Hope no middle got excluded there.
Just typical SHODAN logic.
Cite on this?
Most of the NBER working papers I have perused on the minimum wage show minimal impact, except in the service arena. Most entry-level jobs pay more than the minimum wage.
One interesting piece did show that if you raise the wage, you run the risk of more over qualified individuals taking the lower level jobs now that you have hit their reservation price. This in turn knocks out some lesser skilled individuals from the jobs they would have received at the lower wage rate.
I have not seen an article showing that raising the minimum wage actually CREATES jobs - usually it is fight to see how many jobs might have been destroyed instead due to the basic shift of P on the curve.
It doesn’t mean anything of the sort. I started off by merely responding to your initial question: “An attempt at a serious question (tho it likely will either be ignored, or assumed to be “leftist claptrap”, as has already happened to me in this thread): why is government “meddling” so odious, but private enterprise meddling in your lives is something to be proud of?” I then expanded on my answer when you expanded on your question: “You check Company A, but find that they’ve sold most of their decent-paying jobs overseas-nothing there. Likewise you check out Companies B, C & D-nope, nothing there too. Meanwhile you read about the huge severance bonuses that several high-ranking officials in these companies have gotten, money that could have been used to pay your salary, if they had so chosen. The businesses in question have managed to control your life in a way no less pernicious than government might have-do you acknowledge this at this point, or continue pointing fingers at Washington and blaming them 100% for this state of affairs?”
In response to that sort of reasoning, I wanted to emphasize that I don’t see what such businesses do as Meddling In My Life or Controlling My Life or whatever; like you, they’re just making offers I can accept or reject – and I don’t see that I should blame either you or them for making any such offers.
Now, since you’d offered up that hypothetical, I decided to then add in a hypothetical in which a potential employer makes a good offer – with the added wrinkle that, as it happens, that hypothetical is my actual situation. But that’s, like, secondary, y’know? Flip it around, if you prefer; imagine for a second that I kicked things off with a rosy hypothetical about potential employers making desirable offers, and you replied by asking us to simultaneously consider a hypothetical where no companies want to hire you – and added that, as it happens, no one does.
I wasn’t trying to piggyback an anecdote into data; I just wanted to balance a hypothetical with a hypothetical, and used the anecdote to do it, is all.
If “our society depends on” those “necessary tasks”, then we should pay accordingly. That said, Algher largely beat me to it on this one; plenty of teens flip burgers and mop floors and dig ditches before moving on to other stuff; at the risk of incurring your wrath via anecdote, I’ll quickly mention that I likewise did that stuff in my youth.
Dang it, Algher largely beat me to it on this one as well.
Still, though, I take some issue with the way you phrase it: “the profit motive is a horrible thing on which to run a society,” you say. I prefer to enshrine consent, such that folks can dedicate themselves to whatever ideal they prize. I want you to be free to pursue your goal whether you’re motivated by profit or compassion, so long as you do so by engaging in voluntary transactions. At the very least, I want to shift the language from Social Darwinism to Enlightened Self-Interest – but I’d like to get past that to really concentrate on, um, The Moral Magic Of Consent, or something.
If you have to ask, then you know nothing about the minimum wage literature.
Every economist who studies the impact of minimum wages, and who was still alive in 1994, is familiar with the Card-Krueger series of papers. I suggest that if you are interested in an informed discussion of the impact of minimum wages, you become familiar with these papers also.
ETA: Read thissummary.
If you have to snark in response to an honest request for data, you hurt your own argument and come across as a pretentious asshole.
Thanks, however, for the cite - regardless of how offered. I last formally studied economics back before Card and Krueger did their work, so I was actually interested in the literature - hence my request.
I suggest that if you are interested in an informed discussion of anything, you take your attitude and tone it down a notch in this forum and save the attitude for the pit.
I apologize for the snark.
I do, however, note what an amazing coincidence it is that so many conservatives who claim to be interested in economics all managed to stop reading the minimum wage literature just about 20 years ago. If they were just a *leeeeetlle *more current in their reading they might run into something that would contradict their worldview.
Should we update the chapter on minimum wages in the “Basic Economics” textbook that they all seem to have read?
That is an interesting summary, especially in light of your claim that there was “strong evidence that minimum wage increases can create jobs”.
Emphasis added.
Regards,
Shodan
ETA: Removed snark
You shouldn’t have stopped reading there. If you’d have kept reading you would have seen the following:
Some other quotes which you neglected to add to your post:
But hey, tell you what: You disagree with my claims that minimum wage increases can create jobs, and instead seem to be taking the position that minimum wage increases don’t lower employment at all, just make the lives of minimum wage workers better? OK, you win.
Is this what you meant by “strong evidence”? Correlation is not causation, as I am sure you would agree. What I would like to see are some studies that the increased minimum wage caused the job increase.
Actually I would prefer if you left the goal posts where they are.
You claimed that there was “strong evidence that minimum wage increases can create jobs”, based on “on the Card-Krueger series of papers.” Now it appears that the Card-Krueger papers don’t say that at all. And your other studies aren’t particularly strong.
I wouldn’t be rewriting any text books just yet.
Regards,
Shodan
A debate has two sides, let’s make sure we both know where both our goal posts are: are you arguing the case that the best scientific evidence is that raising minimum wages doesn’t increase unemployment, and that the evidence that raising the minimum wage can create jobs doesn’t rise to the level of “strong”?
You made a claim. I have not seen any of the strong evidence you claim is there. Your assertion about what the Card-Krueger papers showed doesn’t seem to be factual, so I am reluctant to take your word for it.
Regards,
Shodan
You seem uncomfortable taking a stand here. That’s OK, I think we’re in agreement anyway; upon reviewing the papers, I agree with you that the Card & Kreueger studies show that increasing minimum wages has no statistically significant impact on unemployment (up or down).
So, now that we’ve got that out of the way; minimum wage increases–for or against?
Obviously against.
It prevents a voluntary transaction from occurring between consenting parties in the marketplace. It is devoid of negative externalities. Therefore it must destroy value.
An increase in minimum wage? Definitely against. It causes all sorts of distortions in the labor market, as well as price distortions for the goods and services being processed by the intended audience. Making an extra dollar or two an hour won’t be helpful if across the board prices rise on all goods and services from companies who employ minimum wage workers and who will be effected by such an increase. It also won’t help if companies cut workers they feel they can no longer afford to keep on because they now have to pay them several more dollars an hour. Finally, it makes for bad feelings for employees who have been working somewhere and who came in at a lower minimum wage, got a few raises and now are going to be making the same as the new fish coming in simply because the government decided to wave it’s magic fiat stick and give these new folks a raise. It’s happened to me several times in my misspent youth when minimum wage increases were put in, and would happen again unless the companies in quest also increased the wages of all their low wage employees to compensate.
If you are trying to help the poor, then I’d prefer not using these funky back door tactics and simply help them through programs that directly address their issues using general taxes. To me that would be a better solution than this convoluted and distortive method of having everyone pay an under the table ‘tax’ on every good and service that is serviced or produced by low wage workers.
-XT
Excellent - it takes a big man to admit when he has made a false statement.
Against. For many of the reasons **IdahoMauleMan **states.
And, to forestall the next round of equivocation, is it your position that increases in the minimum wage will have no effect on employment no matter what?
Because I think that is a problematic position.
Regards,
Shodan
More fun anecdotes, I realize, but for some reason all the right-wing members of my family (in-laws mostly) are also the ones who either work for the State (ex-farm families mostly, now maintaining rural roads or working at the State Home) or are on benefits of some sort. One complained to me about “lazy people on benefits” at the same time she was applying for WIC support (which didn’t count because she didn’t want to be on benefits) and another complained that Obamacare has going to bankrupt the country and wanted to get rid of it - because it made it harder to get free medication.
In a certain subset of GOP voters, a reality disconnect is required.
Maybe not, if we’re willing to look at what makes so many modern workplaces such hellholes.
Hint: let’s not look simply at economic conditions and give up - let’s look at our assumptions about economic conditions and how we must supervise, work, hire/fire, get along/not get along.
Not a project any economist or management analyst wants to take on; they’d need to cooperate with sociologists and nasty touchy-feely-non-quantitative types like that. Those lines of collaboration were chopped decades ago.
The debate about the minimum wage seems to be a red herring. My contention is that companies have always trended towards reducing the amount of labor to the absolute minimum no matter what the practical or statutory minimum wage happens to be. If the minimum wage were eliminated tomorrow, does anyone believe that companies would race to hire more workers and replace the automated systems that they have installed to minimize their number of employees?