View Poll Results: What is your position on the federal minimum wage?

Voters
22. You may not vote on this poll
  • Keep it as it is. No change needed.

    1 4.55%
  • Raise it to suggested $15 per hour.

    5 22.73%
  • Raise it to somewhere between $7.5 to $15 per hour.

    3 13.64%
  • Raise it to a point higher than $15 per hour.

    3 13.64%
  • Abolish it completely. Let the market decide.

    7 31.82%
  • Not sure.

    2 9.09%
  • Don't care.

    1 4.55%
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Thread: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

  1. #21

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    The market includes the customers. If the majority of the customers want people who do simple manual labor to be able to live with dignity they do make that desire manifest through politics. So, basically, having a minimum wage is what the market decides.

    Tell me about the time you felt that a retail worker deserved more than his wage so you paid more for a product that the sticker price and told him to pocket and keep the extra amount.

    Tell me about the time you stopped and told a ditch-digger that you appreciated his work but felt he was underpaid and thus you gave him some money.


    Your mentality does not entail some believing customers voluntarily giving workers extra money, it entails using political force and coercion to compel businesses to pay the workers higher wages, which are then ultimately passed on to ALL customers including those who do not share your views. It is an attempt to use politics to force your worldview on society.
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  2. #22
    Vanoi's Avatar Dux Limitis
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by ByzantinePowerGame View Post
    Tell me about the time you felt that a retail worker deserved more than his wage so you paid more for a product that the sticker price and told him to pocket and keep the extra amount.

    Tell me about the time you stopped and told a ditch-digger that you appreciated his work but felt he was underpaid and thus you gave him some money.
    You do know many retail stores already pay it's employees well above minimum wage and people still shop there?

  3. #23

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by ByzantinePowerGame View Post
    Tell me about the time you felt that a retail worker deserved more than his wage so you paid more for a product that the sticker price and told him to pocket and keep the extra amount.

    Tell me about the time you stopped and told a ditch-digger that you appreciated his work but felt he was underpaid and thus you gave him some money.

    Your mentality does not entail some believing customers voluntarily giving workers extra money, it entails using political force and coercion to compel businesses to pay the workers higher wages, which are then ultimately passed on to ALL customers including those who do not share your views. It is an attempt to use politics to force your worldview on society.
    As Gaidin rightfully pointed out, the difference between the minimum wage and the living wage is passed on to all tax payers in some shape or form. I do believe regardless of job people do they deserve to get a decent wage for it. My understanding of a decent wage is being able to afford basic commodities.

    In any case, effect of raising the minimum wage on prices is minimal.

    The Effects of Increasing the Minimum Wage on Prices: Analyzing the Incidence of Policy Design and Context
    There are several findings in this paper. First, the impact of minimum wage hikes on output prices (more precisely, on the FAFH CPI) is substantially smaller than previously reported. Whereas the commonly accepted elasticity of prices to minimum wage changes is 0.07, we find a value almost half of that, 0.036. Importantly, the value we found, 0.036, falls far short of what would be expected if low-wage labor markets are perfectly competitive. Second, increases in prices following minimum wage hikes generally occur in the month the minimum wage hike is implemented (and not in the month before or the month after). Previous research has reported notable increases in prices the month before and the month after, but we present evidence that such a finding was likely an artifact of interpolation.

    Third, the effects of federal, state, and city minimum wages on prices are not necessarily the same: the size of the effect, along with when the price effect occurs, can potentially change for these different types of minimum wage policies. Fourth, small minimum wage hikes do not lead to higher prices, and they might actually lead to lower prices. On the other hand, large minimum wage hikes have clear positive effects on output prices. Such a finding about the different effect of small and of large minimum wage hikes is consistent with the claim that lowwage labor markets are monopsonistically competitive. If such labor markets are indeed monopsonistically competitive, then small increases in minimum wages might lead to increased employment. Our study of restaurant pricing, then, indirectly addresses one of the more contentious issues associated with the employment impact of minimum wage hikes. Fifth, we find no evidence suggesting that exit of restaurants fleeing state minimum wage hikes is large enough to affect output prices.

    Finally, we find evidence that the particulars of a minimum wage policy (indexed, oneshot, scheduled) might affect how price changes occur within the relevant area. These results can be used to design future minimum wage policies that best temper the pass-through effect.
    If a company is raising prices extremely in face of a minimum wage increase its likely because the CEO is unwilling to let go a few million dollars of his or her bonus. So, you basically want to accommodate the CEO that will make more money by playing with stocks instead of letting workers have a decent wage that they will have no choice but to spend on much required goods and services.

    I, as the customer, am the market. The market is bound to do what I collectively demand it to do.
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  4. #24

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    As with any economic policy, there are winners and losers. The body of literature on the subject points consistently to negative effects of minimum wages on employment of less-skilled workers, especially teens and young adults. The reason the negative impact is thought to be stronger among those groups is they are the most likely to be directly impacted by a minimum wage increase.
    Overall, we conclude that the preferred estimates of authors of studies evaluating the employment effects of minimum wages in the United States, since the advent of the New Minimum Wage Research in 1992, paint a clear picture that is at odds with how this research is often summarized. In its totality, this body of evidence and conclusions points strongly toward negative effects of minimum wages on employment of less-skilled workers.

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...388/w28388.pdf
    We revisit the minimum wage-employment debate, which is as old as the Department of Labor. In particular, we assess new studies claiming that the standard panel data approach used in much of the “new minimum wage research” is flawed because it fails to account for spatial heterogeneity. These new studies use research designs intended to control for this heterogeneity and conclude that minimum wages in the United States have not reduced employment. We explore the ability of these research designs to isolate reliable identifying information and test the untested assumptions in this new research about the construction of better control groups. Our evidence points to serious problems with these research designs. Moreover, new evidence based on methods that let the data identify the appropriate control groups leads to stronger evidence of disemployment effects, with teen employment elasticities near -0.3. We conclude that the evidence still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others, and that policymakers need to bear this tradeoff in mind when making decisions about increasing the minimum wage.

    In addition, when the identifying variation they use is supported by the data, the evidence is consistent with past findings of disemployment effects. Moreover, when we let the data determine the appropriate control states to use for estimating the effects of state minimum wage increases in the CPS data, we find stronger evidence of disemployment effects, with teen employment elasticities near −0.3. The findings from similar analyses of restaurant employment in the QCEW data are a bit more mixed, but the weighted estimates again point to negative employment effects (with smaller elasticities of around −0.05). Thus, our analysis substantially undermines the strong conclusions that ADR and DLR draw – that there are “no detectable employment losses from the kind of minimum wage increases we have seen in the United States” (DLR, 2010, p. 962), and that “Interpretations of the quality and nature of the evidence in the existing minimum wage literature ..., must be revised substantially” (ADR, 2011, p. 238).

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...681/w18681.pdf
    What are some of these negative impacts?

    A - We find that increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers, and increases the likelihood that low- skilled workers in automatable jobs become nonemployed or employed in worse jobs.

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...667/w23667.pdf

    Not surprising but potentially impacts service industries employing a greater share of low wage and low skill workers


    B - Increases in the federal minimum wage worsen the financial health of small businesses in the affected states. Small, young, labor-intensive, minimum-wage sensitive establishments located in the states bound to the federal minimum wage and those located in competitive and low-income areas experience higher financial stress. Increases in the minimum wage also lead to lower bank credit, higher loan defaults, lower employment, a lower entry and a higher exit rate for small businesses.

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...523/w26523.pdf

    Again, not surprising, but does confirm the concerns of many policymakers who suggest increases in the minimum wage will disproportionately harm small businesses.

    C - The evidence indicates that even as individuals reach their late 20's, they work less and earn less the longer they were exposed to a higher minimum wage, especially as a teenager. The adverse longer-run effects of facing high minimum wages as a teenager are stronger for blacks.

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...043/w25043.pdf

    Also not surprising but it does seem to reinforce the idea that the negative impacts of minimum wage increases on low skill and low wage workers persist beyond the marginal cost.

    D - Using three separate state panels of administrative employment data, we find that the minimum wage reduces job growth over a period of several years. These effects are most pronounced for younger workers and in industries with a higher proportion of low-wage workers.

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...262/w19262.pdf

    More automation, harm to small businesses, less work for less pay over time, all hitting those at the bottom of the ladder hardest of all. If there were a cautionary tale to put in an economics presentation about unintended consequences, the minimum wage would be it.
    Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII

  5. #25

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Legio_Italica View Post


    More automation, harm to small businesses, less work for less pay over time, all hitting those at the bottom of the ladder hardest of all. If there were a cautionary tale to put in an economics presentation about unintended consequences, the minimum wage would be it.
    So are they running a crappy business model or are they morally bankrupt? Either way the taxpayers are stuck subsidizing them.
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  6. #26

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidin View Post
    So are they running a crappy business model or are they morally bankrupt? Either way the taxpayers are stuck subsidizing them.
    There’s little or no conclusive evidence that a higher minimum wage reduces participation in or spending on public programs.
    Their results suggest that, on net, minimum wage increases have little to no ameliorating effect on participation in (or spending on) a range of means-tested programs.
    For instance, the authors find that federal and state minimum wage increases have had no measurable impact on the use by working-age adults of SNAP, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. In some specifications, they find evidence of an increase in the use of free and reduced-price lunches (FRPL) and housing subsidies following minimum wage increases. The authors also examine net welfare caseloads and taxpayers’ expenditures on those programs. They find no statistically significant evidence that a higher minimum wage has reduced participation in or spending on public programs.

    These conclusions suggest that the conventional wisdom on minimum wage increases is wrong: The policy will have little impact on taxpayers, but the impact on less-skilled employees who lose their jobs may be severe.

    https://epionline.org/wp-content/upl...Study_V2-5.pdf
    There is consistently no evidence that the minimum wage reduces either simu- lated SNAP eligibility or participation at any time. This, combined with the fact that SNAP cuto↵s fall between 130% and 200% of the poverty line, suggests that families just below the threshold for SNAP eligibility may be above the income range that benefits most from minimum wage increases; and that these increases, although they boost income, do not do so to the point of lifting families out of SNAP eligibility.

    https://www.minneapolisfed.org/~/med...wage.pdf?la=en
    Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII

  7. #27

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Legio_Italica View Post
    There’s little or no conclusive evidence that a higher minimum wage reduces participation in or spending on public programs.
    So, food stamps and screw good pay?

    Mind you, companies will automate if it’s cheaper whether people can eat or not. If they can automate, and have the tech, they already have. You are making a good case for a higher minimum.
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  8. #28
    Kritias's Avatar Petite bourgeois
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    An interesting thread. I just have a few questions:

    a. Can someone please describe what is the main function of a wage?

    b. Contrasting the above, what is a living wage?

    c. Do you consider public spending (ie. development schemes, infrastructure initiatives etc) an integral part or a distortion of the market?

    d. Taking into account that businesses will seek out the cheapest available labour, is it or is it not the market's decision to close down factories and move them to China and India?
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  9. #29
    antaeus's Avatar Cool and normal
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Re: D, businesses will only be able to seek out the cheapest possible labor if there is a surplus of available workers for the given job.

  10. #30

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kritias View Post
    An interesting thread. I just have a few questions:

    a. Can someone please describe what is the main function of a wage?
    I'm going to pay you to clean my bathroom. A penny. That is your wage. No matter how long it takes you. That is your wage. Just a penny.

    b. Contrasting the above, what is a living wage?
    It took you 2 hours to clean my bathroom. In my state and city I would have to pay you $17.45 per hour before any taxes you pay for you to be able to live in any affable way. After taxes you may only walk home with $12.33 per hour, but for however long it takes you to clean my bathroom, per hour that is what I would pay you to make a livable wage.

    c. Do you consider public spending (ie. development schemes, infrastructure initiatives etc) an integral part or a distortion of the market?
    Well, let's just say if I only paid you minimum wage of 7.50, you might just have to live off food stamps. And I got no damn clue how you're going to pay your rent. You figure that out. That's not my business as the person paying you. Figure that out with your landlord. Or live on the street. (See how this works?)

    d. Taking into account that businesses will seek out the cheapest available labour, is it or is it not the market's decision to close down factories and move them to China and India?
    Cheapest available labor would be set by minimum wage. If you think you can hire someone thousands of miles away to magically fix your toilet...my god...tell me how. That magic...please...I need it. My sink keeps clogging.
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  11. #31
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Romania raised minimum wage 3 times in the past 4 years and each and every time the raise was accompanied by a across the board price hike for basic goods, which in the end led to a smaller purchasing power than before the raise. A raise is warranted but it should be done in such a manner that the purchasing power increases.
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  12. #32

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sir Adrian View Post
    Romania raised minimum wage 3 times in the past 4 years and each and every time the raise was accompanied by a across the board price hike for basic goods, which in the end led to a smaller purchasing power than before the raise. A raise is warranted but it should be done in such a manner that the purchasing power increases.
    Are you sure? Since Romania joined EU the minimum wage have been rising, yet the inflation have been falling down significantly to below 3%. Since you said in the last 4 years, In 2016, the minimum wage was 275 Euros, which rose to 445 Euros in 2019. That's a roughly 62% increase. Yet, the same period saw a total of about 8.5% inflation.
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  13. #33
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    You're looking at inflation overall, I'm talking about people on minimum wage and pensioner's purchasing powers. A kilogram of pork chops used to cost 12-13 lei before the pensions and minimum wage rise of 2018. In 2019 it cost 18 and change. A kilogram of flour used to cost 5,5 lei, now it's 8. A kilo of bread used to cost 5 lei, not it's 8,5. And the examples are numerous.

    In fact, now that you mention it here is chart showing purchasing power over the last few years. Notice the massive drop in 2016 caused by price increases in 2015 triggered by lowered vat and minimum wage raises. Also notice how the purchasing power stays roughly the same despite the 65% increase in minimum wage. In fact things got so bad in 2015 and 2016 that the government had to announce fines for supermarkets that did increase the prices, and "we won't increase prices this time" (his time being the may 2015 lowering of vat for basic necessity goods, also caused by the 2015 increase in minimum wage) actually became a marketing slogan for Auchan, Carrefour, et al.

    And speaking of inflation, inflation for 2018 was 4,5%, again mostly caused by price increases for basic good. The 4,5% inflation actually canceled both the minimum wage rise and the pension increase across the board. And the same thing happened in 2019. Minimum wage increase on the 1st of January, rampant inflation in the first two trimesters that canceled the increase.

    Yes, minimum wage should be livable, but just giving people a wad of cash does not help them. You need to make sure that the extra money is translated into increased standards of living not just increased profits for retailers.
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  14. #34

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sir Adrian View Post
    You're looking at inflation overall, I'm talking about people on minimum wage and pensioner's purchasing powers. A kilogram of pork chops used to cost 12-13 lei before the pensions and minimum wage rise of 2018. In 2019 it cost 18 and change. A kilogram of flour used to cost 5,5 lei, now it's 8. A kilo of bread used to cost 5 lei, not it's 8,5. And the examples are numerous.

    In fact, now that you mention it here is chart showing purchasing power over the last few years. Notice the massive drop in 2016 caused by price increases in 2015 triggered by lowered vat and minimum wage raises. Also notice how the purchasing power stays roughly the same despite the 65% increase in minimum wage. In fact things got so bad in 2015 and 2016 that the government had to announce fines for supermarkets that did increase the prices, and "we won't increase prices this time" (his time being the may 2015 lowering of vat for basic necessity goods, also caused by the 2015 increase in minimum wage) actually became a marketing slogan for Auchan, Carrefour, et al.

    And speaking of inflation, inflation for 2018 was 4,5%, again mostly caused by price increases for basic good. The 4,5% inflation actually canceled both the minimum wage rise and the pension increase across the board. And the same thing happened in 2019. Minimum wage increase on the 1st of January, rampant inflation in the first two trimesters that canceled the increase.

    Yes, minimum wage should be livable, but just giving people a wad of cash does not help them. You need to make sure that the extra money is translated into increased standards of living not just increased profits for retailers.
    I'm not sure how a 0.1 drop, a roughly 6% drop is a massive drop. Otherwise, the Romanian purchasing power is skyrocketing after 1996 till 2008. Within that same period, minimum wage skyrocketed in a similar fashion. There is clearly many different factors in play. However, if minimum wage is such a deal breaker we'd see a different scenario play out there. In reality, purchasing power parity, PPP, is more of a reflection of a country's production capabilities, capacity and competitiveness then it's about actual price of goods.

    The same source has a chart for consumer price index as well. We see that between 2016 and 2019, the index rose by about 10% when minimum wages rose by 62%.
    Last edited by PointOfViewGun; March 02, 2021 at 07:56 AM.
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  15. #35
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Actually it's -3,97%, but that's as an average for the entire country. Imagine the actual drop for the people who live on minimum wage if, they were able to bring down the value for everyone. As for 1996, ba example. Between 1996 and 2002 prices for basic necessity foods were doubling or tripling from January till December. My father earned 1,5 million lei in December 2000 and 4 million lei in December 2004, and it was worth roughly the same amount of money.

    Prior to 2005 salaries were not rising because it was government policy to raise them, but because the currency was collapsing.
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  16. #36
    Kritias's Avatar Petite bourgeois
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    @Gaidin & @Antaeus,

    Well, in my understanding, the main function of a wage is to compensate the worker for the time and effort they spent doing job x. The more probable the worker could be doing something else than job x, the higher the wage ought (this isn't the case for the 99.9%) to be to entice them to do it. When the government gets involved (or when it stands by doing nothing) and allows areas to under-develop, the political economy creates areas in a country where no other jobs are available. As a result, wages can get worse and worse through the dilemma of low-skill, low pay work or unemployment.

    However, the real main function of the wage was always to compensate the worker enough to feed themselves, cloth themselves and rest themselves so they could return to the workplace the next day. This is usually called reproduction of labour. A living wage, which is what you're asking for, is just that bare minimum - taking into account that most Americans need to work two or even three jobs just to scratch at a living. What you're basically asking is this:

    "Please, let us survive with the two or three jobs we already work."

    My question is: Why would you even be asking that?!
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  17. #37

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by alhoon View Post
    Some good points here. I like the argument of "if the business owner doesn't pay a living wage, the taxpayers do".

    However, the OP says that minimum wage was increased by ~15% in 2009. What happened to prices around the USA after that? My main issue with raising the minimum wage is that it may simply drive prices higher. I.e. if everyone's wage jumps by 20%, it may be that basic foodstuff, low-rent, utilities and other basic expenses would increase by 20% in a couple of years.
    Is that the case? Or not?
    It's not. The idea that minimum wage increases inflation is a myth.

    "Only 22% of the time (twice) has an increase of the minimum wage corresponded with an increase to the inflation rate. On the other hand, 78% of time that there was a minimum wage increase since 1980, there hasn’t been an increase to the annual inflation rate. If raising the minimum wage was going to cause inflation, it would’ve increased — but it didn’t, and doesn’t. It’s a historical reality that can be proven when you look at the the minimum wage increases versus historical inflation rates."
    https://discomfiting.medium.com/debunking-if-you-raise-the-minimum-wage-it-will-cause-inflation-c0db32f579f8

    The other common myth is that it causes job loss which is another myth of the right-wing
    "A series of rigorous studies by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, significantly advanced the research on minimum wage employment effects. Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders compared all neighboring counties in the U.S. located on different sides of a state border with different minimum wage levels between 1990 and 2006 and found no adverse employment effects from higher minimum wages.The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment’s Spacial Heterogeneity and Minimum Wages: Employment Estimates for Teens Using Cross-State Commuting Zones found “no discernable disemployment effect, even when minimum wage increases lead to relatively large wage changes.” Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? analyzed the 1990-2009 period (an earlier version analyzed 1990-2007). Carefully controlling for more factors than previous minimum wage studies, the researchers found the answer is no."
    https://www.businessforafairminimumw...cause-job-loss

    "


    • Empirical evidence to date clearly indicates small employment effects of past minimum wage increases, though there is no consensus whether the impact has been a small negative or a small positive effect (see here for a review). Earlier statistical studies found that minimum wage increases were associated with decreases in employment, but have been criticized for failing to take into account the tendency for the minimum wage to be raised in states and localities that would have had declining employment in low-wage jobs in any case. More recent studies that account for these differences in employment trends across regions, including a study coauthored by one of us, have not found that minimum wage increases substantially reduced employment. However, all of these studies considered smaller minimum wage increases than would be involved in a $15 federal minimum wage. Credible data to study effects at $15 in today’s dollars are only beginning to become available."
    • Recent research has shown that minimum wages are also effective in improving a broad range of other important outcomes, including for the children of minimum wage workers. These include the ability to acquire a used car, reducing the cost of consumer credit, reducing poverty, reducing employee turnover, improving worker productivity and reducing reliance on public safety net programs, such as food stamps. They also lead to improved infant health outcomes and improved adult mental health. Moreover, the households of minimum wage workers have a high propensity to spend any additional income, thus raising demand for goods and services and stimulating the local and national economy."
    • https://econofact.org/do-minimum-wages-really-kill-jobs

    So there really is no economic evidence that supports a view that minimum wage increases are bad. Back in the 1990s I used to buy into that myth myself but after reading research over the years, its clear that a minimum wage increase leads to a far more benefits than any negatives.
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  18. #38

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    The idea that the minimum wage’s negative employment effects are a partisan myth is itself completely untrue. Per the research I cited earlier, the idea that “new” research has substantively challenged the consensus surrounding these negative impacts is mostly false and, in the selected cases that do show no negative impacts, the methodology is often flawed.

    For example, a review of these counter factual findings claiming no negative impact shows the latter use arbitrary and exclusive spatial or demographic controls that produce misleading results, and these controls, which exclude and obscure the full picture, are not supported by the data:
    Given the ongoing ebb and flow of this debate, it would have been shortsighted to think that the 2008 book that two of us wrote (Neumark and Wascher, 2008), despite surveying a massive amount of evidence, would have settled the issue. And indeed it has not. In particular, echoing long-standing concerns in the minimum wage literature, Dube et al. (2010) and Allegretto et al. (2011) attempt to construct better counterfactuals for estimating how minimum wages affect employment. When they narrow the source of identifying variation – looking either at deviations around state-specific linear trends or at within-region or within-county-pair variation – they find no effects of minimum wages on employment, rather than negative effects. Based on this evidence, they argue that the negative employment effects for low-skilled workers found in the literature are spurious, and generated by other differences across geographic areas that were not adequately controlled for by researchers.

    The analysis in this paper, however, provides compelling evidence that their methods are flawed and lead to incorrect conclusions. In particular, the methods advocated in these studies do not isolate more reliable identifying information (i.e., a better counterfactual). In one case – the issue of state- specific trends – we explicitly demonstrate the problem with their methods and show how more appropriate ways of controlling for unobserved trends that affect teen employment lead to evidence of disemployment effects similar to that reported in past studies. In the other case – identifying minimum wage effects from the variation within Census divisions or, even more narrowly, within contiguous cross- border county pairs – we show that the exclusion of other regions or counties as potential controls is not supported by the data.

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...681/w18681.pdf
    Moreover, the very connotations of “new minimum wage research” misconstrue the consensus borne out by the latter, which is basically the same as the “old:”
    Overall, we conclude that the preferred estimates of authors of studies evaluating the employment effects of minimum wages in the United States, since the advent of the New Minimum Wage Research in 1992, paint a clear picture that is at odds with how this research is often summarized. In its totality, this body of evidence and conclusions points strongly toward negative effects of minimum wages on employment of less-skilled workers.

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...388/w28388.pdf
    Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII

  19. #39
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    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by chilon View Post
    It's not. The idea that minimum wage increases inflation is a myth.
    And yet it has happened in Europe several times.
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  20. #40

    Default Re: Minimum Wage - Living Wage - What Wage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kritias View Post
    An interesting thread. I just have a few questions:

    a. Can someone please describe what is the main function of a wage?

    b. Contrasting the above, what is a living wage?

    c. Do you consider public spending (ie. development schemes, infrastructure initiatives etc) an integral part or a distortion of the market?

    d. Taking into account that businesses will seek out the cheapest available labour, is it or is it not the market's decision to close down factories and move them to China and India?



    I consider all public spending to be a recipe for a market distortion.


    A factory-owner is free to move a factory to India or China. However, the consumers are free to say they will not buy cheaply made junk from China and the national government is free to assure crucial national defense technology is not developed in the USA and then taken overseas to current, likely, or potential enemies.
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