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A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#141

Post by PatentTroll »

taeric wrote: post #58
lend000 wrote: post #42

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.

No, you're telling the customers that their food is subsidized by ultra cheap labor. Of course, higher prices will decrease the number of goods sold, which the free marketers regard as a deadly sin. Rather, when costs are fully internalized, the free market works better! Externalizing costs onto labor by perpetuating a below-living wage is a market distortion held up by government! They should hate it!

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#142

Post by nkoren »

dreta wrote: post #138
coldpie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, the minimum wage definitely benefits middle class teenagers on their first jobs (if they can get a job), and has questionable benefit for millennial humanities college grads who have yet to start a career. This is the problem. Everyone working 40 hours per week deserves a living wage, whether they're fresh out of high school or 8 years into a humanities degree. There's this weird sense out there…

>Everyone working 40 hours per week deserves a living wage (...) You can earn a living wage for 40 hours a week doing anything in the US. You just can't afford a new iPhone. All the minimum wage does is makes it impossible to employ low-skill workers. So while before the minimum wage you could make a living, now you either can't make a living or you're effectively in the lower middle class. Ask your dad or granddad w…

> You just can't afford a new iPhone.

Or a home. Or a car. Or healthcare. The idea that minimum-wage life in America is in any way up to developed-world standards is horribly, laughably, tragically wrong.

Not saying that minimum wage is the answer. Personally, I support abolishing it in favor of a Universal basic Income. But suggesting that the problem it is trying to address isn't even real is... just not correct.

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#143

Post by tim333 »

Joe-Z wrote: post #126
tim333 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is for $15 per hour the business can probably hire someone more productive or less hassle than the homeless guy. Thus the homeless guy stays unemployed. I was always a put off minimum wage laws by reading Thomas Sowell on how blacks had lower unemployment than whites in 1948 before minimum wage laws had much effect. After people hired non blacks and the unemployment rate shot up giving problems that conti…

Thank you for your example, that's interesting! I guess the story can also be interpreted the other way around: Employers were only willing to hire black people because they were worked for lower wages, because they exactly knew that their labour was being considered less worth that that of white people? So introducing the minimum wage just made the racism obivous and I'm sure problems would also have arisen if the m…

Sowell's argument was that different groups can have different productivity including say the average black at the time being less educated etc which he can get away with saying as he's black himself.

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#144

Post by chroem- »

tptacek wrote: post #71
dragonwriter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[withdrawn]

This is an unusually facile remark for you. 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...

Why is it that every time I see you post here, your posts reek with condescension and insults?

A lot of us are getting pretty sick of your attitude, regardless of who you are.

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#145

Post by tptacek »

rsync wrote: post #139
tptacek wrote: post #43

I really dislike this framing. By any contemporary definition I'm a "liberal": * I support higher taxes, particularly on higher income people, almost for its own sake. * I oppose almost all military intervention abroad. * I believe the federal government needs to intervene with local governments to prevent police abuses. * I strongly support public schools and oppose public-funded charters. ... and I could go on and…

"Why am I meant to feel like my "team" lost something when a study confirms something that most economists have been saying for decades?" Because that "team" did, in fact, lose something - at least in relation to the very cynical (and probably correct) charge that minimum wage increases are vote-buying. Also, I think it's worth considering that the very sound and considerable notion that "a wage price floor causes al…

See, this is exactly what I mean. I'm a liberal. This study is not bad news for me. It does not follow that I somehow support supply-side economics. Literally the first bullet point I chose to wrote in describing myself as a liberal implies directly that I do not believe in supply-side policy. But your comment is written in such a way as to suggest that those are the only two options.

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#146

Post by PatentTroll »

PatentTroll wrote: post #141
taeric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, you're telling the customers that their food is subsidized by ultra cheap labor. Of course, higher prices will decrease the number of goods sold, which the free marketers regard as a deadly sin. Rather, when costs are fully internalized, the free market works better! Externalizing costs onto labor by perpetuating a below-living wage is a market distortion held up by government! They should hate it!

And to the free marketers who point out that companies could voluntarily pay a living wage, you're not wrong! But it exposes the fault in the free market religion. The market, on a whole, will gladly enslave and abuse a small minority for the benefit of the majority.

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#147

Post by PatentTroll »

koolba wrote: post #84
taeric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If nobody is allowed to offer him work below a particular rate and nobody is willing to pay him at or above that rate, then he's effectively forbidden from working.

Or, if no company is willing to pay a living wage to accomplish a task, does it need to be done?

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#148

Post by RussianCow »

tdb7893 wrote: post #127
lend000 wrote: post #42

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…

A lot of my girlfriend's friends work at or near minimum wage because they just need any job and the fact that there is a minimum wage seems to save them from complete poverty (and it's not like they are trying to start a family or anything yet). I think that there is a optimal minumum wage (15$ seems too high for me) but it's hard for me to argue against it completely having seen the good it has done for people and…

Since we're throwing out anecdotes, I've talked to a few local business owners who are looking at layoffs in the near future as a result of a series of upcoming jumps in minimum wage, because they simply can't afford to pay 50% more (over the next 5 years) and keep the same number of employees. I also met an automation engineer whose business is booming because companies are investing heavily into robotics and other technologies as cheaper alternatives to human beings.

Neither of our anecdotes is particularly useful in this discussion, but the economics and data (as in the article) tend to suggest that having a high minimum wage is unsustainable.

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#149

Post by toxican »

dreta wrote: post #138
coldpie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, the minimum wage definitely benefits middle class teenagers on their first jobs (if they can get a job), and has questionable benefit for millennial humanities college grads who have yet to start a career. This is the problem. Everyone working 40 hours per week deserves a living wage, whether they're fresh out of high school or 8 years into a humanities degree. There's this weird sense out there…

>Everyone working 40 hours per week deserves a living wage (...) You can earn a living wage for 40 hours a week doing anything in the US. You just can't afford a new iPhone. All the minimum wage does is makes it impossible to employ low-skill workers. So while before the minimum wage you could make a living, now you either can't make a living or you're effectively in the lower middle class. Ask your dad or granddad w…

Then ask your dad or grandad to adjust for inflation, cost of living, decreased value of both highschool and college degrees, etc.

Re: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news

#150

Post by dahart »

> On the whole, the study estimates, the average low-wage worker in the city lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum.

This study seems interesting, and I'm open to the idea that this wage hike and it's effects could be an example of unintended consequences. But more than anything else in the article, the above quote rubs me the wrong way. Based only on what is reported in the article, this appears to be an abuse of statistics. They intentionally left out large employers, and are focusing on a narrowing wage range, so you can't say anything about the effect on the average low-wage worker. Not only that, it's a purely bimodal distribution. If what this study says is true, then there were no people who lost $125, there were people who gained some money, and people who lost jobs, and nothing in between. It's so misleading to cite an average.

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