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You're right. Raising or lowering minimum wage purchasing power is worthy of caution, but having minimum wage track inflation is an economic no-op, not a shift
by oconnore 10y ago
You're right. Raising or lowering minimum wage purchasing power is worthy of caution, but having minimum wage track inflation is an economic no-op, not a shift in policy.
- dnautics 10y agoit's not an economic no-op, because then the fight begins over who gets to measure inflation. Moreover, if the tracking isn't continuous (which it can't possibly be), during the 'between periods' there's wage devaluation which disproportionately affect the poor. The WHOLE POINT of inflation is that it screws over wageearners: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis."