71–80 of 235 posts
Jeff Bezos owns this newspaper and has a deeply vested interest in keeping wages low.
[withdrawn]
Here's Max Ehrenfreund's publication history at WaPo. Take a glance across it, and then decide if you're convinced he's essentially a fraud, reporting in bad faith to promote the viewpoints of Jeff Bezos. I wonder if he's ever even met him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/max-ehrenfreund/?utm_t...
The problem I have with the minimum wage is that it transfers wealth from the very poorest to the mid-working class/lower middle class. Who am I to tell a homeless person that she is legally forbidden to engage in a voluntary, hourly employment contract for less than $15/hr? I would effectively be guaranteeing that she stays unemployed/homeless. Regardless of practical effects (which are ambiguous at best), it's wron…
You aren't telling the homeless person that they are legally forbidden from working in cheap labor. You are telling businesses that they are not solvent if they rely on ultra cheap labor.
The problem I have with the minimum wage is that it transfers wealth from the very poorest to the mid-working class/lower middle class. Who am I to tell a homeless person that she is legally forbidden to engage in a voluntary, hourly employment contract for less than $15/hr? I would effectively be guaranteeing that she stays unemployed/homeless. Regardless of practical effects (which are ambiguous at best), it's wron…
You aren't telling the homeless person that they are legally forbidden from working in cheap labor. You are telling businesses that they are not solvent if they rely on ultra cheap labor.
1. Employment stayed about the same.
2. Employees overall were payed a lot more.
3. The number of low wage employees (which I assume means those making the new minimum wage) dropped. However employees overall were payed more. My understanding is that this means that employers switched to paying more of their employers above the minimum wage.
4. They say that the average low payed employee made $125 less. However, its not clear to me what that means in light of the other points.
5. The study did not include larger corporations that have employees in multiple cities.
Several different interpretations were suggested:
1. Companies are hiring more skilled employees for higher wages and pushing less skilled employees out of the market.
2. Small businesses are being hurt and large businesses are taking their place.
3. Companies are paying employees more.
4. The results are due to some aspect of the economy that wasn't controlled for.
It seems to me that the conclusion that this is bad for those who advocate for higher minimum wages isn't very strong unless they could show that it was actually pushing low skilled employees out of the market.
I 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?
Don't take away the only entry point to employment in the economy that those people have until we actually have a good answer to that question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 p…
Total payroll fell, so your explanation is not consistent with the data.
Opponents of a minimum wage need only believe that increasing the price of a thing tends to proportionally decrease the demand for that thing. This is simply a statement of the law of supply and demand, which is (though weaker) the economic equivalent of physics' F=MA. Proponents of a minimum wage need to believe that in this particular case, raising a price does not proportionally decrease demand. While this may be…
Pretending that it's a "law" of economics we can blindly apply to any situation is absurd.