Minimum Wage Machine

[palani]

This reminds me of all those slot machines in Vegas. I always thought that if someone were paid a minimum wage to crank the handle they would last 2-3 days at most before finding some more entertaining (and more lucrative) form of employment.


http://blakefallconroy.com/18.html


http://blakefallconroy.com/background18.jpg

Minimum Wage Machine (Work in Progress)

2008-2010

Custom electronics, change sorter, wood, plexiglas, motor, misc. hardware, pennies (approx. 15 x 19 x 72 inches)

The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 4.97 seconds, for $7.25 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine's mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box.




December 15, 2012

Posted by JacobSloan

Via Andrew Fishman’s Art, minimum wage machine is a sculpture installation by Blake Fall-Conroy, allowing anyone to work for minimum wage for as long as they wish:


Turning the crank on the side releases one penny every 4.97 seconds, for a total of $7.25 per hour. This corresponds to minimum wage for a person in New York.

This piece is brilliant on multiple levels, particularly as social commentary. Without a doubt, most people who started operating the machine for fun would quickly grow disheartened and stop when realizing just how little they’re earning by turning this mindless crank. A person would then conceivably realize that this is what nearly two million people in the United States do every day…at much harder jobs than turning a crank. This turns the piece into a simple, yet effective argument for raising the minimum wage.

[chad]

i don't know if this is true or not, but i read somewhere about a month ago (don't remember where), that to match the purchasing power of the $ in the 1970s, minimum wage would need to be between $25-$30 today. i guess we should be surprised that million of people are sucking off the government teat when the dollar is worth shit and people get paid $7.50 an hour with 30 hours max so the business doesn't have to get raped by obamacare. krugman is not needed to figure this one out.

[Carl]

And let's not discuss the millions who can't even find a job earning minimum wage.

Corporate globalization, the poor can just suck it....

[palani]

If the minimum wage were set to $30 an hour then merchants would have no complaints. There would be so much money floating around in society that coffee would run to $15 a cup, an apartment would run $10,000 a month, a typical spaghetti dinner would set you back $60 with a $10 tip for service.

Minimum wage in the late '60s was $1.90 an hour. State university tuition was $110 a quarter and a sleeping room in a private dwelling was $40 a month.

[jimswift]

What this piece tells me is, fuck minimum wage.

Minimum wage is just another sad product of paper fiat.

[madfranks]

Minimum wage is nothing other than price controls. In this case the price of labor. Basic economics and countless historical attempts show us that price controls result in shortages, in this case a shortage of labor, also known as unemployment. The labor of black teenagers living in the ghetto is not worth $7.25 an hour, so nobody will hire them. So what do the young blacks do when there are no jobs for them?