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The Center for American Progress reports:
Think a higher minimum wage is a job killer? Think again: The states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have seen higher employment growth since then than the states that kept theirs at the same rate.
The minimum wage went up in 13 states Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington either thanks to automatic increases in line with inflation or new legislation, as Ben Wolcott reports in his analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is 0.99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is 0.68 percent.
Digging deeper, all but one of those states are experiencing increases in employment, and nine of them have seen growth above the median rate.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 04 2014, @09:13PM
And if people are so koch-sure about testing assertions, I propose we lower the minimum wage to 0 dollars and see how long it takes for everyone to work part time at Walmart.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday July 05 2014, @12:52AM
I'm up for that. It's worth noting that modern economies (with a middle class and all that) precede minimum wage. For example, the US didn't implement minimum wage laws until 1938 [wikipedia.org]. Also according to the same page, there are nine EU countries that don't have minimum wage laws.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday July 05 2014, @06:24AM
But did you miss my posited outcome? Not that everyone would be unemployed (that was frojack with the $150 minimum wage), but that everyone would be working for Walmart at a non-subsistence wage: in other words, society at large would be subsidizing low wages with government provided nutrition programs, health services, and all the rest. But your point is well taken. Minimum wages are not always required, and especially not in civilized countries where such things as the moral necessity of a living do not have to be explicitly laid out. Only in extreme situations, such as the Great Depression (or now!), where immoral employers could get people to work for less than subsistence, does the government, as the conscience of the society at large, have to step in a restrain those bastard slavers. But this is only an ideologically informed speculation, right? Like the one where increasing the minimum wage will reduce employment? Or the one where cutting taxes on the most wealthy will actually increase economic activity and thereby raise tax revenues, just like in Kansas. (And of course, the problem with non-subsistence wages that are not subsidized by the government: your employees tend to die. Even slavers are not that stupid. )
(Score: 2) by khallow on Sunday July 06 2014, @12:27AM
I didn't think it relevant (particularly since that wasn't part of the thread scope). But since you mention that, I think that idea is naive and unrealistic. There are a bunch of people who presently are not worth employing at minimum wage. This shows up, for example, as overly large unemployment rates among young people and minorities (particularly, when one is a member of both groups). Raising minimum wage increases the sizes of these groups which are not worth employing.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday July 06 2014, @01:15AM
Thread kind of went off track, which was my point. And my point about the thread going off point was that there is a lot of ideology parading around as economic theory and common sense. How do you know that there are people not worth minimum wage? If that were true, and there was some posited relation between wages and worth, then necessarily would raising the minimum wage have the effect your deduce, just as raising the minimum wage would, per the theory, decrease the number of employed persons. But that is the point, true in theory, absolutely no evidence in reality. Look up Milton Friedman on the F-twist in economic research. Reality may not be the reality some think it is.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Sunday July 06 2014, @03:51AM
Stuff like this [cepr.net]. Just under half of young African Americans are employed according to that link. Similarly, this link cites similar results [cnsnews.com].
And I say we're seeing that.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday July 06 2014, @09:07AM
Oh, excuse me! What I took to be ignorance of economics and scientific method appears to be something much more difficult to reason a person out of.
You can say that, but the original article was arguing the exact opposite, that raising the minimum increases the number of employed persons, and that theoretical explanation of the observable data is just as valid as yours. Once again, results that confirm your biases are not scientific evidence. I am not saying you are wrong, just that you ain't right but there is no way for you to ever see that. You see, if you respond again, you will just be confirming my assumptions about you. Which means that I know you will. Please prove me wrong?
(Score: 2) by khallow on Sunday July 06 2014, @02:09PM
Their data doesn't confirm their conclusions. For example, there was an obvious difference [soylentnews.org] in employment growth between the 4 states that had impromptu increases in minimum wage in 2013 and the 9 states that had predictable inflation-adjustment increases in minimum wage. This difference was significantly larger than the difference between states which had increased minimum wage and those that didn't. The 4 states with impromptu increases actually fared worse, for what that's worth, than the states which had no change in minimum wage.
Second, their data is very limited. Choosing a particular 10 month span in which to study this problem is very susceptible to cherry picking of data. While the increased levels of unemployment among young adults and minorities spans a significantly larger period of time.
Third, they don't have a model for why this works. It's just magic thinking without a basis for why anything should work the way they want it to. OTOH, supply and demand provides a simple model which explains why raising the minimum wage results in a drop in demand for labor at that level. For example, it's not worth paying someone $8 per hour to do a job which delivers $7 per hour. That simple model also explains why the developing world with its large supply of cheap labor is getting most of the new jobs in the world.
There's also secondary effects. If you're not worth employing at minimum wage, then how are you going to get the sort of job experience and such required in order to be worth more? At least in the absence of a minimum wage, you can work for less in order to get valuable job experience and demonstrate that you can hold down a job. That's appealing to employers at that level of the economy who will pay more for someone who can show that they're a good worker than someone who is a complete unknown, perhaps with a criminal record or other negative parts of their lives.
Sure, there is. Rational argument. Dumping a bunch of dogma as fact doesn't convince anyone who wasn't already convinced.
And innuendo too. I cited evidence of groups that face considerably higher levels of unemployment than the general population. What they have in common is factors that are effected by minimum wage laws. If I'm considering an ex-felon or a young adult with no job record for employment at a minimum wage job, then I take less risk, if the minimum wage is lower than if it is higher.