A cura di @reislaufer.

Secondo uno studio condotto da David Neumark, un cosiddetto ‘scettico del salario minimo’, salari minimi più alti sono spesso affiancati da minore propensione dei lavoratori a basse qualifiche di lavorare nei cosiddetti ‘lavori automatizzabili’ – lavori fortemente abitudinari.

Ma c’è di più: secondo alcuni studiosi, i salari alti sarebbero stati la scintilla che fece scoccare la Rivoluzione Industriale, mettendo in moto il processo che ha alla fine portato alle moderne società industriali.

To see why, we should first think back to the Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain and the Netherlands in the 1700s. This was the greatest, most spectacular episode of automation that ever occurred — miners, farmers, weavers and craftspeople of all types were put out of a job by steam engines, power looms and other machines. This hurt lots of people, but in the end, it resulted in the greatest explosion of human wealth and prosperity in history.

Why did this happen? No one knows for sure, but one major theory is that high wages spurred the creation of industrial technology. Economic historian Robert Allen notes that labor was especially expensive in pre-industrial London and Amsterdam, with British wages especially high. Where businesspeople in China or India or Russia might hire armies of low-paid workers to make cloth or mine coal, British entrepreneurs had to find ways to make machines to do those jobs, because human hands were just too expensive.