California poised to raise minimum wage to $10 • Hacker News Board

Re: California poised to raise minimum wage to $10

#61

Post by panarky » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #13

I'd really like to see an experiment conducted that can put the whole debate to rest: raise the minimum wage in half of the states, lower it in the other half. Run this experiment for three years and compare the results, and apply the strategy with the best outcome to the rest of the country.

This is exactly what the cited research in the original post did.

It looked at contiguous US states, where one raised the minimum wage and one did not. It measured the gain or loss in jobs with all these "natural experiments".

This study found minimal effects on employment when comparing the states that raised minimum wages against those that did not.

Re: California poised to raise minimum wage to $10

#62

Post by elnate » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

elnate wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article says 90% are over 20.

So everyone who claims teenagers are the ones who are going to lose their jobs are very, very wrong. Good to know.

Some might, but it's only part of the picture. There are solutions to that as well such as a youth wage.

Re: California poised to raise minimum wage to $10

#63

Post by alexqgb » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 2:53 AM UTC

forgingahead wrote: post #25

mikeyouse wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this.. Is the theory here that companies have $X in a bucket to pay staff, Employees each make $Y, so X/Y is the number of employees? Because that's not how it happens at all. Companies don't hire more staff than they require. If McDonalds needs 10 employees per shift to operate, they're going to hire 10 per shift no matter if they cost $8/hr or $16/hr. The amount of work determines the number of employee…

The general principle is that an employee has to cost less than the money they bring in. The best HN-related example is that if you work for a software development firm, and if they bill you out to clients at $100 an hour, your total cost to them (your hourly wage + taxes + healthcare + benefits + extra) has to be less than $100. To properly phrase your example, yes it is depend on "work", but work is dependent on re…

This is really bad analysis, not least of all because it excludes the glaringly obvious option of simply accepting tighter margins of profit and lower executive-level pay.

If you want an intelligent, fair-minded, and properly-researched account of economics at McDonald's see here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/mcdonald-s-8-25-man...

Re: California poised to raise minimum wage to $10

#64

Post by yetanotherphd » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 7:54 PM UTC

moocowduckquack wrote: post #52

yetanotherphd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was no welfare, and no tax system, then introducing a minimum wage would probably be a net improvement. However, taxes and welfare already address the issue of hungry people (I don't particularly care how angry a person is). My problem is not with the goal of redistributing wealth, but with the minimum wage as a way to do this. Since the tax authorities already know the figure that we are really interested i…

If we had good universal welfare that did not depend on income, then having no minimum wage is politically fairly neutral. However when you have a situation where welfare is divisive and intrusive on the individual, then being able to leave welfare through employment is socially important. And it really does matter how angry the hungry person is, at least if you want to stay in government.

While there is some truth to what you say, I would point out that (A) a person making $9 a year would still be paying around $900 federal tax, and (B) my understanding is that TANF is not especially intrusive (not sure what you mean by divisive).

I still don't understand the logic of "X will make people angry so you shouldn't do X". Since I already care about how well off poor people are, why should I care about what makes people angry directly. While the government needs votes to stay in power, that doesn't change what in theory is the best policy, it just restricts the set of policies that we can choose from. While increasing welfare and decreasing tax on the poor, while (possibly) removing the minimum wage, might make some people angry, I don't see why this makes it a bad policy.

Re: California poised to raise minimum wage to $10

#65

Post by cortesoft » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 12:08 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #54

cortesoft wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earned income tax credit is amazing. It is one of the few government initiatives that is an unquestionable success. It is such a good way to redistribute wealth without creating the negative incentives of welfare and the like.

> Earned income tax credit is amazing. It is one of the few government initiatives that is an unquestionable success. It is such a good way to redistribute wealth without creating the negative incentives of welfare and the like. EITC, because of the phase out, has the same negative incentives as any other means-tested social benefit program which has a benefit reduction at less than a 1:1 level for additional income.…

Maybe I was mislead, but I thought that the EITC amount actually INCREASED (up to a point) as you made more money.

This makes it seem like there isn't a negative incentive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit