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\J	Martin   Feldstein   in   \F1The   Economics   of   the   New
Unemployment\F0 seems implicitly to have the following model  of  the
jobs  available  to disadvantaged workers and paying near the minimum
wage.

	The job is "dead end" and "has no future", but  if  only  the
employer didn't have to pay the minimum wage he could combine it with
training for a better job.  It can also be made  more  attractive  so
there will be less labor turnover.

	No doubt there are some jobs like this, but my
problem  in  believing  it is that I can't think of any examples.
The jobs  I  know  that  pay
near  the minimum wage are dishwasher, counterman, houseworker, movie
usher, and service station attendant.  It seems to me that these jobs
have the following characteristics:

	1.   They  cannot  be  eliminated  at  the  present  level of
technology.  Several millions of people have to be found to do them.

	2. They cannot be enriched in a significant way.  They can be
made to pay better and the working conditions can be improved.  There
is no way of  doubling  the  productivity  of  a  movie  usher  or  a
houseworker  by  training.  Of course, some countermen can be trained
to become  hamburger  stand  managers,  but  this  won't  reduce  the
requirement for countermen.

	3. Often their low pay is not related to any specific
characteristics of the job itself but rather to the bargaining power
of a group of workers or to some characteristic of the industry.
Thus, nurses now get more than some workers they used to get less than.

	To  the  extent  that  the low paying jobs satisfy this model
rather than Feldstein's, we come to the conclusion that  the  minimum
wage  ought to be increased rather than reduced. This will presumably
increase the attractiveness of these jobs  relative  to  the  various
ways of getting money without working. It is also fairer.

	Of  course, if the jobs are intrinsically uninteresting, then
increasing the pay will cause some people to work less  in  order  to
have  more  leisure.      This  should  be  accepted  as  a desirable
development, and as Feldstein suggests,  the  unemployment  insurance
laws  should  be reworked so that this voluntary idleness doesn't get
confused with real unemployment. Moreover, if increasing the  minimum
wage  causes  some  of these jobs to be eliminated by mechanization -
good riddance.    Increasing aggregate demand will get new jobs,  and
the  more  efficient economy will make more money available for doing
good.

	I fear that if Feldstein's proposals are adopted, instead  of
handing  the new movie usher a flashlight and starting him to work at
$1.60 per hour, they will start him at $1.20 an hour but  enrich  his
life with two hours a day of lectures and laboratory on how to repair
the flashlight and how to place the people with bags  of  popcorn  so
they  won't disturb others.  He will also have to read \F1The Fall of
the House of Usher\F0 in order to get beyond apprenticeship.
Of  course,  the
job will have a future - one can aspire to become a lecturer
in usherology. When job turnover increases, the administrators of the
usher training program will propose more intensive lectures, financed
perhaps, by reducing further the stipend of the trainees.

	Kidding aside, the effect of changes in the minimum wage and
other actios designed to affect unemployment depends on how many jobs
there are which can increase their productivity by upgrading and by
also on the possibilities for mechanizing these low level jobs.  This
is not a matter that can be answered by pure economic theory; it depends
on the characteristics of the industries concerned.  Would Professor
Feldstein care to estimate the number of jobs satisfying the various
models?\.