Conservative Political Forum

As cities across the country pushed their minimum wages to untested heights in recent years, some economists began to ask: How high is too high?

Seattle, with its highest-in-the-country minimum wage,1 may have hit that limit.



In January 2016, Seattle’s minimum wage jumped from $11 an hour to $13 for large employers, the second big increase in less than a year. New research released Monday by a team of economists at the University of Washington suggests the wage hike may have come at a significant cost: The increase led to steep declines in employment for low-wage workers, and a drop in hours for those who kept their jobs. Crucially, the negative impact of lost jobs and hours more than offset the benefits of higher wages — on average, low-wage workers earned $125 per month less because of the higher wage, a small but significant decline.

“The goal of this policy was to deliver higher incomes to people who were struggling to make ends meet in the city,” said Jacob Vigdor, a University of Washington economist who was one of the study’s authors. “You’ve got to watch out because at some point you run the risk of harming the people you set out to help.”

As cities across the country pushed their minimum wages to untested heights in recent years, some economists began to ask: How high is too high?

Seattle, with its highest-in-the-country minimum wage,1 may have hit that limit.



In January 2016, Seattle’s minimum wage jumped from $11 an hour to $13 for large employers, the second big increase in less than a year. New research released Monday by a team of economists at the University of Washington suggests the wage hike may have come at a significant cost: The increase led to steep declines in employment for low-wage workers, and a drop in hours for those who kept their jobs. Crucially, the negative impact of lost jobs and hours more than offset the benefits of higher wages — on average, low-wage workers earned $125 per month less because of the higher wage, a small but significant decline.

“The goal of this policy was to deliver higher incomes to people who were struggling to make ends meet in the city,” said Jacob Vigdor, a University of Washington economist who was one of the study’s authors. “You’ve got to watch out because at some point you run the risk of harming the people you set out to help.”

It's not that they were not told what would happy.   Why should I pay 15$ for a hamburger and fries when I am out when I can get it for 7$.   Or just go home and make my own and have it my way. 

Just like a lib troll. If they don't like evidence to the contrary? They attack the messengers credibility.

Seattle mayor tries to destroy credibility of UW researchers for unfavorable minimum-wage study

What happens when you pay university researchers to study the results of your untested policy (a massive minimum-wage hike) and they deliver results you weren’t expecting?

You try to destroy their credibility, of course.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who by Seattle standards is considered a “conservative,” asked University of California-Berkeley researchers to denounce and rebut the study the city commissioned from University of Washington researchers before it was even made public.

Berkeley researchers had earlier released another study of Seattle’s minimum wage, which jumped to $11 an hour in 2015 and $13 in 2016, that found “employment in food service … was not affected” by the wage hikes (they studied “food services” as a proxy for minimum-wage jobs at large).

The UW study, by contrast, used cross-industry data on “work hours” that were not available to the Berkeley researchers, a much deeper set of information that is only available in Washington and three other states:

Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies.

MORE: Student workers lose out under Oregon’s massive wage hike

Get that? “Low-wage employees” – defined as under $19 an hour to include the “spillover effect” of raising pay for employees slightly above the minimum wage – lost about $125 a month. The Seattle Times reports:

“If you’re a low-skilled worker with one of those jobs, $125 a month is a sizable amount of money,” said Mark Long, a UW public-policy professor and one of the authors of the report. “It can be the difference between being able to pay your rent and not being able to pay your rent.”

The report also estimated that there are about 5,000 fewer low-wage jobs in the city than there would have been without the law.

This was not tolerable for Murray, who asked the lead author on the Berkeley study, economist Michael Reich, for his comments on the UW study. Reich said he received an “advance copy” of the UW study June 21, five days before it would be publicly released.

The embargo date on Reich’s return letter to Murray is 5 a.m. June 26 – the same morning the UW study was publicly released. It suggests Murray wanted to bury the city’s own paid research with outside criticism from the moment the public saw it.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/33973/

Every minimum wage increase seems to remove opportunities for unskilled kids looking for a summer job.

Mandating healthcare coverage limited employees to <32hrs for the work week.

If people want to work for $5 an hour, just let them.   Minimum wages, IMO, reek of Socialism and the quick easy path to Communism.
What happened to the saying, "You're paid what you're worth!"  If you want to make more, present your case to the boss, and he/she can make that determination - don't like it move on.   When the boss knows they have a GOOD employee, they'll try to KEEP THEM employed, and possibly cut loose or layoff the ones worth less.

Another one: Who said you can't fire someone without "just cause"?  What's "just cause"....?    You were picketing outside my store, demanding higher wages, it HURT my business, you're fired!

I used to thiunk Dims were stupid, but now that we're seeing what the real plan for the nation ios, it's easy to see, by eliminating all entry level jobs, the govt will need to step in, write more laws on hiring, (more govt control).
So look at it from a corporate POV, they seldom hire kids out of high school so it won't affect them, so Congress makes a deal with them, that if they support the leftist idea of more laws, they'll get a kickback or tax loophole out of the deal.
In the end, all kids get hired for a year, taxpayer foots the bill of course, problem solved....

Now Mark Zuckerberg is advocating a minimum guaranteed income for everyone. What a deal - free $$$$.

Hmm... Who is going to work?  Someone will need to take out the garbage.

How dare you ask a probing question to a liberal.

MY BAD!!!    

No do you get it Libs? Min wage increases do nothing but kill off jobs, Tech is killing entry level jobs!




ZANE TANKEL: If something becomes prohibitively priced, you find an alternative.

STUART VARNEY, FBN: Of course.

TANKEL: I've always said increasing minimum wage is technology's best friend. We have 1,000 less servers this time this year than we had this time last year.

VARNEY: Really?

TANKEL: Yes sir.

VARNEY: And you run, what, 42, 43 Applebee's.

TANKEL: 40.

VARNEY: Okay, about 40. So you've got 1,000 fewer wait staff.

TANKEL: Yes sir.

VARNEY: So what you do nowadays is you employ technology.

TANKEL: Yes sir.

VARNEY: And you have runners from the kitchen to the table -

TANKEL: Exactly.

VARNEY: That's how you —

TANKEL: You know the business.

VARNEY: Well, I've been to Newark Airport. I see this constantly, and that's what you see.

TANKEL: We're not quite Newark Airport, because that's really impersonal, people passing through. We have servers, but they're moving — more and more the model is to a concierge type of a person, comes to the table, "Can I help you? Do you need assistance with the tablets? Can I get you anything immediately?" And making people feel warm and comfortable.

So that the model now that we're heading towards where we had one server for three or four tables, we're moving towards one server for ten tables, eliminating about two-thirds of our labor ultimately. But it's because of Cuomo, De Blasio, the liberal agenda.

It's all really good if you have a job.

VARNEY: Yes.

TANKEL: Right? If you don't have a job.

VARNEY: (If) you're a youngster, you want to get your first foot on the rung of that ladder going up the food chain.

TANKEL: Exactly. Stuart, if you don't have a job, $100 an hour doesn't help you a whole lot, does it?

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2017/07/12/restauranteur-fbns-stuart-varney-minimum-wage-has-led-1000-job-cuts-%E2%80%94

Great exchange and to the point, 'if you don't have a job, minimum wage doesn't matter'.
For reference, here's a list of countries minimum wage / minimum wage laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

Or .... what does the average person make in a month in US Dollars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

Country             Monthly average wage
 Switzerland              $7,396
 Luxembourg             $5,583
 Norway                    $5,418
 Denmark                  $5,310
 United States           $4,893
 Australia                  $4,700
 Ireland                     $4,379
 Netherlands              $4,289
 Canada                    $4,134
 Belgium                    $3,963
 Sweden                    $3,849
 Finland                      $3,781
 Austria                      $3,761
 Germany                  $3,478
 United Kingdom         $3,461
 France                      $3,374
 Italy                         $2,671
 Spain                       $2,541
 Israel                       $2,405
 Slovenia                   $2,052
 Greece                     $1,631
 Portugal                   $1,513
 Slovakia                   $1,138
 Czech Republic         $1,065
 Hungary                   $1,067
 Poland                     $1,021
 Romania                     $919
 Lithuania                     $914
 Bosnia & Herzegovina  $731
 Bulgaria                       $627
 Belarus                        $422
 Armenia                       $386
 Albania                         $379

Ok, to retire with a fulltime Maid, Cook & Servant....      I'd hire them from Albania!!!   
Honestly, minimum wage is meaningless without knowing the cost of living.   I've spent more in gassing up 2 cars than some of those people make in a month.  It wasn't too long ago filling my truck's tank was >$75, and that was 2-3 times a week.

Raising the minimum wage is ultimately increasing the cost of living, which is another way to siphon money away from the retired folks trying to exist on a meager income.  Ultimately raising the minimum wage is akin to spurring inflation.

Exactly..
And as history proves, raising min wage drives manufacturing jobs away to countries with lower wages.
Is their standard of living lower than us? I see France and the UK make a fourth less than we do, yet their standard of living is on par with ours or those in Spain.
Yeah, all the min wage increase does is force business to cut labor another way, which usually entails cutting a need for labor, be it mechanizing or completely changing the way one does business as this guy proposes removing wait staff and adding runners.

God Dims are stupid!