Oh, that time raising the minimum wage gutted over 700,000 jobs

[bigbadjohn45]

Oh, that time raising the minimum wage gutted over 700,000 jobs
posted at 8:41 pm on July 28, 2015 by Matt Vespa
Are liberals better at economics or are they just more adept at selling ideas that drive purely on emotion? Increasing the minimum wage is a perfect example. Raising it increases the living standards for those who struggle earning such a wage, and those who are against it–Republicans–are just anti-poor cretins who have no heart. The political campaign almost sells itself. Yet, we’re against it not because we hate poor people–that’s unadulterated nonsense. We’re against it because hurts workers, which is something that we’ve been saying ad nauseum, but alas, liberal intransigence and stubbornness on this issue has resulted in over 700,000 jobs being cut over the past couple years.

Piggybacking off Daniel’s post last week, Seattle’s progressives have seen their minimum wage increase blow up in their faces. Workers are now demanding fewer hours. Why? The city’s $15 minimum wage law means that they’re ineligible for other welfare services. So, the burden of the law falls entirely on the employer, with the employees wanting to work less so they can remain on the government programs. It is laziness or just immaturity; that being you have to pay more in taxes and are ineligible for certain programs once you start making more money? That’s a debate for another time.

The American Action Forum has provided an analysis of the minimum wage and other economic policies from the Obama administration, which was supposedly meant to help the middle class. Spoiler alert: it hasn’t:

In 2013 High Minimum Wages Cost 747,700 Jobs: In 2013 a $1 increase in the minimum wage was associated with a 1.48 percent increase in the unemployment rate, which amounted to 747,700 jobs. States with minimum wages above the federal standard are lagging behind their counterparts by a full percentage point. The increases will lead to fewer jobs for those who need them the most.

The jobs lost from minimum wage hikes are almost entirely low-wage jobs.

[…]

According to a study by Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Wither from the University of California San Diego, the last time the federal minimum wage increased (from $5.15 to $7.25), employment among those earning less than $7.50 decreased by 8% nationally. That amounted to 1.7 million fewer jobs. As a result, average monthly income fell by $100. Read more here for fascinating data on its effect on mobility, poverty, and unpaid work.

[…]

The Affordable Care Act has reshaped American healthcare and affected the middle class, but not in a positive way financially.

Small businesses have been some of the hardest hit. AAF research found that Obamacare has reduced the wages of small business workers (offices with 20-99 employees) by $22.6 billion annually and cost those small businesses 350,000 jobs.

The ACA has also led to workers’ hours being cut. As Nate Silver’s 538 site wrote this past January, “the evidence suggests [the Affordable Care Act] has led some employers to limit the hours of workers who were already part-time, effectively giving a pay cut to some of the most vulnerable Americans.”

Welcome to Obama’s America.

 

[bigbadjohn45]

Hey, liberals why not let’s make the minimum wage $100 per hour? It should fix everything, right? Why hasn’t Obama issued an executive order to that effect?

McD up the street should be able to afford that, huh?

How about Jackson’s Quik-Mart? You think Mr. Jackson has enough margin to pay his drop-out employees $100 per hour?

Oh, sorry, I forgot...liberals cannot process logic and facts...my bad....

 

[MidTnBlues]

Actually we process facts and logic just fine. You keep using sites that are dark money organizations who cherry pick data much like the tobacco companies did when there was a debate about the health concerns of smoking. I'm sure there are liberal leaning sites that probably do the same things, but I get more and more familiar with the stuff you and flash post. I enjoy these because it's a lot of fun picking these things apart. AAF is funded by a lot of oil and pharmaceutical companies, and this kid that wrote that article was fresh out of college making an argument against people with years of research under their belts. But about these so called "facts" that I am having such a hard time processing.. First this AAF article is just an outlier and its methodology is comparing apples to oranges because it is comparing entire states rather than economically similar regions.

Hristos Doucouliagos and T. D. Stanley – both PhD economists who are published experts in meta-analysis did a meta-study of 64 min wage studies published between 1972 - 2007 measuring the impact of min wages on teenage employment in the US. When they graphed every employment estimate contained in these studies (over 1,000 in total), weighting each estimate by its statistical accuracy, they found that the most accurate estimates were heavily clustered at or near zero employment effects. Link They concluded: “Two scenarios are consistent with this empirical research record. First, minimum wages may simply have no effect on employment… Second, minimum-wage effects might exist, but they may be too difficult to detect and/or are very small.” So your AAF study is an outlier at best.

In 2010, in a study published in the Review of Economics and Statistics Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich showed that minimum wage studies "that do not account for local economic conditions tend to produce spurious negative effects due to" regional effects in employment "that are unrelated to minimimum wage policies" Relative article In other words, if you don’t control for regional differences in employment, it will look as if the minimum wage has a connection with higher unemployment; but the moment you account for regional differences, that finding disappears.

This is why the best studies of the MW compare contiguous counties in neighboring states. The counties used to test minimum wage effects are, as much as possible, within a single economic region, except that one is in a state that has just raised its minimum wage. In other words, good studies compare apples with apples. The AAF’s incompetent study, in contrast, simply compares entire states, as if the only significant economic difference between (say) Oregon and Georgia were minimum wage levels. They’re comparing apples and oranges.

To be fair, the AAF study also controls for high school graduation rates, but that is the only thing they consider and nothing else - not region, not college graduation rates, not industry - is controlled for.

Edit: I also want to point out another inaccuracy in your post, John. The minimum wage in Seattle is currently $10/hour and not $15. It is $10/hr for businesses with < 500 employees and $11/hr for businesses with > 500 employees. The $15 will be phased in over the next few years ( I think 2021) and again depends on the size of the business.

 

[BlueRaiderFan]

You can't reason with these guys...They know it ALL.