Jeff Bezos owns this newspaper and has a deeply vested interest in keeping wages low.
Seems better than a government that wants to keep people out of work.
A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
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Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#22Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#23I find this to be credible - at some level, it'll certainly hurt. The problem as I see it is that some people say "aha, see, that doesn't work", but then stop there. There is a real problem in that some people (not all who make minimum wage, and not only those who make minimum wage) have real problems making ends meet. What's the best way to help them?
Increase social services funding by taxing the rich and closing tax-dodging loopholes (like capital gains, etc.).
Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#24I find this to be credible - at some level, it'll certainly hurt. The problem as I see it is that some people say "aha, see, that doesn't work", but then stop there. There is a real problem in that some people (not all who make minimum wage, and not only those who make minimum wage) have real problems making ends meet. What's the best way to help them?
A UBI.
Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#25"employment overall did not change" "The number of workers making over $19 an hour increased abruptly" This is the bad news.
"the average low-wage worker in the city lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum." This is the bad news.
But they worked significantly less hours. No telling if they were able to then get a second job and make significantly more, or if they were fine with the $125 a month less and just got to use their time not at work for what they wanted to do.
Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#26.
> then the study is just measuring toxicity rather than bad policy.
Don't you think that good policy should account for human toxicity? You seem to believe that policy should not account for "human folly."
Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#27Jeff Bezos owns this newspaper and has a deeply vested interest in keeping wages low.
The article itself seems to be a pretty even-handed summary of some the underlying research (which was not carried out by Jeff Bezos).
Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#28>> to avoid confusing establishments that were subject to the minimum with those that were not, the authors did not include large employers with locations both inside and outside of Seattle in their calculations. I read this to mean that the study therefore would exclude employers such as Seattle-based Starbucks, Seattle-based Amazon, Seattle-based Costco, Seattle-based Nordstrom, McDonald's, etc. Based on that readi…
I'm not intelligent enough to say either way. I do think that excluding them was a good idea. If the only businesses that can survive a law are massive multi-national corporations, we've got a problem...
That's a separate issue, also worthy of study.
But it does seem ridiculous to assume the validity of a study of low-wage workers in Seattle while omitting data from companies like Starbucks that presumably employ many people affected by the change.
Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#29"employment overall did not change" "The number of workers making over $19 an hour increased abruptly" This is the bad news.
"the average low-wage worker in the city lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum." This is the bad news.
I can't seem to find the underlying paper, but statistics can be deceiving -- if the pool of "low-wage" workers was reduced because some of them, due to the boost provided by the minimum wage increase, became "medium-wage" workers, then this statement might not have a negative meaning.
It does not appear that the survey involved has the degree of resolution to make the statement that "the individuals comprising the pool of low-wage workers earned $125/month less on average after the change", then it is problematic, but it is far from clear that this is what the study says.
The GP's quote seems to capture the only hard data given -- that employers employed as many people at higher wages as they unemployed at the lower wage, meaning a net increase in wages paid by employers given that unemployment did not change.
Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news
#30.
Ok, your moralizing tone is condescending, it is rude to pretend to "ask questions" when you're really pushing a thesis, and the thesis you are presenting has no explanatory power. Thus addressing those "questions" is largely uninteresting.