I couldn’t help but laugh on reading this article at NRO by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry proposing alternatives to an increase in the minimum wage. I honestly don’t know why he bothered.
It doesn’t matter if a higher minimum wage is economically inefficient. It doesn’t matter whether it hurts more people than it helps. It doesn’t matter than union officials have decidedly mixed motives in supporting a high minimum wage, e.g. it provides them with opportunities for underbidding the minimum and it would automatically provide raises to union members with minimum wage multiple contracts.
It most especially doesn’t matter that there are much more efficient and effective alternatives. None of them pits state against state the way a higher minimum wage does, none of them has the secondary effects noted above which for some of the supporters of a higher minimum wage are primary objectives rather than secondary, and none of them has a catchy slogan.
You are wrong. If conservatives actually propose and support this, LOL, it will have overwhelming support on the left. The minimum wage is easier to understand, and as there isn’t really much evidence that it actually does the bad things conservatives claim, easier to sell.
Steve
“The minimum wage is easier to understand, and as there isn’t really much evidence that it actually does the bad things conservatives claim, easier to sell.”
In that case we should just make it $50 an hour.
You seem to traffic in a lot of disinformation, steve. I quit following it, but last I saw Washington and CA were having difficulties with minwage.
BTW – how is that wonderful Obamacare thingy doing. Gotta paper to show us how much everyone loves it………
If progress is made growing jobs, the economy becomes more vibrant and wages will follow suit.
If you simply raise wages, pacifying the workers’ demands for more money, an employer’s overhead will rise, no matter how vegetative or strong the business might be, which may result in letting go workers or even closing up shop.
There needs to be some kind of synergistic relationship between raising wages, profitability of a business, and how the overall economy is doing. Such factors feed into each other, creating success or failure in business models.
Furthermore, forcing increases in wages, when there is not the market environment to sustain them, will lead to dismal results, as what is happening to the PPACA, where big insurance companies are opting out of exchanges, admitting the death spiral of this poorly conceived health care bill is fully in gear.
“In that case we should just make it $50 an hour.”
Cutting taxes raises revenue, so we should cut taxes to zero.
“You seem to traffic in a lot of disinformation, steve.”
You seem to traffic only in what confirms your beliefs. BTW, how is that wonderful orange president of yours making out in DC?
Steve
As I presume you know that’s not true. Cutting taxes may or may not increase revenue depending on circumstances.
It’s the same with an increase in the minimum wage. In some places under some conditions, increases in the minimum wage don’t decrease the number of jobs or the rate of growth in jobs. In other places they do. Consequently, it’s possible that in Seattle an increase in the minimum wage to $15/hour would be benign while in Yazoo City it could be disastrous. To my eye that’s an argument for federalism.
Indifference to Yazoo City is a poor guide for policy. The paragraph above doesn’t fit well on a placard so it’s not as compelling as “Fight for 15!”.
Agree completely Dave, which is one reason I support a low federal minimum wage.