3 ms·

"Seattle votes to fire everyone worth less than $15 / hour"

dan_bk 12y ago
That argument doesn't work, b/c: You can always "create jobs" by lowering the salary. As others have noted, it simply results in people becoming dependent on social benefits (and this bill ends up being footed by the tax payer). So: You are right if you think that the tax payer should subsidize business owners.
- fdr234rd22 12y ago
  That is a trite and misleading argument. 89% of minimum wage workers don't live in poor households. To say that they are being subsidized because they are poor is simply dishonest. See my link above.
  - KJasper 12y ago
    Those 11% isn't worth helping? And should be subsidized by the government?
    - dfa333377777 12y ago
      Who said that? Why attack the minimum wage and not the EITC (which directly helps the poor)?
  - ubernostrum 12y ago
    In the United States, a family of four with a total household income of $23,851/yr. is "not poor". An individual with an income of $11,761/yr. is "not poor". If you believe an individual can survive on $11,761, or that a family of four can survive on $23,851, in a major city, I would identify that as a flaw in your positions.
  - bakhy 12y ago
    the word "households" being key. i just noticed that the text you linked clearly states that in those households there need to be 2-3 workers (or one doing 2-3 jobs) for them to rise above the poverty line. if one would try to put a price on the lost free time, family interaction,.. these people could in fact be in a very tough situation, even though their bank account might not reflect it.
brazzy 12y ago
This gets dragged out in every minimum wage discussion everywhere (most vocally by business lobbyists), but in reality the big wave of firings never really seems to manifest...
- fdr234rd22 12y ago
  "A 2011 study by Sen, Rybczynski, and Van De Waal found that "a 10% increase in the minimum wage is significantly correlated with a 3−5% drop in teen employment." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Research_subsequent_to_Card_and_Krueger.27s_work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Research_subsequen...
  - whimsy 12y ago
    "A larger body of economic research investigates the effects of state and federal minimum wage increases. These studies compare employment trends for states or counties that have different minimum wages. The best studies make comparisons to nearby states or counties to control for regional economic trends. These studies also find no statistically significant negative effects on employment or hours at an aggregate level or for low-wage industries such as restaurants and retail stores, or for specific groups of workers such as teens. These studies also do not find substitution effects (such as shifts in hiring away from black and Latino teens)." ... "Several additional studies of Santa Fe and San Francisco have been produced by the restaurant industry-backed Employment Policies Institute. In a study of Santa Fe, Yelowitz (2005a, 2005b) found an increase in the probability of unemployment for low-skilled workers and evidence of replacement of low-skilled adults by teens. In his study of San Francisco, Yelowitz (2012) found the opposite result: a decrease in teen work hours and no discernible effect on overall employment. Unfortunately, both studies suffer from serious methodological problems that make the results unreliable. Since higher wages are likely to increase the labor supply, unemployment rates can increase even as the number of people who are employed also increases. Pollin and Wicks-Lim (2005) replicate Yelowitz’s (2005a) study but look at employment, rather than unemployment. They find no negative impact on employment. Furthermore, even if the reported results for each of the studies held, total compensation for teens and low-skilled workers would still have increased. Any employment or hours reductions would be more than offset by the increase in hourly earnings (Pollin and Wicks-Lim 2005; National Employment Law Project 2012). " ... "In his review of minimum wage research, Schmitt (2013) considers several channels through which employers might adjust to increases in the minimum wage. One possible scenario is that employers will simply switch to hiring more skilled workers, thereby hurting the employment prospects of less educated workers and, in particular, black and Latino teens. Schmitt reviews several studies that have explicitly researched this question, some of which yield conflicting findings. Again, research design matters a lot here, and studies that thoroughly control for regional or local differences do not find evidence of labor substitution. For example, Allegretto, Dube and Reich (2011) examine the impact of the minimum wage on the employment of white, black, and Hispanic teens, covering the period from 1990 to 2009. After improving on previous research by controlling for regional differences, they find no statistically significant negative effects on employment or hours for teens, regardless of race or gender. In their contiguous counties dataset, Dube, Lester and Reich (2013) similarly find no evidence of such substitution by either age or gender." http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berkeley-IIAC-Report-3-20-2014.pdf http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berk...

That argument doesn't work, b/c: You can always "create jobs" by lowering the salary. As others have noted, it simply results in people becoming dependent on social benefits (and this bill ends up being footed by the tax payer). So: You are right if you think that the tax payer should subsidize business owners.

fdr234rd22 12y ago
That is a trite and misleading argument. 89% of minimum wage workers don't live in poor households. To say that they are being subsidized because they are poor is simply dishonest. See my link above.
- KJasper 12y ago
  Those 11% isn't worth helping? And should be subsidized by the government?
  - dfa333377777 12y ago
    Who said that? Why attack the minimum wage and not the EITC (which directly helps the poor)?
- ubernostrum 12y ago
  In the United States, a family of four with a total household income of $23,851/yr. is "not poor". An individual with an income of $11,761/yr. is "not poor". If you believe an individual can survive on $11,761, or that a family of four can survive on $23,851, in a major city, I would identify that as a flaw in your positions.
- bakhy 12y ago
  the word "households" being key. i just noticed that the text you linked clearly states that in those households there need to be 2-3 workers (or one doing 2-3 jobs) for them to rise above the poverty line. if one would try to put a price on the lost free time, family interaction,.. these people could in fact be in a very tough situation, even though their bank account might not reflect it.

brazzy 12y ago

This gets dragged out in every minimum wage discussion everywhere (most vocally by business lobbyists), but in reality the big wave of firings never really seems to manifest...

fdr234rd22 12y ago
"A 2011 study by Sen, Rybczynski, and Van De Waal found that "a 10% increase in the minimum wage is significantly correlated with a 3−5% drop in teen employment." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Research_subsequent_to_Card_and_Krueger.27s_work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Research_subsequen...
- whimsy 12y ago
  "A larger body of economic research investigates the effects of state and federal minimum wage increases. These studies compare employment trends for states or counties that have different minimum wages. The best studies make comparisons to nearby states or counties to control for regional economic trends. These studies also find no statistically significant negative effects on employment or hours at an aggregate level or for low-wage industries such as restaurants and retail stores, or for specific groups of workers such as teens. These studies also do not find substitution effects (such as shifts in hiring away from black and Latino teens)." ... "Several additional studies of Santa Fe and San Francisco have been produced by the restaurant industry-backed Employment Policies Institute. In a study of Santa Fe, Yelowitz (2005a, 2005b) found an increase in the probability of unemployment for low-skilled workers and evidence of replacement of low-skilled adults by teens. In his study of San Francisco, Yelowitz (2012) found the opposite result: a decrease in teen work hours and no discernible effect on overall employment. Unfortunately, both studies suffer from serious methodological problems that make the results unreliable. Since higher wages are likely to increase the labor supply, unemployment rates can increase even as the number of people who are employed also increases. Pollin and Wicks-Lim (2005) replicate Yelowitz’s (2005a) study but look at employment, rather than unemployment. They find no negative impact on employment. Furthermore, even if the reported results for each of the studies held, total compensation for teens and low-skilled workers would still have increased. Any employment or hours reductions would be more than offset by the increase in hourly earnings (Pollin and Wicks-Lim 2005; National Employment Law Project 2012). " ... "In his review of minimum wage research, Schmitt (2013) considers several channels through which employers might adjust to increases in the minimum wage. One possible scenario is that employers will simply switch to hiring more skilled workers, thereby hurting the employment prospects of less educated workers and, in particular, black and Latino teens. Schmitt reviews several studies that have explicitly researched this question, some of which yield conflicting findings. Again, research design matters a lot here, and studies that thoroughly control for regional or local differences do not find evidence of labor substitution. For example, Allegretto, Dube and Reich (2011) examine the impact of the minimum wage on the employment of white, black, and Hispanic teens, covering the period from 1990 to 2009. After improving on previous research by controlling for regional differences, they find no statistically significant negative effects on employment or hours for teens, regardless of race or gender. In their contiguous counties dataset, Dube, Lester and Reich (2013) similarly find no evidence of such substitution by either age or gender." http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berkeley-IIAC-Report-3-20-2014.pdf http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/UC-Berk...