Oh, boy. Here we go.
Oh, boy. Here we go.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/?utm_term=.8e4f88c00437
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/?utm_term=.8e4f88c00437
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/?utm_term=.8e4f88c00437
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/?utm_term=.8e4f88c00437
As usual, the headline is click-bait.
ReplyDeleteWhat's actually happening may be far more interesting: as noted, total employment didn't significantly change among the isolated group of small employers (excluding large employers) studied. The minimum wage jobs that disappeared were replaced by higher wage jobs. There weren't fewer employees among the small firms studied - the average wages simply went up. But where did those workers come from?
The answer in part might come from the other element of the study - the fact they didn't include larger employers (given challenges in normalizing that data). Larger employers who hire substantial numbers of minimum wage employees - and who have the larger cash flows and margins to potentially afford to pay them better. If the small firms are poaching experienced workers from the large firms, what are the large firms doing to fill those holes? The answer might very well be that the large firms which can better afford to pay minimum wage, do. It's not completely clear.
Point is - as the authors of the study appropriately note, even if the headline doesn't - there's a lot of complexity at play. Peer review - not yet completed - will help us understand what's going on, and how we can get more accurate picture of whether Seattle workers as a whole are net better off.
But there's certainly something suspicious about cherry-picking one isolated component, from a pre-peer-reviewed paper. The truth, I suspect, will be far richer, and far more interesting.
I just meant the spinning and hawking on one side and another to claim their viewpoint is now supported or here's why it isn't true. And legislators and Congress and who knows who else will be leveraging this and scaremongering it.
ReplyDeleteEconomics is less objective than most of the Science stuff I critique for how it ends up in the public press. This is just going to turn into another red vs. blue political gaming strategy that doesn't really care much about what happens to actual people.
I mean, it's ok if I"m wrong. I just don't expect there to be much cooler heads prevailing.
True that. I mean, if we in America let reason guide our policy making, we wouldn't have eight states in an ostensibly 1st world nation with life expectancies for whites no better than - or worse - than Mexico...
ReplyDelete