a script

4\. The relatively small JS loader / jQuery / etc. eventually loading triggers a whole new set of requests which are now at the end of the queue behind all of the CSS and content references for images, fonts, etc.

HTTP/2.0 will help significantly with all of this but in the meantime various bundling hacks used to lower requests counts and the lack of dependencies as a first class concept mean that you tend to see a lot of unintended load delays unless someone has carefully profiled their page loading behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would be nice if there were some rough stats attached to these tips.

Is leading white space really a big slowdown? I wont know if its worth it ubt I invest the time into implementing it.

<comment><USER18> Actually just got done benchmarking this. The conclusion was that it is a worthless optimization compared to just sending the client a gzipped webpage without minifying first. [https://github.com/yeoman/generator-gulp- webapp/issues/215#i...](https://github.com/yeoman/generator-gulp- webapp/issues/215#issuecomment-61394148)

<comment><USER19> I appreciate the benchmark, but "worthless" was your conclusion.

What your benchmark shows is that gzipped pages may be as much as 20% larger than minified + gzipped pages. Even larger pages typically were 3-5% larger.

Sometimes you'd kill for a 3-5% improvement.

<comment><USER5> I'd save murder for something more valuable. Changing your load time from 10s to 9.5s is hardly a noticeable improvement. I've optimized many a web page and extra whitespace in HTML has never once been the bottleneck. It's bandied about because it is a magic button that takes no analysis or hard decisions to implement, not that it is effective.

<comment><USER19> Sometimes you've gotten all the low-hanging fruit, and the bottleneck is something that you can't easily avoid. Then you're left finding a bunch of "worthless optimizations" that hopefully add up to an improvement.

I would agree that it's not the most important optimization early on, it's probably not even worth doing at all unless either it's trivial or your project is big, stable, and consuming tons of resources. But that's not the same as worthless.

It's also the case that mature tools (from your compiler, to SQLite, to your browser) chase "worthless optimizations" all the time. Front-end development is in such a state of flux that we don't expect our tools to do that. But eventually we will.

"Worthless" is just too blunt of a verdict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would be nice to hear tips specific for mobile browsers. My site is going to be accessed mostly from mobile browsers (over edge/2G connection most of the times). No images only data. This is what I have decided to follow:

1\. Make it ajax as much as possible to avoid sending requests for each operation. Try to keep everything in one page dashboard. 2\. Keep the page/services sizes under 1500 bytes (Ethernet)

<comment><USER21> As a user who sometimes has terrible coverage and 2G I would suggest not using AJAX so much. If you do, make sure it is cached by the browser. It is incredibly frustrating to have zero indication if there is some AJAX loading going on in the background or not. The browsers don't show and animated indicators that websites show, well, like to animate for eternity. And if loading stopped or you decide to reload the page in the hope that this time it will load better, sites usually fetch the whole shebang again.

So my recommendations: Make sure your site is split into nice, cachable chunks (css, images, js, etc). If you can, avoid JS. Avoid loading content invisibly to the user in the background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just keep the page under 1500 bytes, which is the size of an ethernet packet</comment>


Coderwall (YC W12) launches Assembly - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/01/assembly-will-crowdsource-development-of-your-awesome-startup-idea-then-pay-you-cash/

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea, but I see 3 major problems:

1) Voting on each others work introduces perverse incentives when money is involved. It also potentially undermines the very spirit of community which Assembly is trying to capitalize on. Instead of having to judge each other a couple times a year (in a traditional peer review), we're constantly judging each other and thinking about how we'll be judged.

2) I think the 5% reward unfairly justifies the notion that ideas are worth something. They're worth maybe 1% (at most) of most startup success. Success comes from persistence, execution, and luck. Reaffirming the notion that "idea people" are worth much doesn't help anyone.

3) Big, boring, important tasks will likely never get accomplished due to the incentive structure. Every community member can only give _one_ point to a contribution. ([https://assemblymade.com/help/profits#profits-2](https://assemblymade.com/help/profits#profits-2)) So that massive implementation you made that laid the groundwork for the entire backend will only get 1 point from each other developer. (And the number of people in the particular "community" qualified enough to understand this kind of work isn't large enough for crowds to work well.) So instead people are incentivized to do lots of quick & simple front-endy tasks.

All together, the politics of this really worry me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points, here's some of our thinking around this:

1) The voting is not a judgement of people's contributions, it's more the community's valuation of a particular piece of work. The votes help prioritise the importance of a task or feature which can then be claimed by anyone who completes the work.

2) It's a tricky thing, what is the idea worth? 1%, 2%, 10%? 5% felt about right to us but we'll definitely be reviewing this over time.

3) We're going to actively keep WIPs small where we can to help avoid this problem. We also have a core team that helps guide the community towards a shared vision. They can promote certain tasks so they attract more upvotes which in turn makes them more enticing for people to complete.

Thanks for the feedback, we're expecting to do a lot of iterating and working with the community to keep evolving the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love the idea. Has a "save the world" aspect to it as well. If all the great ideas that currently go un-launched get pushed into existence sooner, we'll all be better off.

</comment><comment><USER4> Love this idea! Great job Dave and team.</comment>


Django Girls make the male-dominated world of IT more accessible to women - <AUTHOR> http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite6_1_02/04/2015_548730

<comment><USER2> anyone else get annoyed when this field is called "IT"? Maybe I'm over- sensitive but I just can't shake the feeling that "IT" is what shit-for-brains pointy haired boss types call this line of work.

Personally I prefer to just be called a programmer or an engineer, or a developer and for the job to be called programming, software engineering, or software development. "IT" is the guy who sets up the locked-down site installation for the accounting department which runs Windows XP and IE8 and the users aren't allowed to change it. I don't want to be associated with that.

<comment><USER3> Well, at least "IT" is marginally better than "Computers" or "Computer Stuff:"

      Django Girls make the male-dominated world of Computer
      Stuff more accessible to women</comment></comment>


YC Companies: Where are they now? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious where, geographicaly speaking, are all those YC companies are now.

I can see some main options:

1) They stay where they joined YC. Either they remain in Cambridge or Mountain View.

2) They go home. They return to where they were based before YC, possibly because of visa issues or prior commitments.

3) They move to the other YC hub. For example justin.tv moving coasts after kiko.

Are there any rough numbers available?

</comment><comment><USER2> Here are a couple: <http://www.flagr.com/maps/40>

Quite a few of them are in San Francisco, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> A whole bunch of them have moved to San Francisco in the last 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER4> a starter list can be found at yrumours ~ <http://yrumors.blogspot.com/></comment>


Seattle votes for $15 minimum wage - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-27674474 <comment><USER4> SeaTac raised it to $15 at the beginning of 2014, and they're already seeing regrettable consequences.

        "Are you happy with the $15 wage?" I asked the full-time cleaning
        lady.

        "It sounds good, but it's not good," the woman said.

        "Why?" I asked.

        "I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation,"
        she responded. "No more free food," she added.

        The hotel used to feed her. Now, she has to bring her own food.
        Also, no overtime, she said. She used to work extra hours and
        received overtime pay.

        What else? I asked.

        "I have to pay for parking," she said.

        I then asked the part-time waitress, who was part of
        the catering staff.

        "Yes, I've got $15 an hour, but all my tips are now much less,"
        she said. Before the new wage law was implemented, her hourly
        wage was $7. But her tips added to more than $15 an hour. Yes,
        she used to receive free food and parking. Now, she has to
        bring her own food and pay for parking.

[http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/17751-warning-to- seatt...](http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/17751-warning-to-seattle- seatac-businesses-slashing-benefits-overtime-in-wake-of-wage-hike)

<comment><USER5> This is not a good study. They are a couple of anecdotes, for all we know cherry picked to promote the views of rich people trying to make more money off poor people.

Also, I'm not sure a cleaning lady, and a waitress are even qualified to figure out their financial situation. Especially since functional illiteracy, and innumeracy in that region is around 40%.

How do we know that the companies didn't use this situation to take away the benefits and blame it on the minimum wage laws? It sounds like a typical negotiation tactic pulled on the powerless. Sure, the managers need to come up with more money to balance the budget. Taking less profit, or increasing efficiency, or charging more are harder than simply taking away benefits from easily replaced low skilled workers.

<comment><USER6> If their workers were powerless, why wait for a minimum wage increase to take away benefits?

<comment><USER7> because it gives a good cover. workers sometimes get outraged, go on strikes. a good excuse is worth gold.

<comment><USER6> Why would a profit maximizer care about the feelings or actions of a powerless person?

It's almost as if workers and employers are both consenting adults, capable of entering into or rejecting a transaction if it isn't mutually agreeable.

<comment><USER7> that's if you insist on painting it black and white. reality is, unfortunately, somewhat complex.

anyway, your question is already answered in the post above. you do know what a strike is?

furthermore, many workers are theoretically capable of exiting such an agreement at will, but in reality they have little choice. work in one lousy job or another, or starve. which would you choose?

<comment><USER6> If the strike is harmful to the employer, then employees are not powerless. Which is the point I'm making.

 _work in one lousy job or another, or starve._

If we are discussing the US, the choices are enjoy consumption of $20k/year funded by the government or enjoy consumption of $20k/year funded by earned income.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt

<comment><USER7> there is a big space between powerful and powerless, which is the point i am making. in your trolling you are grossly oversimplifying things, i can only presume in order to further some personal goals of yours, but reality is that life in these situations is not such a walk in the park as your condescending tone would have us believe. organizing strikes, negotiating some form of collective bargain, these are hard battles, which in the past have known even to cost people lives. this is, i suspect, exactly why the new right-wing, corporate-funded flavor of libertarianism advocates this approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A minimum wage would stop companies indirectly sucking the 'welfare-tit', where their employees are forced to have welfare/food stamps in order to just survive. [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/30/mcdonal...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/30/mcdonalds- helpline-food-stamps-minimum-wage)

<comment><USER9> Probably would, but it's really just shifting the costs elsewhere. With the "welfare-tit" as you call it, the taxpayers are paying the cost of the poor _ish_ via welfare paid for by taxes. But when you increase the minimum wage, it'd end up just shifting the costs to higher overall prices, which everyone will bear... _including_ the poor it's meant to help. I suppose you could argue that this _might_ cut into business owners' profits, but that's a stretch. As they'd most likely just raise prices to cover the new operating costs.

<comment><USER10> • Studies of the impact of minimum wage increases on restaurants' operating costs find that an increase of 10 percent in the minimum wage increases operating costs by about 1 to 2 percent.

• Researchers find small one-time price increases in the restaurant industry (of about 0.7 percent following a 10 percent minimum wage increase), but not in other industries.

from "University of California, Berkeley study: Who Would be Affected by an Increase in Seattle's Minimum Wage?" which is one of the two pieces of research commissioned in the development of the Seattle ordinance.[1] The research explored empirical evidence provided by similar minimum-wage increase ordinances in other cities. (9 total, I believe, including San Francisco.)

[1] [http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC- Berk...](http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berkeley- IIAC-Report-3-20-2014.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Okay, and? We all know that operating costs will rise if the wages paid to employees goes up. The question is, how will those cost increases be paid for. Less profit, higher price of service/product? Not to mention that a 1-2% in operating cost could be a drastic reduction in profit, or increase in price. It depends on the business. And the proposed increase is 100%, not 10% as cited in the article so can we assume that "operating costs will go up by 10-20%? Not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In Australia our minimum wage is $16.37 and $20.30 for casual work (no fixed hours). I think the gap to the usa minimum wages has generally narrowed over the last decade or so. The other side is that tipping in most forms is rare. Maybe a little less so now though

</comment><comment><USER12> Evidently Seattle businesses are very productive and able to readily achieve profits over and above the $600+ a week (8h/d) cost of employing someone ( "+" means that I don't know what the overhead costs are). Rather tough on those whose energy and skills do not warrant employing them at that rate. The alternative for borderline businesses is to find ways of not employing anyone at all.

<comment><USER9> > " _Rather tough on those whose energy and skills do not warrant employing > them at that rate. The alternative for borderline businesses is to find ways > of not employing anyone at all._ " That's the dirty little secret that no > one wants to talk about when it comes to the minimum wage. Especially in > discussions where everyone is compelled to make feel-good arguments in > support of stuff, without thinking of the long-term consequences.

Sure, we'd all like it if all people could live comfortably, and it is a noble goal. But the minimum wage is not the way to do it.

<comment><USER10> It would be an interesting and compelling secret if there was evidence for this occurring. Research indicates that it's simply untrue.

"A larger body of economic research investigates the effects of state and federal minimum wage increases. These studies compare employment trends for states or counties that have different minimum wages. The best studies make comparisons to nearby states or counties to control for regional economic trends. _These studies also find no statistically significant negative effects on employment or hours at an aggregate level or for low-wage industries such as restaurants and retail stores, or for specific groups of workers such as teens._ These studies also do not find substitution effects (such as shifts in hiring away from black and Latino teens)."

...

"In a prospective study of the San Francisco minimum wage, Reich and Laitinen (2003) carried out a representative survey of establishments. They estimated that a 25.9 percent increase in the minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.50 would result in a 1.1 percent increase in the overall wage bill. When viewed from the perspective of operating costs, a 26 percent increase would result in 82.0 percent of establishments experiencing an increase in operating costs of less than 1 percent or more, and _95.2 percent experiencing an increase in operating costs of less than 5 percent._ Breaking down results by industry, they estimated that 17.9 percent of restaurants would experience an increase in operating costs of 5 percent or more, as would 8.6 percent of retail establishments. For manufacturing, entertainment, hotel, and personal service firms, the estimated increase in operating costs was close to zero.

Pollin (2004) similarly estimated that the average increase in firms' costs relative to sales under Santa Fe's 2003 minimum wage ordinance would be 1 percent; the average cost increase for hotels relative to sales would be 3 percent.

Benner and Jayaraman (2012) analyzed the impact of a proposed increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 (a 39 percent increase, not accounting for inflation during the phase-in) on the food industry. They estimated a maximum increase in operating costs for the food service and drinking establishment industry of 2.25 percent over three years, and 1 percent in the retail food industry. "

from "University of California, Berkeley study: Who Would be Affected by an Increase in Seattle's Minimum Wage?"[1], one of the pieces of research commissioned during the development of the Seattle ordinance. "This research was based on nine localities in the United States currently have enacted minimum wage laws: Albuquerque, NM; Bernalillo County, NM; Montgomery County, MD; Prince George's County, MD; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Santa Fe, NM; Santa Fe County, NM; and Washington DC."

[http://murray.seattle.gov/minimumwage/#sthash.u0fx1kth.dpuf](http://murray.seattle.gov/minimumwage/#sthash.u0fx1kth.dpuf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At worst, this is a great experiment. This will likely cause a substantial enough gap in pay between Seattle and another similar city that we can analyze the benefits and consequences of artificially increasing min wage.

<comment><USER14> I thought the same thing at first.

But to analyze it as an experiment, you really need to determine some objective criteria for success and failure. Each individual may have different criteria, but it's important to come up with the criteria _first_ and then compare them to the results later.

Even then, it's unlikely to change many minds. With the economy, it's too easy to find some exceptional event that you can blame for the results not matching your prediction.

I think we just have to accept that science can't answer everything, and the economy is probably one of those things that can't be answered.

<comment><USER10> Well, the primary goal is, of course, to raise the income of minimum-wage earners. Failure criteria probably include things like a) a marked increase in businesses that rely on minimum-wage earners going out of business relative to other and/or b) a marked increase in unemployment among minimum-wage earners. I don't know what thresholds are reasonable. (Possibly confounding: as minimum wage increases, the available labor pool will also increase.)

In the case of Seattle, they commissioned two pieces of research for this ordinance:

UW Evans School of Public Affairs study: Local Minimum Wage Laws: Impacts on Workers, Families and Businesses [1] University of California, Berkeley study: Who Would be Affected by an Increase in Seattle's Minimum Wage? [2]

The second paper addresses a lot of the questions I suspect you're interested, and it addresses them with empirical evidence based on previous such experiments in other cities.

[1] [http://murray.seattle.gov/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/Evans-r...](http://murray.seattle.gov/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/Evans-report-3_21_14-+-appdx.pdf) [2] [http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC- Berk...](http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berkeley- IIAC-Report-3-20-2014.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> the most incredible libertarian assumption is that all companies operate in such a way that the smallest hike in pay absolutely must result in cutbacks elsewhere. apparently, no company is making any profit! :D

<comment><USER15> One "libertarian assumption" is that it's worth doing a little math to figure these sorts of things out. Usually if you do that math you will discover that neither profits nor high top salaries are anywhere near large enough that companies could merely absorb the higher cost out of either or both. (Incidentally, a raise to $15/hour is quite a lot more than "the smallest hike in pay".)

But hey, just for the sake of argument let's pretend you COULD take it out of profits. Here's where you run into a related assumption which is one of the basic rules of economics: _change happens on the margin_. Suppose that the entirety of the McDonalds chain as a whole is profitable. For simplicity we'll ignore the fact that the individual stores are mostly franchises and pretend they're all company-owned. The chain is not _uniformly_ profitable! Some outlets are _very_ profitable and others are just barely scraping by. When you increase the cost of labor the outlets that were _very_ profitable are still worth running even with the new cost of labor, but the outlets that were only _slightly_ profitable before are now losing money.

Those are the outlets that close.

Restaurants that will lose money every year with the higher wage aren't worth keeping open. _shifts_ that lose money at the higher wage also aren't worth keeping open, so hours of work tend to get cut back too. You don't lose jobs at every store or uniformly, but you do lose _marginal_ jobs that did exist or that would exist were it not for the new wage.

Overall, the chain will survive, but it has to shrink back in order to do so. In order to argue that it doesn't, you'd need to believe not just that the company overall is making (a lot of) profit, but that EVERY individual outlet is making the same share of that profit, so they're all worth keeping around post-change.

<comment><USER7> in my experience with libertarians so far, they are most disinclined to do any math. i don't see any math here either. there is a study mentioned a lot in the comments here which refutes this argumentation.

as for the argumentation - it is again the same thing! instead of "whole company", you moved to topic into "individual branches", but it is still the same - apparently, a huge number of workers is employed in places with zero profit, be it whole companies or just branches. this is an incredible claim. why would we accept that workers in highly successful branches should get underpaid, just so that a couple of barely profitable branches could remain open?

everyone needs work. and low-skilled workers come in large numbers. any manager not aware of this, and how it enables him or her to pay the workers as little as possible, is a fool! management will pay the least amount possible, since replacement workers are readily available. this is why an increase in minimum wage will not produce nowhere near a proportionate response in lost jobs.

<comment><USER15> > _in my experience with libertarians so far, they are most disinclined to do > any math. i don 't see any math here either._

Fine. Suppose we want to increase the minimum wage by at least $5/hour. Let's see if that's possible without "cutting back":

McDonald's has 1,800,000 employees and makes 5.46 billion in profit. Divide the latter by the former and you'll see that their profit is $3,033/employee. If they gave ALL the profit to the workers in the form of higher wages and divided it equally among the workers, that's how much of a raise they could afford to give without doing any "cutting back": ~$3k/year.

A 40 hour workweek is about 2000 hours per year, so that means if they didn't save ANY profit to give back to investors or invest in the growth of the business or set aside against losses in bad years, out of profits they could afford to give their full-time workers a raise of: $1.50/hour.

Any more than that, and they have to cut back.

But wait, you say! What about bloated CEO salaries?

Huffington post says the incoming CEO of McDonalds recently got paid ~$14 million and the outgoing one got ~$28 million. (source: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/12/mcdonalds-ceo- pay_n...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/12/mcdonalds-ceo- pay_n_3070833.html) ). Let's add those together and round the total WAY up to $50 million dollars. Let's assume they can save $50 million dollars by not paying CEOs or ex-CEOs (and a couple other high administrators) anything, and distribute the savings to the workers as higher salary.

$50 million / 1.8 million = $27.8. So by eliminating those top salaries we could give every worker an extra 27.8 dollars per YEAR. Divide that by 2000 and you'll see we can afford to give each full-time worker an additional raise of roughly: 1.4 CENTS per hour.

Conclusion: doubling the minimum wage (or bumping it by $5, or anything in that ballpark) can't be done out of profits or out of cutting top salaries. Raising the minimum by more than a dollar or two would render the overall firm unprofitable.

<comment><USER7> hm, interesting calculation. however, isn't McDonalds a franchise? where did these numbers come from?

also, i am not that crazy to think that this would not cause ANY cutbacks. the money does indeed have to come from somewhere. it's just that there would be nowhere near a proportionate response in firings compared to the increase in the life quality of the people affected, and also in the consumption driven by their new incomes.

ultimately, this is like a collective bargain on a wider scale, supported by the democratic process in Seattle. it is correcting for the unfavorable effect of market forces on the pay of uneducated workers. due to their abundance, the downward pressure on the pay of this category of workers can only be stopped by minimum wage or social security.

EDIT - i've been googling around, and found a much lower number of employees, 440k employees (source: [http://www.macroaxis.com/invest/market/MCD-- McDonalds-Corp](http://www.macroaxis.com/invest/market/MCD--McDonalds-Corp) \- don't know how reliable..) which, following your calculation through, gives ~ $6 net income per employee hour. also, another point is flat out ignored - prices can be increased, shifting part of this burden to the end consumer, which in the end only seems just. any business that is already giving a fair wage to it's workers is being driven out of business by competition exploiting lack of minimum wage rules and abundance of low skilled labor.

EDIT 2 - Also, the crucial problem with executive pay is not so much that people think that from their pay some huge increases in workers' pay could be given, it's in the purely subjective feeling of injustice, when on one side managers are showered with millions (and I presume McDonalds has more than just 1), while workers are given advice on how to get food stamps. this quite understandably pisses people off.

EDIT 3 - Sorry for all the edits :D Another thing worth noting is that it seems very unlikely that ALL McDonalds employees are working on a minimum wage. This would also reduce the effect of minimum wage hike on their profits.

<comment><USER15> I initially got the numbers from the right-side box here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's)

The larger number I used includes as "employees" people who work for non- company-owned franchises and licensees; I believe your smaller number is only counting workers at the _company-owned_ outlets (not franchises or licensees), so your number should be about 19% of mine, give or take (source for that 19% number is the last line on this page: [http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/investors/company_profile....](http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/investors/company_profile.html) )

(Incidentally McDonald's suggests it has 761,000 "employees" here - I suspect that's a US-only number: [http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/careers.html](http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/careers.html) )

> _another point is flat out ignored - prices can be increased_

Actually they can't. I assume prices currently are set at levels that roughly maximize the firm's profits. If McDonalds could earn significantly more money by charging more they would have _already_ raised the price to do that. They serve a price-sensitive customer base; raising prices would indeed earn more per meal served but would sell fewer meals for overall less profit.

(If you think McDonald's could make billions more by raising prices, you have to explain why they've been voluntarily charging less than they could all these years. Are they just being magnanimous, charging less out of the goodness of their hearts? :-) )

If you really want to nitpick, though: if McDonalds spent their entire _worldwide_ profit margin raising salaries _just in the US_ they could do a bit better than my calculation, but that would involve "exploiting" their foreign licensees and helping the relatively-rich US employees entirely at the expense of relatively-poor foreign ones. Whereas if anything, it would be more ethically just to only raise wages abroad and not do so here.)

<comment><USER7> you cannot, in one calculation, use the number of employees in all non-McD owned restaurants plus the number of employees in McD, and the profit of only McD itself. i hope i don't need to explain why that is wrong. as for the number of 761,000, you seem to be right to put "employees" in quotes, even the site you link to does not call them employees. the site i linked to provides both figures.

"I assume prices currently are set at levels that roughly maximize the firm's profits." \-- again, you simply assume. and you forget to consider an important factor in determining where the point of maximum profits is - <USER2> costs of production. which have now, with the hiking of minimum wage, changed. so, even if they were in this theoretically perfect point of maximum profit (which is an ideal, and thus incredible to be achieved to say the least), they would automatically be out of it after the min wage is introduced, and would be forced to change prices to return to it. but this is all idealized talk, for such a point to exist we must assume a perfectly linearly elastic market. i would like to see proof of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Things to watch for:

1) businesses making employees clock in when it's busy, and clock out but stay on the premises when it's not busy. Thus, the business has workers available but only has to pay them for some of the time those workers are there.

2) "zero hour contracts". [http://acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4468](http://acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4468)

Other things the UK has done is increase the amount someone needs to earn before they start paying income tax; reduce the lower rates of income tax; provide "working tax credit" to some people, etc.

I have no idea how the US tax system works so I don't know if that could be done or would work with voters. ("Supporting business to employ people on fair wages" maybe?)

</comment><comment><USER17> For anyone who thinks that $15 minimum wage is a bad idea, what do you think is the "correct" value for a legislated minimum wage? Is the current value also too high? Should there be such a thing as a minimum wage?

<comment><USER15> The current value is also too high. There should be no such thing as a minimum wage.

<comment><USER17> How do you see this work in practice? Would you still have government assistance programs to subsidize workers at the low end? I mean, you would expect wages for a lot of people to drop drastically, right?

<comment><USER15> > _Would you still have government assistance programs to subsidize workers at > the low end?_

Those are separable concerns; I see no strong reason to immediately change the status quo in that regard.

> _I mean, you would expect wages for a lot of people to drop drastically, > right?_

No, I would actually expect wages for a lot of people to _increase_ and the overall need for assistance to decline. But there's an important trick here that renders things a bit counterintuitive, which is that _average_ wages would indeed decline - even though nearly everybody in the economy is being paid as much or more than they were before. This happens because you're adding _new_ workers into the pool of people with jobs, and you're adding them at the low end.

If you just look at people at the low end who are currently unemployed, underemployed or illegally employed: without a minimum wage law they would find it much easier to get a legal first job, some transitional employment which gives them experience and references and training that makes it easier for them to get higher-paying later jobs. So THEIR reported income goes UP, both in the short run and in the longer run. But since they weren't employed before, their wage of $0/hour wasn't part of the "average wage" computation BEFORE, and their new wage of, say, $5/hour _is_ part of the "average wage" computation after the change, so their improved salary drags the computed "average" down.

Now consider the rest of the economy: The existence of more people in the labor force who were previously unemployed makes the economy more productive, which enables even people earning far above the minimum to also get higher wages. When someone who is highly productive can hire other people to mow the lawn, empty the trash, do the filing or paperwork, that person can focus more of their own time and effort on what they're best at - more workers means more gains can be had from specialization of labor. Also, the fact that fewer people are _entirely unemployed_ and more are rapidly entering the workforce means we need _less_ government assistance which means tax rates could decline, again making the economy more productive and increasing standard of living.

(The case for getting rid of the minimum wage is actually quite similar to the case for open borders. Fully opening the borders to let people work wherever they want would by some estimates DOUBLE world GDP. Getting rid of minimum wage laws everywhere wouldn't have nearly THAT large an effect, but it would be quite positive.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think most people on HN agree that employees _should_ be paid proportional to the value they create. In fact that is an underlying reason many folks choose to work for (or start) a startup for equity rather than a big company for a salary. With equity, the more value you produce the more you make.

For the rest of America, you typically work for an agreed upon sum (salary or hourly wage) with your employer. We call this a mutually agreeable contract since no one is forced to work for an employer in our modern society (we have valid laws to prevent this scenario). If an employee does not like a given wage, they can shop their skills around for another employer (or start their own company) in order to gain a higher wage. We call this the free market.

I am a libertarian all about math. But even putting math aside, with the logic above why is there a need for a minimum wage?

<comment><USER7> supply and demand have an important quality called elasticity, which is not taken into account in libertarian discourse.

unlike a simple commodity market, like coffee for example, where a buyer can say "these prices are too high, i'm not going to buy any", a worker cannot simply say, "these wages are too low, i'm not going to work". (unless the government plans to give them all sufficient social security so that they can live comfortably without any work, which is unlikely and probably undesirable.)

likewise, when a coffee producer sells a lot due to good prices, he will increase his production, and thus the supply. in the labor market, a company that seeks workers and offers them a great wage will easily find workers, but i find it incredible that it's managers will then think "hey, we had such a great demand for work, let's hire more people just because of that!" it will not increase demand, limiting the effect a single positive agent can have.

not every market is exactly the same, and considering the dynamics of various markets will enable you to understand why so many countries have minimum wage, why they subsidize food production and are very interested in influencing the prices of basic commodities, and why they often meddle in real estate. these are things people simply cannot do without, and the stability of governments and regimes depends on somehow ensuring them for as many people as possible.

<comment><USER15> If workers are so desperate that they can't _not_ work, then putting them out of a job by making it illegal to work for low wages is _especially_ cruel.

If you doubt that the minimum wage causes unemployment, how do you explain that the countries in Europe _with_ a national minimum wage law have such consistently higher unemployment rates than the countries in Europe without one?

<comment><USER7> "If workers are so desperate that they can't not work" \- did you really put an "if" there? :D i presume you come from privileged background?

"then putting them out of a job by making it illegal to work for low wages is especially cruel." \- assuming they will all lose work. which they will not. not even a large minority will. despite the libertarian scaremongering, companies always somehow find the money to keep the workers, and their business running. go figure.

as for the other claim, do you have proof of this? in any case, it is ingrateful to draw such conclusions, due to large cultural and economic differences between these countries, and (the part which annoys me personally the most) the ever varying methodology of determining the unemployment rate.

P.S. No reference to the market dynamics? I believe it nicely explains where the extra money to cover for the minimum wage hike is going to come from, and why the hike will not result in a proportionate loss in jobs. I will take your silence as a sign of agreement ;)

<comment><USER15> > did you really put an "if" there?

Yes, I put it there because a large fraction of minimum wage workers are teens who live with their parents or are otherwise in a living situation where they aren't the only breadwinner. Hence, they _aren 't_ so desperate that they can't not work. Since choice exists (yet again, on the margin), labor employment is a normal good that responds to supply and demand.

> do you have proof of this?

Quoting from [http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=24759](http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=24759) :

 _Regarding the minimum wage, here is some data for Western Europe:

There are nine countries with a minimum wage (Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg). Their unemployment rates range from 5.9% in Luxembourg to 27.6% in Greece. The median country is France with 11.1% unemployment.

There are nine countries with no minimum wage (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland.) Five of the nine have a lower unemployment rate than Luxembourg, the best of the other group. The median country is Iceland, with a 5.5% unemployment rate. The biggest country in Europe is Germany. No minimum wage and 5.2% unemployment.

Still want to raise our minimum wage to $10? Germany used to have really high unemployment. Then they did labor reforms to allow more low wage jobs, combined with subsidies for low wage workers. Now they don't have high unemployment.

Still want to raise our minimum wage to $10?"_

> No reference to the market dynamics?

Your "market dynamics" claim doesn't make sense. I'm familiar the concept of elasticity, but it doesn't have any obvious relevance. I suspect you don't have the economic background to paraphrase the argument you're trying to make - could you perhaps point me to a link where somebody _else_ makes it? One problem is that you're making an "argument from personal incredulity" \- you just say "I find it incredible that..." rather than giving any actual, you know, _evidence_ or even argument - but the other problem is that the claim you "find incredible" is so weirdly phrased that I can't really tell what it is.

AFAIK, the best story labor economists have come up with in defense of their own claims involves theorizing that the employers have excess "monopsony power", but it's not actually a _plausible_ story.

Anyway, we're probably well past the point of diminishing returns here.

<comment><USER7> "a large fraction of minimum wage workers are teens" \-- how large? source? in the end, it does not matter - if they don't need to work, where is the problem? why should we even encourage them to work, to bring down the price of labor of those who already earn the least?

the data on minimum wage you quote is incorrect. i happen to know that Austria does have minimum wage, just not a single global one. i was offered work there, and then found out that they have minimum wages defined per occupation (country-wide collective bargain), and there exists a minimum wage for programmers in Austria. i actually found that unnecessary :D i believe in Sweden there is a similar situation, the unions are very politically strong there. as for Germany, when exactly did it have high unemployment, and how high? this is very sketchy. also, a factor for Germany is that a lot of people work part-time, which has reduced reported unemployment here.

but i must admit, even if unemployment is slightly greater, i don't care. because i believe that removing minimum wages in those countries that have it, even if it would hire some people, would cause a big drop in the pay and quality of life of many, many more people who would have been employed anyway. this is something that ultimately needs empiric check (Germany is also soon about to introduce minimum wage so there's another opportunity), but you already waved that off - what was it you said, we should not be fooled by lack of evidence to support your claim? :D

lastly, yes, i do not have economic background so i cannot phrase things in expert terms, but i would appreciate hearing some reason why it does not make sense. the point is, since demand is always equally present, and the supply is limited and independent of the demand (that is what i found incredible in the comment above - a company that offers great pay will easily find employees, but it will not choose to hire more simply because a lot of people applied, which is specific for labor markets), then the price of low-educated labor simply goes down until it hits some bottom, i.e. it becomes too low to earn a living, or it becomes comparable to social security payments. is it really so hard to grasp? or are you simply trying to discredit me and avoid the whole argument?

<comment><USER15> > _(that is what i found incredible in the comment above - a company that > offers great pay will easily find employees, but it will not choose to hire > more simply because a lot of people applied, which is specific for labor > markets)_

How is this feature specific to labor markets? Suppose a company is buying laptop computers to accomplish some task. If the company is willing to offer great pay - a high price - in exchange for laptop computers, they will easily find laptops, but they won't choose to buy more laptops simply because a lot of vendors submitted bids. Right?

Going back a bit, it's not true about either workers or laptops that "demand is always equally present". And it is true about both workers and laptops that "the supply is [somewhat, in the short term] limited and independent of the demand".

I honestly don't get the point you're trying to make. People respond to incentives. If companies can hire people for less than the value of their labor product, companies will expand and try to hire _more_ people. If they can't, companies will contract and hire fewer. In the extreme cases supply fluctuates via emigration/immigration. People have a reserve price - <USER3> generally aren't willing to work unless offered enough to make it worth their while, just as they aren't willing to sell a bicycle unless offered enough on eBay to make it worthwhile. Sometimes that price is less than the minimum, and sometimes it's more, in which case the minimum becomes irrelevant because it's less than the market rate.

I think I'm done looking up specific numbers for you; it never makes any difference to your views. Yes, collective bargaining exists in some sectors in Europe - it exists in some sectors in the US too! But there's no national minimum in those countries, which is what matters most for general employment. (And yes, these things are always in flux. Switzerland just last month voted on whether to have a $25/hour minimum, but 75% of the electorate voted against it - common sense prevailed for once!)

<comment><USER7> first of all, we are looking at it from different sides :) i was talking about the demand for jobs, not workers, and the supply of jobs. perhaps that created some of the misunderstanding.

the laptop example also illustrates the difference quite well. majority of the people need work, and they have to work, whether they like the price they will get or not. in the end they must eat. so, the demand for jobs (or, the supply of workers) cannot fall below a certain level, particularly the low skilled ones.

laptops are not such a necessity, so people may choose, if conditions become too unfavorable, to simply not buy them. this is why producers, who of course want to get the highest price possible, cannot raise prices as they wish. with low-skilled labor, however, companies can lower wages as much as they like. if they reach the point where people can no longer feed themselves, people don't simply decide not to work (really?!) - we then have a revolution.

your comparisons actually demonstrate this quite clearly, it really amazes me that you can compare a low skill workers quest for jobs with selling a bike on eBay without noticing any difference.

"I think I'm done looking up specific numbers for you; it never makes any difference to your views." \-- that's a cheap shot. i gave some arguments, you ignored them, and you're now just weaseling out. the effects of a nation-wide collective bargain, which defines a mandatory minimum wage for all sorts of professions, are pretty much the same. in fact, since many professions have pretty healthy situations in the job market, i would say that that actually is harmful in the way you described.

but ultimately, i explained that i actually accept that a minimum wage may mildly increase unemployment. did you just skip that part?

<comment><USER15> The problem is that you demand support even for claims of mine that are easy for you to verify for yourself and that you have no reason to doubt. While on the flip side you never provide any numbers of your own, so it's unbalanced. But what the heck, I'll do it one last time.

>"a large fraction of minimum wage workers are teens" \-- how large? source?

Half of all minimum wage workers are under age 25; 62% are still enrolled in school, and the average family income of people earning minimum wage is in excess of $60,000/year. I found this out just now by googling the string "what percent of minimum wage workers are teen", which led me to these links:

[http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm)

[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/02/who- earns-t...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/02/who-earns-the- minimum-wage-suburban-teenagers-not-single-parents)

It is true that SOME minimum-wage workers desperately need a job. But it is also true that SOME people desperately need a laptop computer! The overall characteristics of a market - whether a market for labor or a market for laptops - aren't driven by just the few who have the most inelastic demand. Employers have to offer wages high enough that _on the margin_ , those people who are indifferent between employers or willing to wait a little longer for "the right job offer" are inclined to accept the one being offered. This means the average job pays a lot MORE than the bare minimum that the most desperate people would be willing to accept. Even if there were no minimum wage, wages would not drop to starvation levels for that reason.

In short, Malthus and Keynes were wrong to predict a "race to the bottom". We don't need a minimum wage to have high average wages, high entry-level wages or a high standard of living. (In fact, the minimum wage does far more harm than good to the lowest-skilled workers - it reduces job _quality_ and _availability_ , cutting off some of the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.)

<comment><USER7> ok, interesting statistics. i did not expect such a large number of teens. the average income part, the key is that it counts "families" or "households", i have seen it in another source where it stated that many of the poorest families actually earn 2-3 wages in order to reach that level, so i would not immediately jump to the conclusion that they are all that well off.

"It is true that SOME minimum-wage workers desperately need a job. But it is also true that SOME people desperately need a laptop computer!" \-- again, these crazy comparisons... these situations are not equal. period. such reductionism is unproductive.

"Employers have to offer wages high enough that on the margin, those people who are indifferent between employers or willing to wait a little longer for "the right job offer" are inclined to accept the one being offered." \-- this seems unrealistic. middle-class or up may afford that, but we're not talking about them here. and it's worth noting that the middle-class is growing smaller lately.

as for the race to the bottom, it is a demonstrated reality of history, one that we have experienced, but which is easy to forget now that the problem had been solved. it drove people to revolutions, simple fact. we have progressed far since then. this neo-libertarianism seems to be an initiative to take us back, and by many indicators, since the 80s, that plan is working out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now, if only the workers did $15 per hour worth of work, everything would be set...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > A councillor who supported the push said the vote "sends a message heard > around the world".

Probably the most important aspect here. Don't get ripped off.

</comment><comment><USER20> For years, I've been frustrated by the debate over the minimum wage. Like many economic arguments, lots of ideas are mixed together and argued without very clear analysis. Seattle will offer us an opportunity to see what really happens when we establish minimum wages at levels comparable to some other developed countries.

I happen to be a libertarian, and I note that there are often philosophical and economic arguments to be made for policy decisions. I'd like to see policies that are both just and economically efficient. So, for example, an argument (clearly specious) that women staying out of the workplace would produce overall economic gains doesn't matter to me. I don't care if it would or it wouldn't be more economically efficient for women (or minorities or red- heads) to be restricted from certain jobs. It's wrong to have laws restricting the freedom of women or minorities or red-heads and that trumps economic arguments.

In Seattle, they have decided that restrictions on their citizens fundamental freedoms, will on balance be worth instituting, but the freedom to work, entering into an agreement to sell one's labor, is an important freedom that is being abrogated. What if Seattle decided that it wanted to encourage more high tech workers to move to Seattle, because it would increase the tax base, and they instituted a minimum wage for programmers, say $160 per hour. What would happen? Would you like being told that you were not allowed to program in Seattle unless you could find a job that paid $320,000 per year? It would ruin things. Like $160 per hour programmers, many $16 per hour low-skilled teenage kids will be priced right out of the job market.

I got my start working in my first full-time job working for under $3 per hour. I lived at home with my parents, and my income made only a modest dent on the family's overall income, but it gave me a start. I learned to get up every morning, get to work, and do my job. Low wage jobs are a way to get into the job market, even if they don't immediately provide wealth and comfort.

Ignoring the restrictions on our freedom of contract, some argue that this development is a good thing nevertheless, that the $16 per hour will help those living in poverty. Well, if $16 per hour is a good thing why wouldn't $25 per hour be even better? Clearly there is a level that will have negative impacts. Those supporting $16 per hour seem to recognize that there will be negative impacts, but the argument goes that these negative impacts are not so bad because they affect a group that the minimum wage supporters don't like or don't care about (for example, business owners).

Perhaps supporters of the new minimum wage really do care about everyone and my last paragraph is too harsh. In that case what I see is a kind of first- order effect rationale being given that ignores the indirect, but possibly quite significant, consequences of the new minimum wage policy. Each side in this debate has studies that they can cite, but money doesn't grow on trees. It has to come from somewhere. Businesses will have to cover the costs by doing either (1) lowering the dividends to the owners/shareholders, (2) decreasing the salaries of higher paid employees or employing fewer people, or (3) increasing the costs imposed on the business's consumers. All of these actions have negative consequences. (1), lowering the benefits of owning the business means that over time, there will be less of them in Seattle; (2), lowers employment, often of the people this policy is purported to help; and (3), increases costs to everyone (or lowers the quality of the goods provided).

If my simple breakdown in the previous paragraph is correct, why are politicians in Seattle supporting this new minimum wage? Politicians want to stay in office and they can use the minimum wage to appeal to large groups. One group is those that want to help others but don't understand economics or freedom well enough to understand what this policy means. The other group is comprised of those whose jobs might be threatened by workers willing to do the same job for less than $16 per hour. (This is the reason that unions are big supporters of raising the minimum wage even though their workers have wages far above minimum wage. It protects their high wages from low cost competition.)

<comment><USER7> the ease with which you compare the minimum programmer wage of $160 and the general minimum wage of $16 is astounding. (not to mention the ease of waving off empirical data, wow!) these things are not exactly equal, some consideration should be given to differences in these markets if you want to be serious. programmers are not so abundant, and for us the market really works. for a non-educated worker, on the other hand, the market is problematic, with an abundance of workers creating downward pressure on pay that is, de facto, only stopped by social security!

freedom is important, but to most people on the lower end of the income graph, just making a living is a more pressing issue.

the money must come from somewhere, and it will come from profits, yes. sadly, individual employers have no reason to pay these workers more, on the contrary. so, look at this like a collective bargain, but achieved on a wider level.

this brings me to the last, but greatest problem with your post - the ease with which you completely dismiss the democratic will of the people who voted for this policy (though indirectly). they are either in an evil conspiracy, or merely stupid. this is quite an anti-democratic, condescending attitude.

<comment><USER20> You make a good point. Making a living is a pressing issue, and I feel that we do have a responsibility to aid those that can't take care of themselves. Further, you point out _correctly_ , that I was harsh in my dismissal of those supporting Seattle's policy. Most people that support Seattle's policy probably do it in the belief that it will help the people that need help. Nevertheless, I believe that there are likely to be unanticipated negative consequences and a further eroding of our freedoms.

I must disagree with you that simply because the people of Seattle have had a democratic vote for a particular policy that we must respect it and refrain from criticizing it. The majority isn't always right and there is a long tradition in my country (the USA) of speaking out against policies that are either morally wrong (in some way) or wasteful despite the positions taken by majorities. I'm old enough to have demonstrated for civil rights at a time when there were states still refusing civil rights to their racial minority populations. While I was in college, there was a minority in this country demonstrating against a war being waged by conscripts that didn't want to fight. Today, there are states that don't allow gays the rights that the rest of us have. Do you dismiss criticism of these (sometimes majority held) positions as condescending and anti-democratic? Our cherished Bill of Rights is fundamentally anti-democratic, protecting us from simple democratic majorities.

I'm curious, although not hopeful, about the outcome of Seattle's experiment. I share your wish that it will help (the difference is I believe it won't). You can say to me "I told you so" if it really does help the people of Seattle, that would be a good thing.

<comment><USER7> > I must disagree with you that simply because the people of Seattle have had > a democratic vote for a particular policy that we must respect it and > refrain from criticizing it.

Now, if only I had ever said that... I did not call your attitude undemocratic simply because you disagree. I called it undemocratic, because you declared everyone who disagrees with you to be either retards or morally bankrupt. All this condescending preaching was not really necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> why Bay Area cities wouldn't do that? How much pricier our coffee/burritos would get here so that we stop buying them thus making the minimum wage increase a "job killer"? I think even making it $30/hour people here would hardly notice it.

<comment><USER10> Actually, San Francisco and San Jose both have laws increasing the minimum wage. Richmond also just passed an ordinance in March to raise it to $12.30 by 2017, which will be the highest minimum wage in CA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Seattle votes to fire everyone worth less than $15 / hour"

<comment><AUTHOR> That argument doesn't work, b/c: You can always "create jobs" by lowering the salary.

As others have noted, it simply results in people becoming dependent on social benefits (and this bill ends up being footed by the tax payer).

So: You are right if you think that the tax payer should subsidize business owners.

<comment><USER23> That is a trite and misleading argument. 89% of minimum wage workers don't live in poor households. To say that they are being subsidized because they are poor is simply dishonest. See my link above.

<comment><USER24> Those 11% isn't worth helping? And should be subsidized by the government?

<comment><USER25> Who said that? Why attack the minimum wage and not the EITC (which directly helps the poor)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How exactly will it help? Employers are not stupid, they will pay the same money eventually, destroying the perks.</comment>


How to stop the deadliest drug overdose crisis in American history – Vox - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/1/15746780/opioid-epidemic-end <comment><USER2> This has a pretty comprehensive overview of a variety of interventions that can help. I didn't find anything new, but I've been learning about addiction secondhand for several years now...

Connection and meaning are two of the most important factors for helping addicts out of their funks.</comment>


Interview with Patrick Collison – Co-Founder, Stripe [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://www.fromscratchradio.com/show/patrick-collison <comment><USER2> If you're craving more interview with him, there's a pretty interesting podcast with patrick hosted by vox's Ezra Klein. it was useful for giving lots of context to somebody whose tweets i had spent a fair amount of time reading but who i didn't really have a grasp on (other than knowing about stripe): [https://soundcloud.com/panoply/eks045-patrick-collison- ads](https://soundcloud.com/panoply/eks045-patrick-collison-ads)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am confused about one thing in the interview. He implied that when they launched they didnt have a backend integration with a merchant account (assuming that is how all this stuff works) ... so you would eventually get your money. (implying there was a manual step that required human intervention)

It sounds like the beta was only half built, but I am surprised that it didnt need to be 100% there for it to process payments.

I'm just confused.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love what Stripe has done / is doing with Atlas. I can barely even explain what a pain it is just to open a US bank account with a foreign address. If they can succeed on a broader level, it will democratize online commerce like WordPress did for online publishing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you to all the guys at stripe, your product is great and very helpful

</comment><comment><USER6> Listened to it this morning, thanks. I wasn't aware the founders of Stripe were so young until very recently.

</comment><comment><USER7> NPR needs a mobile friendly website sooner or later.

<comment><USER8> Here you go [1] and [2]

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2017/02/15/515412799/patrick-collison- co-...](http://www.npr.org/2017/02/15/515412799/patrick-collison-co-founder- of-stripe)

[2] [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1261661...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126166186)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for this</comment>


Microsoft's CFO Is Damning The Surface With Faint Praise - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cfo-surface-learnings-2013-2

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially ...

"This is the dilemma Microsoft is facing: Klein and other executives cannot strongly praise the Surface, lest they scare the PC makers who pay lots of money to license Windows."</comment>


Why Silicon Valley Is Full of One-Hit Wonders - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/maeghan-ouimet/why-silicon-valley-is-full-of-one-hit-wonders.html

<comment><USER2> The "Paypal Mafia" ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia> ) seem to me a good counter-example, if we are in the anecdotal evidence range.

But more importantly, I think the whole "VC prefer serial-entrepreneur", is not because serial-entrepreneur are "alway right" but rather because their track record prove that they have a better chance than first time entrepreneur. Which is alway important when you are investing...</comment>


The Top Growth Hacks of All Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.adambreckler.com/top-10-growth-hacks-of-all-time?src=hn

<comment><USER2> Great case studies! AirBnB and Instagram made smart moves with cross-posting. Why make users choose, when they don't have to? Even better, they improved the experience of the other platform using their interface (ex. uploading Facebook photos works great, but Instagram adds a lot to the experience). As a bonus, you get free PR on both platforms! Everybody wins with those kinds of growth hacks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really interesting, thanks Adam!</comment>


I will tell you why it's so freaking hard for single founders: It's so freaking lonely - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I believe it. Oddly enough, it's lonely even when there are a couple of you. This is one of the main reasons we do YC in batches. The startups all become one another's friends, because they're all in the same situation.

I think it's well worth the inconvenience of moving in order to have a large group of energetic and sympathetic peers. That's the deal with college, after all.

<comment><USER3> i've been in this situation before and in general, i agree. and there's a similar kind of suckage being the only technical guy in a startup (i've run a startup for a couple years with a non-technical guy -- smart, but not a hacker.)

in my case, i'm working on a new idea alone at the moment while i find the right cofounder. i've found that a good compromise that still allows you forward progress is to hang out with people who are in the same boat, even if you're not working on the same stuff. i worked over the summer with a couple yc guys who were also starting their own thing and it was great to have other people to bounce ideas off of and frankly to have other people who were stuck inside on friday nights or up at 3am (welcome to the startup world, kids -- often not as glamorous as you'd hope :)) when everyone else is out drinking. it didn't matter that we weren't working on the same stuff -- there was still that esprit de corps and a shoulder to tap when you're working on something cool.

i think it's just the being-in-a-room-by-yourself that sucks, especially if you have roommates on a completely different schedule. and i think it's worth waiting for the right cofounder, even if that means you have to hack the prototype or even launch a beta by yourself -- more startups implode for people reasons than anything else.

there's hope; a good friend of mine has been running his own show for a while after his cofounder left and he's doing fine (but works in an office with other entrepreneurial types), and founders at work has numerous examples of people who had to hoof it on their own for a period of time and did ok (evan williams, a bunch of others).

so if you're in this situation, just get some moral support and keep making forward progress until you find the right cofounder. good luck!

-drew

<comment><USER4> Good advice! The biggest mistake I've made in past businesses is to try to do it all alone. That's a recipe for having it fizzle out into an undead hobby project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Definitely. I think there's more to it, but you've captured the fact the most the major downsides are emotional/psychological. There's no one to temper doubts. Worse, you're not letting anyone else down if you slack off; having others depend on your efforts is a powerful motivator.

"so freaking lonely" does sum it up pretty well though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Long hours without alot of positive feedback from the business you are building can be very lonely.

Its kind of like the first 6 months you are taking care of a baby, they really don't do much but need to be attended to constantly, and usually you can take solace in the sheer love of what you are making, but sometimes at 4 am when the little thing is crying and all you want to do is get some sleep and then you have to get up and go into work the next day anyway, having someone to share the experience with is great.

I like the idea of meetups, but I'm in the Hartford area, not sure there are a ton of startups around. What would be kind of cool though would be some kind of "Who's working on their startup now" list, maybe even here on YC's site, where people could sign-in when you start working and we could have some kind of quiet community, even if its just the ethereal prescence of our names.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I get lonely, all I need to think about is some of the more annoying folks I've had to work with over the years. God bless em. A few minutes remembering their antics, and I appreciate my solitude anew.

<comment><USER8> I tend to think of the people who were made uncomfortable by my antics instead, but I feel a similar sense of relief to be free of them. I've often found comfort in the H.G.Wells short story "The Country of the Blind".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm running an open-source software startup (apparently one of the three entrepreneurs who read this site and don't care about web apps), and I get plenty of interaction from my community. My problem is that no one else knows the code base or the problem space nearly as well as I do, which means the majority of my technical decisions are made with essentially no feedback.

I don't have problems with loneliness, and never really did even before I had an active community; I just have problems making competent decisions, especially since I'm a sysadmin turned developer, so I'm a bit out of water doing a software startup.

All you web guys need to quit yer complaining; at least you've got thousands of other entrepreneurs who are in the same boat. There is almost no one else in the sysadmin space, and pretty much everyone's eyes just glaze over when I mention that I'm working on infrastructure, not AJAXy web 2.0 bling.

</comment><comment><USER10> Most founders with families in the startup stage of business don't see them that much anyways. Plus you have to network alot so you're always seeing people.

However, there would be a lacking of intimate contact. You can bond with other founders but that only goes so far. Society as a whole is becoming increasingly isolated. Many people have hundreds of friends on their "friendspace/mybook", but deep down have no one to really confide in.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Shared Struggle" is one of the most compelling reasons for doing startups. A small ragtag band of hackers battling the odds.

When you're trying to do it alone there's the feeling that even if you did make it no one would know how hard it was.

Besides, who's going to write the tell-all memoir about the "real" you?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> zaidf, amichail

the thing is that most of the time you don't care. But there are times that suddenly you become aware of it, and if its one of the times that it annoys you then it strikes you, and thats when you need maybe somebody to either support you (the case of someone who is active part in the early process of starting up) or fulfil it before it becomes a need. And as always you must get over it

<comment><USER12> Trust me I've gone through it. I've posted before my success ratio in partner versus no partner ventures. In my case I couldn't get over it and after few too many projects going no where, I decided to take the partner route.

I doubt I'll be starting anything in future without a partner or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> i totally agree with this, here in the midwest i can barely find a handful of folks that even know what i'm talking about when it comes to 2.0 type ideas...

it is heavy, and you feel lonely, and yet you also feel like you got nothing to lose other than a house, a life, family and everything else... which is why we all need to be more wealthy, and more sane via yoga and good workouts...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i could talk you about it days, blog about it until my keyboard dies, but the main point pretty much covers it all and its on the header

<comment><USER14> So find ways to make it less lonely.

I think that getting back frequent feedback can help in that regard, although it might also increase the chances that someone will copy your service.

<comment><USER11> Competition could help -- "someone to race against" as Reid Hoffman discussed in an interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> good sociologist type q's raised here.

could this 'loneliness' be an indicator of 'personality' as well as being a single founder? For instance are you (anyone) _energised_ in the presence of crowds? (for me, no). Variations in founder personality types come into play here.

could also be an indicator of how many 'related/non-related' social groups you inhabit. Do you meet others in other social contexts? I mix in 3-4 non startup groups, thats more than enough.

There are definite advantages of working in groups of like minded. The sharing of knowledge, contacts, protection ~ I'm primarily thinking of how other ape- like creatures work/live, passing on knowledge & skills. Doesn't the web allow this kind of behaviour virtually?

<comment><USER6> There are many communication cues the web doesn't distribute. I can't see if you are frowning or smiling as you read this, I can't hear if your voice is desperate or confident. I would bet that much of that information contributes to ape-like creatures sense of well being and progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are you in college?

If you aren't enroll part-time. Join every biz/ad/entrepreneur club. Finding a great partner is hard - but far from impossible. Step 1 is to start meeting SOMEWHAT partner-ish people and college is a good start from my experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> has anyone found any of the various web2.0/entrepreneur meetups to be useful for this?

I'll be at the next web2.0 meetup in NYC -- <http://newtech.meetup.com/21/>

<comment><USER17> I've found events such as opencoffee and barcamps to be encouraging. Only trouble is the barcamps only happen every few weeks

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> you struck a chord here, buddy! you are absolutely right. That's why I like news.YC so much - clean wholesome fun. A watering hole for entrepreneur animals. If you are looking for a cofounder, email me.

<comment><USER15> '... clean wholesome fun. A watering hole for entrepreneur animals ...'

love that quote. Someones whacked up a 'search for co-founder site' ... can't remember where.

<comment><USER18> thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's Sting's take on the issue: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=cffpdZIFjxc>

</comment><comment><USER19> "Lonely"?! That's the biggest problem? What about the hundreds of other posts? Come on...

</comment><comment><USER20> if anyone on here is looking for a b-side partner, let me know.

<comment><USER20> myoung8 at stanford dot edu</comment></comment>