States That Raised Minimum Wage See No Slow-Down In Job Growth 778
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Department of Labor has released data that some proponents of raising minimum wage are touting as evidence that higher minimum wage promotes job growth. While the data doesn't actually establish cause and effect, it does "run counter to a Congressional Budget Office report in February that said raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, as the White House supports, would cost 500,000 jobs." The data shows that the 13 states that raised their minimum wages in January added jobs at a faster rate than those that didn't. Other factors likely contributed to this outcome, but some economists are simply relieved that the higher wage factor didn't have a dramatically negative effect in general.
Local testing works? (Score:4, Insightful)
So the federal government staying out of the way lets local laws be different and we can see if the changes are good or not? Then people can go to where the laws are how they like them instead of having bad ones forced on them at a federal level.
Its almost as if the whole system was set up like this so only the obvious non-controversial laws should be at the federal level and everything else should be local.
Screw that, its too hard to force your views on others in every location, they should just force eveything on a federal level without Congress so those people who don't agree with me don't get a say.
Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Economic activity is increased by more people having more money to spend ?
Inconceivable !
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
That is because the additional money goes back into the local economy and not into an offshore account.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Short-Lived? (Score:3, Insightful)
People don't need more motivation to get jobs, they need available jobs.
Was there really an increase? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nine of the 13 states increased their minimum wages automatically in line with inflation
In other words, in most states there was no increase. The minimum wage wage boost followed the economic growth.
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Inconceivable.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Short-Lived? (Score:3, Insightful)
The data shows that the 13 states that raised their minimum wages in January added jobs at a faster rate than those that didn't
Did the study account for the fact that those states already were adding jobs faster than the other states? It appears not. Drawing conclusions without historical context is a common stupidity these days.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:1, Insightful)
Libertardian: n. 1. An anarchist who wants to do away with government, but expects police protection from his slaves, judicial enforcement of contract law, and the free and unfettered use of a modern and magically maintained infrastructure. 2. Someone blithely unaware of the consequences and logical inconsistencies of the nonsense they're babbling.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crazy (Score:2, Insightful)
Nonsense and propaganda. You cannot state anything until those increases actually kick in and are in effect for some time. About 5% of workers are on minimum wage in the first place, out of those 5%, some will not be rehired, and once the wage is in effect fewer new businesses will be created. The money will come from somewhere, higher consumer prices and fewer minimum wage jobs. Fewer minimum wage jobs does not mean "people will have more money to spend" but it will slow down growth of new positions.
Minimum wage is actually minimum ability. It cannot extract non-existing money from small business, but it can prevent people with abilities that are below minimum wage from finding jobs. Large business will transfer costs to the consumers, higher prices will leave you with less money to spend, not more. Small business will cut employment, will hire fewer people. Government stats are manipulated in every category, this is not an exception, best case scenario this is premature.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
Show me an area with a high minimum wage and I'll show you an area with a large illegal labor force making less.
I travel all around the country and that's a very constant result. If you want to increase wages then 1) invest in education, and 2) change Free Trade to Fair Trade.
Actually, why don't you show us? Give us the stats, man, or you're just one more trickle downer refusing to accept the idea that people who make some money, spend some money.
Re:10.10 per hour (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not supporting a hand out as much as a hand up, but if a person shows up to work everyday and does the job well enough to keep it,
he or she shouldn't have to apply for assistance to enjoy the basics of survival.
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense and propaganda. You cannot state anything until those increases actually kick in and are in effect for some time.
Actually I feel pretty confident stating that if more people have more money, economic activity will increase.
Minimum wage is actually minimum ability.
No, minimum wage is setting a floor on living standards.
It cannot extract non-existing money from small business, but it can prevent people with abilities that are below minimum wage from finding jobs.
If a business can't employ someone for minimum wage, then their business model is broken. They are basically saying that their product or service is of such little value, that people will not pay enough for it such that the workers involved in delivering that product or service can live a bare existence lifestyle.
Re:Short-Lived? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Local testing works? (Score:2, Insightful)
Conservatives everywhere deplore the brain-drain and family disruption that comes with people migrating away from an area for better work elsewhere.
Conservatives certainly emphasize the importance of a stable family and decry the attempt to replace parents with govt programs, but I've never heard any conservative object ideologically about moving one's family to take a better job. Dislocations are part of economic freedom.
there's a general expectation that things work more or less the same everywhere.
No, there isn't. One of the first questions a person asks when considering a move to a different state is whether or not the state has an income tax.
Sure, there are still some cultural differences between large regions, but the US isn't 13 distinct colonies any more.
I guess you're not a Texan who has tried to buy a handgun after moving to New York or a San Franciscoan who has tried to buy a gimp suit locally after moving to Alabama are you?
If the American Revolution happened today in our hyper-connected world, there definitely wouldn't be the same call for devolution and autonomy as in the days of the Founding Fathers.
The FFs designed our system to allow state and local govt to handle most matters because they recognized that local govt was move responsive and accountable and, thus, more likely to govern more justly than a distant and alien central govt. The federal govt was entrusted to handle only those small number of duties for which a central govt is best suited such as maintaining a common currency and national defense. The logic of this has not changed since the country's founding and so your statement is false. The wisdom of the FFs can be seen today in the way that the fed govt ignores the will of the American People while imposing itself ever more deeply into people's lives.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
A strict libertarian would expect infrastructure to be paid for by user fees.
Which is what we call TAXES. That's why the GP is right to call it a fantasy. It is a fantasy to think individual user fees would be an efficient way of paying for widely used necessities.
a libertarian would be extremely opposed to slavery.
Libertarians that oppose the notion of a fair minimum wage is using slavery.
I used to be very libertarian. I'm not anymore because a healthy libertarian society requires people to be intelligent and rational,
And intelligent and rationality requires education on mass, which libertarians also don't want to pay for, making libertarianism a self-defeating system.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem thoroughly confused. You talk about an industry of illegals and then suggest we look at those legally here on H2B visas as an example.
Are you suggesting that there's a huge amount of US workers just waiting to pick fruit and plant pine trees? And the only thing holding them back is that the minimum wage is too high?
Re:Local testing works? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no idea how you came up with the number 80% of Wal-Mart employees are on government assistance, but a report Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story, by Jason Furman - Obama's own advisor, states that the number of employees on public assistance is "in line" with other companies of its size.
During the depression there was a continual migration of low-income workers as they looked for work. My grandfather in any given week was a hard-laborer, shoe repairman, piano tuner, and musician at night traveling around the Midwest, gone for weeks at a time. He'd go where he could find work. Choosing to live in places with insane home prices or property / sales taxes when you're out of work should be motivation to relocate to a place that can support you and work is plentiful.
As an aside, there's plenty of above-minimum-wage jobs out there if you know where to look. The mikeroweWORKS foundation is a wonderful organization that promotes scholarships and training for those willing to work in skilled trades that are hurting for people.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:4, Insightful)
in their [conservative] "we will only be wealthy when you are as poor as possible" outlook,
The idea that economics is a zero sum game where one person can only get rich if they make others poor is a Marxist viewpoint, not a conservative viewpoint. Economic conservatives recognize that the surest way to increase the wealth of as many individuals as possible is to promote wealth creation by maximizing economic freedom through low taxes, low regulation and strong protection of private property rights.
Why would you accuse conservatives of having Marxist economic views?
giving any employee any raise immediately causes the economy to fail,
Conservatives don't oppose giving employees raises. They oppose govt mandates that force businesses to pay employees above labor market rates.
and causes employers to throuw up their hands in defeat, and close their food stand, and we all starve to death.
Spare us your histrionics. Forcing businesses to pay employees a wage determined by politics will either 1) be irrelevant because the the minimum wage is set below labor market rates or 2) cost jobs and, if the minimum wage is set very high, cause businesses to close.
If you don't believe 2), then consider what would happen if the govt required all McDonald's employees to be paid at least $300/hr. How much would fries and a burger cost at McD's if every one of their employees were paid that much? Would you buy a McD's burger if it cost > $15? Of course, you wouldn't and no one else would either and so a $300/hr. minimum wage would kill businesses and jobs. A less extreme minimum wage would have the same effect although the magnitude would be smaller.
But then there's that little thing of places like McDonald's giving employees directions on how to apply for food stamps and other Government assistance. ... Sounds kind of like business based socialism to me.
The usual terms for this are "corporatism" and "crony capitalism", but, yes, you seem to have recognized a problem, although you have drawn the wrong conclusions. Govt creates the problem by setting up all kinds of handout programs and then taxes the snot out of companies in order to pay for the programs. Then you come along and complain that the same companies that are getting shafted with taxes and burdensome regulations shift some of their labor costs by paying their workers less and telling them to sign up for govt handouts. (Obamacare is by far the worst example of this, by the way, as everyone will see once it is fully in place and every company has dumped its employee health insurance plans.)
In a world of greater economic freedom, the govt would dramatically decrease regulations and taxes and roll back handout programs, the economy would thrive, more companies would be created, jobs would be plentiful and wages would be bid upward as companies competed for workers by offering higher pay. Sadly, the statists have control of the political system and the country is getting f***ed up because of it.
WalMart is a great company and its employees are generally satisfied working there. Why the hate?
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Local testing works? (Score:1, Insightful)
You always know you've found a tolerant, caring liberal online by how much name-calling and slandering he does at anyone who doesn't share his opinion.
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
So if you want to compare the trend of job growth increasing or decreasing, it looks like raising the minimum wage does hurt significantly.
What kind of jobs are being created? Are they minimum-wage jobs that you can't actually live on?
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
So the $600 pre-refund of taxes that Bush2 put in place (which made a negligible increase in per paycheck take-home) and the SS 2% rebate by Obama (which had a similar result) were useless? No, they weren't, they were identified as having an impact on the economy, even though the money wasn't even in consumers hands when it was announced/started.
That's a straw man's argument. Reducing taxes is not even remotely close to having the same sort of economic impacts as setting a minimum wage. The first puts more control of the economy back into the hands of consuming public, while the latter makes it difficult or impossible for those who cannot bring in enough productivity to justify the wage to find a job.
Minimum wage has nothing to do with minimum ability. It sets a price floor for labor. The people who lose out are those just above the minimum wage floor who see their less skilled/experienced/tenured coworkers elevated to a higher wage while theirs remains stagnant. (This happened to me, btw, and it sowed a short period of discord in that company)
I think you've just successfully argued against yourself.
For businesses with very small margins, the costs will be transferred pretty much one for one. As the margin of the business increases, the cost will be passed on in a proportionally smaller magnitude. People are (almost) never hired because they're "cheap" but because work needs to be done to meet demand. Just as nobody hires people if their taxes go down, or fire people if taxes rise. Might it delay hiring? In some instances it makes greater efficiency more valuable, with businesses investing in machines (which are built by people) instead of people. However most of the time it's just a cost of production. If you need to make more silk shirts and the cost of silk goes up, you don't buy less silk - you buy as much as you need to meet demand.
You're making so many assumptions here, I'm not really sure where to start. I guess I'll start with the law of supply and demand. Raise a price, ceteris paribus, the demand decreases. This is visible throughout the economy, although possibly it is easiest to see when looking at the supply side of the equation. For instance, look at doctors and lawyers: these fields have artificial barriers to entry, reducing supply and increasing prices. If you want to look at the demand side, I highly suggest reading upon Thomas Sowell's work, where he very often points out that the young black male worker used to be on par with his white counterpart in terms of percentage employed. With the introduction of the minimum wage, however, young black male unemployment skyrocketed. Why? Because that people group is generally not as educated and brings in less productivity (that's not to say that young black males are inherently worse than their white counterparts, but rather that they're at a societal disadvantage and that laws like the minimum wage make that worse).
Regarding people not being hired because they're "cheap," you're only looking at half of the equation. You're right in that work needs to be done, but how the work gets done is hardly as simple as you make it sound. For example, if labor is very expensive, it becomes more advantageous for the business owner to invest in capital goods to offset the high labor costs; this generally comes at the cost of how many laborers he will hire. For example, consider a fast food business where most of the employees are burger flippers. They cost $7/hour to hire (40 hrs a week for each); 10 of them must be employed to produce 5,000,000 burgers annually, which is the business's target. Let's say that the minimum wage is raised to $12/hour, thus drastically increasing the employer's labor costs. What cost him $145,600 before will now cost him $249,600. As it turns out, an automated burger flipper, which can do all of the basic flipping that the employees did, has been developed that costs $150,000. The employer realizes that he can let 8
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
JAIL TIME for those that hire the undocumented.
Jailing non-violent people is idiotic. America already imprisons more people than any other country. The solution to illegal immigration is to deal with the fundamental causes. Mexico is no longer a net source of immigration (as many Mexicans return home as arrive). The biggest net sources are Central American countries experiencing extreme drug gang violence, such as Honduras and El Salvador. Ending the drug violence will allow these countries to stabilize and create local jobs for their people. And the best way to do that is broad legalization, which is already successfully happening in Colorado and Washington. Other states will hold referendums on legalization this November. We should be jailing a lot less people, not more.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
typical socialist mind-rot.
Gotta love libertarian logically fallacious reasoning. Calling something a name constitutes an argument, apparently.
Here's the test - can you decline to pay the fee, and therefore to use the service? No? It's a tax.
Can you decline to use the service? Can you decline to use the economic benefits from having interstate highways? Can you decline to benefit from having clean water and safe food? Can you decline to benefit economically from a nationally enforced currency and social stability from a commonly applied law?
Actually, yes you can. You decline to use the service by leaving society. Don't like it? Tough. You can actually leave, and you won't pay taxes. So by your very own definition, they are just as much fees as any other fee.
Quality of life is not an entitlement and is only possible through joint investment from every member of society.
What is fair can only be determined by consensual transactions arrived at in a competitive environment.
Circular reasoning. By whose rules do you say that is the only possible definition of fair? Only if you buy into libertarianism do I accept those rules. I don't, so I don't.
Furthermore, what constitutes a "consensual transaction"? Under contract law, consent does not exist if made under duress. Someone who accepts a job way below minimum living standards because they are pressed to do so is under duress, yet that is what libertarians like you like to take advantage of. Or do you mean to restrict consent to the consent of the employer, and not the employee? Only consent matters for the poor put-upon employer?
Education is critically important, yes, which is exactly why we need a competitive market for it
A non-sequitur if there ever was one, and also a tautology because, again, you'd need to assume libertarianism to accept your conclusion. Why do Americans continually ignore the examples of Scandinavian and German public education, as though other people have not already figured out how to make schools valuable without introducing social darwinist forces into education?
You know the models of other countries are ALSO competition in principle, and your ilk's ideological and puritanical approach has failed compared to the competition. Like I said, your ilk's systems are self-defeating.
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
If a business can't employ someone for minimum wage, then their business model is broken. They are basically saying that their product or service is of such little value, that people will not pay enough for it such that the workers involved in delivering that product or service can live a bare existence lifestyle.
More like this...
If a business can't employ someone for minimum wage, then their business model is broken. They are basically saying that their product or service is of such little value, that people will not pay enough for it such that the workers involved in delivering that product or service can live a bare existence lifestyle, while exceeding existing shareholder expectations.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a large gap between the economy not being zero sum and an infinite pie.
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a friend who has a misdemeanor and she has a struggle even getting minimum wage jobs. With improved access to people's records even minor crimes become life sentences and create a strong push towards living poverty or turning to crime.
However, I don't think it's being used more as a "filter" at this point. There are 7 employees and 6 jobs. Any kind of criminal record at all is used to select which of the 6 will be hired.
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
So if you want to compare the trend of job growth increasing or decreasing, it looks like raising the minimum wage does hurt significantly.
What kind of jobs are being created? Are they minimum-wage jobs that you can't actually live on?
They are almost certainly not good jobs. They are probably some of the worst and lowest paid jobs in the country. But that just points out why job growth is a stupid metric to look at anyway. I would like to see an alternative employment figure of "households that make at least twice the poverty level" alongside any unemployment figures.
Growth in median wages would also be a statistic that is more meaningful for most people than job growth. Most people who complain about not being able to find a job could find one if they were willing to work for minimum wage. When people complain about an economy they usually are complaining because they can't keep up whatever standard of living they are familiar with.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole attempt to steer the discussion to one of illegal immigration is a cute trick, but it skirts the real issue. The minimum wage (which hasn't been adjusted for inflation in decades) isn't enough for someone working 40 hours a week (whether picking fruit or stocking aisles at WalMart, etc) to live on without some form of public assistance. So either:
1) Accept this - and lobby for public assistance to make up the difference instead of against it.
or
2) Accept that the wage needs to be raised, because it's more important to the American ideal for a full time worker to be able to support themselves - if not themselves plus their children, than it is for employers to be able to squeeze every last bit of profit from their labor.
or
3) Admit that you're okay with America not being a place where all people who work can afford food, shelter and health care (i.e., perhaps not The Greatest Country On Earth (tm)).
But the point of the article is that the argument that 'raising the minimum wage will kill jobs' has been disproved. To continue to scream it is to lie. But many of those are the same ones still touting that 'lower tax rates raise revenue' - despite the fact that that's not really what the Laffer curve says - and experience shows that we're on the part of the curve where that's not true anyway. In other words, it's a lie, based on a fantasy and/or propaganda - in the face of actual experience that demonstrates the opposite. That letting gays marry will destroy marriage and hurt children. I could go on...
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
One huge beneficiary of food stamps is WalMart. Without food stamps, their workers would be half dead from malnutrition and would frequently die right there in the store (bad for business). That would force them to raise pay. Thanks to food stamps keeping their worker units alive for them, they don't have to pay so much.
So since WalMart isn't real commerce (being a huge welfare recipient), we should jettison it. Fortunately, by raising the minimum wage, we may yet salvage it as an actual contributor to commerce.
As for the comment about cleaners, good luck selling food in a filthy restaurant that gets closed by the health inspector. The fact is, you would be forced to stop mooching off of the food stamp program and actually paying a living wage if you want to stay in business.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:4, Insightful)
For a group of people who love throwing around words like, "Marxist" and "Tyranny" and "Collectivist" and "Fascist" and "Moochers" and "Leeches" and "Parasites", I'm not sure you're in a position to judge what is and what is not intelligent debate.
Yes, what passes for a libertarian in 2014 is a thin-skinned mental undergrad with a grudge. A Republican who read once read a book. Any push back at all and they holler, "Mom, he's hitting me back!" Bitter and brittle, they march around just knowing that society could be so wonderful and free...if only. Protected by the notion that they'll never have to actually perform. And whenever libertarian policies are put in place, the resultant failure is always blamed on not having gone far enough. So, if only they had really gone a few steps further, it totally would have worked. In that way, they are just like the handful of hard core communists left. "If only they had really gone all the way with libertarianism/communism, it would totes have worked". It's actually a lot like your basic extremist follower of any other New Age belief. "The coffee enemas would have cured their cancer, but they just didn't stick closely enough to the regimen." Or, "The faith healing would have totally worked, but the patient didn't have enough faith." It's an argument that can never be won, which is why most people have given up and have just taken to ignoring them.
There is a reason no society in the world, in history, has ever tried to fully implement a fully libertarian system. Because even those most desperate for liberty - especially those most desperate for liberty - can recognize full-blown crazy when they see it. But I have to say, it would be a great treat to see a libertarian live for one day in such a society.
There's also a reason that of all the times the John Galts of the world have decided that they're going to create some floating libertarian utopia somewhere beyond the evil grip of the choking fist of government around their skinny necks, it's never ever happened. Because in the marketplace of ideas it loses every single time. Even libertarians know the idea is crazy, but they've become in love with the vast amount of self-regard that such a philosophy affords them, safe in the knowledge that they'll never be called upon to actually, you know, live like that.
Re: Local testing works? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called basic human dignity, and if you think working a full-time job should not by itself be enough to support oneself, you clearly do not believe in it.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:4, Insightful)
But if they bettered themselves, they would not be picking produce for sub-subsistence wages, now would they? So those poor farmers would still have to ship in exploitable people so you could keep getting produce for below its actual cost of production. Which is what this is really about: you want stuff for below its actual cost, even if this means exploiting desperate people.
In other words, you are against minimum wage because it makes it harder to transfer wealth from poor people to you. Damn looter.
Re:Local testing works? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it so hard to grasp the concept that public policy is a balancing act? Just because I say today's minimum wage is too low, doesn't mean you get to extrapolate and say that my argument is equivalent to suggesting a $25 minimum wage, and that would be a disaster, so no increase at all. That's asinine. But it's exactly the argument that so many right-wing pundits are making - and that you're parroting so faithfully here...
Re:Crazy (Score:1, Insightful)
No, this is a lie.
- just because you are economically illiterate doesn't make something "a lie".
That service can absolutely be provided
- if it could and it were economically advantageous for companies to provide it, they would have done it. Nobody had to force the gas stations in the past to provide the service, it was in their best interest to do it because it attracted more customers and there was a competitive pressure to do it.
no-one is prepared to pay what it costs
- precisely why the service can not be "absolutely provided" and what makes you not only economically illiterate but also so confused as to make 2 separate completely contradicting statements in the span of 2 paragraphs.
in no small part because their incomes have been suppressed for thirty-plus years to facilitate ever-greater corporate profits
- that's the propaganda line, sure. The reality is of-course completely different. The wages of the workers have been destroyed by inflation, not by 'corporate profits'. The inflation is created by the Federal reserve bank of America buying up bad USA debt from the Treasury (and the rest of the market) for decades following Nixon's default on the US dollar in 1971.
The corporate profits are driven up by the inflation as well, unless those corporations are selling worldwide and not only within USA itself. It is quite frustrating to be surrounded so tightly by so many people with so little knowledge and so much desire to talk.