I had another dream, I had another life
We’ve written a lot about minimum wage hikes here at Difficult Run. Here’s another to add to the list: economist David Neumark (who has published extensively on minimum wage) has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal arguing that minimum hikes may indeed go to low-wage workers, this very different from saying they go to … Read more
We’ve written critically about the proposal to raise the minimum wage here at Difficult Run before. (Quite a lot, in fact.) In one of the first pieces I wrote back in February I pointed out that there are basically three criticisms of the minimum wage hikes. By raising the cost of labor, they eliminate jobs. … Read more
Yesterday the CBO released an analysis of the President’s proposal to hike minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016, and it was more or less a political disaster for the Obama Administration. Why? Because the report indicated that approximately 500,000 jobs would likely be lost due to the impact of the minimum wage hike, leading to … Read more
I’ve written about my criticisms of minimum wage a couple of times already. (Walker has weighed in as well.) Here’s a good article, posted by Michigan economist Miles Kimball but quoting fellow professor Jeff Smith, on reasons why Jeff Smith refuses to sign a petition supporting a raise in the minimum wage. His concerns are: … Read more
Nathaniel recently argued that minimum wage hikes were dumb, largely due to the policy harming those it intends to help. New research (2012 working paper version here) examines turnover rates in relation to minimum wage increases. The researchers find that when the minimum wage is higher, all low educated workers face jobs that are more … Read more
Greg Mankiw tipped me off to a report by David R. Henderson about where the benefits of minimum wage go. Highlights? Only 11.3 percent of workers who would gain from the increase live in households officially defined as poor. A whopping 63.2 percent of workers who would gain were second or even third earners living … Read more
Greg Mankiw points out that the President’s recent remarks about economics research into the impact of increasing minimum wage were somewhat misleading. The President said “there’s no solid evidence that a higher minimum wage costs jobs.” That makes it sound as though the concern is a mere ideological fabrication. In reality, however, it’s a hotly … Read more
One of the perennial conflicts between left and right in the United States is over minimum wage. The left insists that it’s a crime (at least morally) for companies to pay their employees less than a living wage and lauds companies that have business models based on paying workers well (or “fairly”, as those on … Read more
I’ve been a huge fan of Bryan Caplan since “The Myth of the Rational Voter” fundamentally changed the way I think about politics, voting, and democracies. I still haven’t read “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids”, but I can’t wait to get started. In the meantime, however, here is an excellent article from Caplan about … Read more
President Obama made a surprise call to increase the national minimum wage to $9 per hour. Is that actually a good idea? Becker and Posner took the issue on directly. Becker writes in a measured, but skeptical tone: The two main issues debated are the effects of a higher minimum on employment of the low … Read more
