http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2013/02/18/raising-the-minimum-wage-makes-sense Comments On: Raising the minimum wage makes sense by Max Brantley en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Wed, 22 May 2013 13:45:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by j7]]> Wed, 06 Mar 2013 06:04:20 -0600 Arkansas Times
Who benefits most from low cost goods and services? Rich people who can afford to pay more, or poor people who would have to do without?

Now another question, who pays the majority of taxes in the US? Rich people.

If you want to give poor people a certain standard of living through minimum wages, the effect will be diluted because there are minimum wage earners that are not poor, and the costs will hit the poor when everyone that sells to the poor raises prices to cover increased labor costs.

If you want to give poor people a certain standard of living through transfer payments funded by tax dollars, you can target only actual poor people and do a better, but still imperfect job of isolating the poor from the costs of the programs.
Posted by Gylippus]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 23:42:55 -0600 Arkansas Times
We taxpayers are subsidizing the unconscionably low wages that don't allow workers to keep their heads above water. Ergo, Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, foists off some of its true cost of labor on public welfare and health care systems.

Like polluters who belch their toxic waste into the air we breath and don't have to pay the true cost of air pollution, the Walmarts of the world are not really "low cost" unless you ignore the real cost of their business model.

Gyli, I'm going to sleep well tonight knowing the light bulb finally went off in your head!
Posted by Sound Policy]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:37:37 -0600 Arkansas Times
Which means that we ALL are complicit by our benefits (cheaper goods, etc.) from a system that cheats people and denies them fair compensation for their labor, whether or not we are the ones actually doing the hiring.
Posted by Perplexed]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:29:49 -0600 Arkansas Times
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Posted by Gylippus]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:55:50 -0600 Arkansas Times
"It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says 'you toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle." [Lincoln-Douglas debates, 15 October 1858]

Balancing a business's (small or large) budget on the backs of people by paying them a wage that they are unable to live on is a form of government-sponsored slavery. It differs from what Lincoln described above only in degree.
Posted by Perplexed]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:25:02 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:37:01 -0600 Arkansas Times
So what if some minimum wage workers are teenagers. I worked as a teen to save money for college and still ended up with over $60k in student loans that I'm still paying back over ten years later. Perhaps if I was paid a living wage for all the hours I spent working in restaurants, retail shops, and nursing homes then I wouldn't have graduated to a life of debt. Imagine if I could spend that $250/month at local businesses instead of sending it to an out-of-state bank.

People who aren't getting paid a decent wage have no purchasing power and that's bad for business.
Posted by Sarah Marsh]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:25:25 -0600 Arkansas Times http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979738/ns/msnb…
Posted by rablib]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:20:23 -0600 Arkansas Times
I understand Rubio has declared that the president is lying and trying to destroy American because he said the sun rose in the east this morning. The US House voted this afternoon that the sun only rises in the west in tribute to Ronald Ray-Gun!
Posted by couldn't be better]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:05:34 -0600 Arkansas Times
But then you are hurting poor people so someone that will, over their lifetime, earn a million dollars more than a high school graduate can shave a few bucks off his monthly loan payment.

How charitable of you.
Posted by Gylippus]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:45:31 -0600 Arkansas Times
Syli Gyli.
Posted by Sound Policy]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:17:35 -0600 Arkansas Times A bit under 1.1 million of the total are working more than 35 hours a week.

Again, most of the positive effects of increasing the minimum wage are not going to go poor people. It's going to go to white suburban teenagers, college students that are going to be making much better money in a couple of years, and to people who aren't in desperate need of money.

And there are costs, and they are going to hit poor people. Poorly educated minorities will bear the brunt of employment effects. Who do you think is hurt worse when businesses raise their prices to cover increased labor costs? The poor. Rich people won't even notice.
Posted by Gylippus]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:22:44 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by couldn't be better]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:35:19 -0600 Arkansas Times
In what you posted is this statement from Krugman: "So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. This theoretical prediction has, however, been hard to confirm with actual data."

This is exactly what Krugman said in the article posted by Max. And the opposite of the claim that you made: "And there are costs for raising the minimum wage. Despite what Krugman says, with a higher minimum wage, fewer low skill workers will be hired."

And, in the Krugman article you linked to, the primary discussion is of the "living wage", not the minimum wage.
Posted by Arkie]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 09:43:56 -0600 Arkansas Times
I don't really feel like finding any that are free. Worst part about graduating was losing the library's journal subscriptions. You wouldn't be convinced anyway. You would cite more articles, I would cite more, we'd be here all week. Such is the state of social sciences.

But here is 1998 Krugman: http://www.pkarchive.org/cranks/LivingWage…

"So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. This theoretical prediction has, however, been hard to confirm with actual data. Indeed, much-cited studies by two well-regarded labor economists, David Card and Alan Krueger, find that where there have been more or less controlled experiments, for example when New Jersey raised minimum wages but Pennsylvania did not, the effects of the increase on employment have been negligible or even positive. Exactly what to make of this result is a source of great dispute. Card and Krueger offered some complex theoretical rationales, but most of their colleagues are unconvinced; the centrist view is probably that minimum wages "do," in fact, reduce employment, but that the effects are small and swamped by other forces.

What is remarkable, however, is how this rather iffy result has been seized upon by some liberals as a rationale for making large minimum wage increases a core component of the liberal agenda--for arguing that living wages "can play an important role in reversing the 25-year decline in wages experienced by most working people in America" (as this book's back cover has it). Clearly these advocates very much want to believe that the price of labor--unlike that of gasoline, or Manhattan apartments--can be set based on considerations of justice, not supply and demand, without unpleasant side effects. This will to believe is obvious in this book: The authors not only take the Card-Krueger results as gospel, but advance a number of other arguments that just do not hold up under examination."
Posted by Gylippus]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 09:09:30 -0600 Arkansas Times
Conservatives: "Evidence? We don't need to stink in' evidence!"

It's such a shame that the conservatism of Bill Buckley has vanished and gone with the wind. What has risen up to take it's place is something that is based on isolated anecdotes and so-called common sense. The debate in our country is becoming more and more a debate between "head" and "heart," between what is based on actual intellectual application of evidence and what simply "feels good."

Hopefully, reality will someday re-emerge from the ooze that Arkansas politics has become.
Posted by Perplexed]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:53:53 -0600 Arkansas Times
Any links to peer-reviewed academic studies that support this position?
Posted by Arkie]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:46:50 -0600 Arkansas Times
How much will a job that is only worth the current minimum wage pay once the new rate goes into effect? How much will that worker make?

I only hire people who make $14+ per hour. I do have acquaintances though whose business models allow for only minimum wage labor. Those jobs will go away if the minimum wage is increased more than a dollar or so. Margins are especially low for so called mom and pop stores.
Posted by ProCarry]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:45:58 -0600 Arkansas Times http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011tbls.htm

5.1% of all hourly workers and 2.8% of all workers make the minimum wage
23.4% are teenagers.
26% are between 19 and 24.
It's not listed, but many are the second or third income earner for their household, and others may be working just to have something to do. They may live nowhere near poverty.

If you are attempting to lift people out of poverty with the minimum wage, most of the effect is going to be going to people not in poverty.

And there are costs for raising the minimum wage. Despite what Krugman says, with a higher minimum wage, fewer low skill workers will be hired. The ones that are may have to deal with worse working conditions. Some of the cost will be passed on to customers, including very poor customers, through higher prices and worse service. Some of it will come from lower profits to business owners, a very diverse group that includes people struggling to keep a business open or trying to save for retirement, not just the Waltons.

Be very careful, you could make things worse for poor people.
Posted by Gylippus]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:36:59 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by ozarkrazo]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:29:06 -0600 Arkansas Times
Either way, he's one step closer to roasting sparrows under a bridge.
Posted by the outlier]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:11:44 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Cindi Cobb]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:01:39 -0600 Arkansas Times
What an example of a Republican christian-full of stuff for themselves and to hell with the less fortunate because the Good Book didn't say one word about taking care of the poor and less fortunate but rather that you should get rich so you can go through the eye of the camel. Or maybe I have those reversed?

If overly rich companies paid their employees a livable wage and healthcare, it might reduce the Medicaid costs in this state significantly. When your primary care physician is the ER, you don't see a doctor early enough on chronic diseases and in this time of concern about terrorism, there could be a wide-spread epidemic because all you would have to do is get a couple of lower paid check-out clerks in major chains infected and it would go viral before anyone got sick enough to go to a doctor.
Posted by couldn't be better]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 07:51:27 -0600 Arkansas Times
"Even though Facebook (FB) reported $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations in 2012, it will probably pay zero federal and state taxes—and even receive a federal tax refund of about $429 million—according to a Feb. 14 statement from Citizens for Tax Justice."

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-…
Posted by the outlier]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2013 07:29:29 -0600 Arkansas Times