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June 11, 2015

EPIC Meme Against Minimum Wage Increase Is The Best We’ve Ever Seen

From Powerline:
It was the University of Chicago’s John Cochrane, …who wrote that
“Once upon a time, the minimum wage, like free trade, was a basic test of whether you were awake in the first week of econ 1. We put a horizontal line in a supply and demand graph. Minimum wages increase unemployment of poor people.”

But a higher minimum wage is a leading cause of the populist Left, and several referenda calling for a higher minimum wage passed by large margins in some of the same states where voters were tossing out Democrats…
There’s a brand new paper just out from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), one of the most prestigious economic organizations in the country, by two economists at the University of California at San Diego that finds significant adverse effects on the number of jobs and the earnings prospects for the very low income people the minimum wage is supposed to help. …
Over three subsequent years, we find that binding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers.
Like most academic papers it is dense and filled with advanced equations, etc. But the conclusion of the main paper could hardly be more clear or direct:
We also present evidence of the minimum wage’s effects on low-skilled workers’ economic mobility. We find that binding minimum wage increases significantly reduced the likelihood that low-skilled workers rose to what we characterize as lower middle class earnings. This curtailment of transitions into lower middle class earnings began to emerge roughly one year following initial declines in low wage employment. Reductions in upward mobility thus appear to follow reductions in access to opportunities for accumulating work experience.

I’m sure liberals will tell us to “follow the science” on this issue, as James Pethokoukis reminds us:
Of course it’s strangely settled science on the left that raising the minimum wage is an unquestioned win-win all around. As Hillary Clinton said at a rally back in October, “And don’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. They always say that. I’ve been through this. My husband gave working families a raise in the 1990s. I voted to raise the minimum wage and guess what? Millions of jobs were created or paid better and more families were more secure.”
What do you think of this?

17 comments:

  1. The minimum wage was not intended to be less than a living wage. I'm sure that corporations would be happy to hire workers for $2.50 an hour and let them rely on food stamps and welfare to survive. Does that seem right to you?

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  2. The corporations are already doing this, even at the much higher than $2.50 minimum wage. The best documentary on this is Brave New Film's "Walmart - The High Cost of Low Prices" https://youtu.be/RXmnBbUjsPs But pawning off the difference between a low wage and a living income onto the taxpayers is a separate issue from demanding that all employers pay entry-level workers more than their labor can generate in revenue for the business. Easily forgotten in discussions of minimum wages is the true cost of employing someone: the Social Security matching payments, the worker's comp insurance, the payroll bookkeeping, and sometimes healthcare insurance. The rule of thumb in business is that employees will cost the company double the up-front wage, so your $15 an hour worker is really $30 an hour when all is said and done. But a huge and difficult-to-quantify cost for entry level workers is the supervision required to keep them pointed in the right direction and not kill themselves on your machinery. I've fired this type of worker after less than a day when they proved that they were clueless about work ethics and safety, but too smart-assed to realize they had a lot to learn.

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  3. As Hillary Clinton said at a rally back in October, “And don’t let
    anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. They
    always say that. I’ve been through this. My husband gave working
    families a raise in the 1990s. I voted to raise the minimum wage and
    guess what? Millions of jobs were created or paid better and more
    families were more secure.”


    Because you can just say what sounds good to the crowd, facts be damned.

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  4. The McDonald's worker should BE $15, but the EMT should get $50. Of course, this meme with an agenda is implying the EMT should STAY at $15, but the McD worker should be $7.

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  5. no interest loans for education and small businesses give ladders....making folks comfortable with being a fry cook is one level above making them comfortable with welfare

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  6. Epic BS! $15/hr. isn't enough to pay rent/health insurance/car ins. and then have enough to eat with. So people who work 40hrs.wk and still qualify for Welfare is better? Then paying a livable (barely, if single) wage? I understand the rant!

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  7. You are going to have to WORK. All the FUN jobs where you all"socialize" and fiddle around can NOT pay good.

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  8. Go read "Atlas Shrugged" --- Fernando's explanation of what money IS. You cannot have a living wage unless you PRODUCE a living amount.

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  9. That BITCH does not pay her own staff.

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  10. Have you ever worked in fast food? Out of all the different work I have done it came in second to Nurse Aide as the most physically demanding.

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  11. Are you saying the billions in profits from fast food, or say walmart, isn't produced by the employees? Not entirely of course since it is a team effort. Just why should the captains get most of it and the players have to scrape by?

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  12. When you elevate the lowest you elevate everyone.

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  13. I totally agree that "executive" pay should be reduced to HISTORICAL levels and distributed to the workers .... but that will not go as far as One might think.
    The "executives" sit on one another's Boards and vote each other huge UNEARNED pay checks ................

    “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” – Warren Buffet, NY Times 11/26/2006

    DAVOS ............ the Billionaire's UNION MEETING ...................... while the "Freedom to Work" JUDAS ISCARIOTS have been undermining the Worker's organizations,the BILLIONAIRES have become ever MORE organized. From the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers,DAVOS ..............they have tightened the noose around the neck of the Working Man. They screen members in their FRATERNITIES and at Country Club socials .......
    1) Doctors have UNIONS, one is the American Medical Association.
    2) Lawyers have UNIONS, one is the American Bar Association.
    3) ALL Professions have UNIONS ...... they have Trade Associations, They have Trade Publications
    4) "trade" treaties that favor the 1%
    Fraternities, Country Club Memberships are "screening" areas to ensure UNION solidarity............
    P.S. YOU pay for THEIR Union Dues &Meetings.
    Without Unions the WORKERS would not have living wages, vacations, sick days, pensions, 40 hour weeks, overtime, SAFE work conditions..... LOSING all that? Just as the Unions are undermined and destroyed? WHAT A COINCIDENCE !!!!

    Be sure to THANK a "RIGHT to SLAVE" propagandizer next time you see one. Wages in right-to-work states are lower on average than wages in non-right-to-work states, by an average of about $1500 a year. Workers in right-to-work states are also less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance and pension coverage. The decline of the American middle class mirrors almost exactly the decline of American labor union membership.

    American Wages have stagnated since the 1980s and working conditions have worsened. What happened then? REAGAN.
    Reagan waged war on the Working People of America (1)Launching the war with his attack on unionization, firing the air-traffic controllers and (2) Introducing the concepts of low paid part-time and contract workers. Remember how Henry Ford introduced the concept that if you paid your people enough money, they would/could buy the products they were building? Well Reagan destroyed that concept, and brought us HERE, to THIS economic crash. Reagan was no "hero" who destroyed Communism. Reagan was a coward who HID the fact that the USSR was dead on it's feet and collapsing. Reagan created fear in the People to get support for a wasteful looting of the Public Treasury by the Military Industrial Thieves. Finally, Reagan, the week after leaving office, ran over to Japan to collect at LEAST $6MILLION in "speaking fees" which was a nice term for BRIBE for keeping our markets open to the Japanese, and thus SELLING OUT American Workers. No, Reagan was not a great man, he was a Low Life Credit Card spendthrift.
    Raygunomics...tax more and spend a whole lot more...that ol' boy keeps getting resurrected...his true legacy is the beginning of "deficits don't matter"...and a central/big gov't can control the economy.

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  14. It is how much VALUE ADDED you create not how HARD you work. I hand mixed cement & concrete and stacked concrete block ...............try THAT out for fun,in the summer.

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  15. Hehe
    The "capitalists" are speaking, and of course higher wages dont solve anything, right, but highere revenues, anualy, is mutch better.
    The problem is obvious, is a class war, the one sidedness is hillariously revealing to read, a ltt of coments about thing they obviously dont know shit about.

    Work/slaver, just a definition, bot are the same.
    Untill the system is leveld to where is should be, by hanging bankers and layers, then WE can talk again, as brothers, scums, because this articles premisses is a facistic one, any the neofudalistic thinking is even soaking the comon man.

    The eCONomy whom have ledd us to where we stand this days is a scam, a massive pyramid scam, and morons, belive the bollocs served by ONE side of the table.
    Well anclegrabbers, of course the world look obscure from upside down, and people like you have never been nor have the balls to straighten your back.
    Its the fibre that keeps the sheeps standing, spine have gone down the drain a long time ago.

    Jesus you are pathetic breed of idiots.

    peace

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  16. Do they have evidence of this? Or did they just write it. Because I tell you this: I work my ass off, 40 hours a week, my wife works and we are still unable to afford food and electricity without some sort of assistance. How about you go and try it. You go live on government benefits for a month and see if you can make ends meet. Don't just take the word of some clowns on the internet.

    I went and read (a) post, which was on AboveTopSecret. What a bunch of crap, unless the state of texas is doing so good they can just dole out that much cash.

    $900 for foodstamps? BS!
    5 months to get on section 8? BS! (here, its a 3 year waiting list.)
    Most places not hiring people with college degree? Fail. All I work with are college graduates, and we work retail.
    AND REALLY, WHAT FUCKING RESTAURANT TAKES FOODSTAMPS?

    This is a hit-piece written by a money-junky

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  17. It should be obvious to everyone that wages have not kept up with inflation.


    This implies that wages do not drive inflation, something else does...


    Gee, I wonder...what could it be? Usury, perhaps? It is interest that causes inflation.

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