Archive for the 'Minimum Wage' Category
Feb6th2007
Jan25th2007
Historically Low Minimum Wage, Historically Low Unemployment
Published by in Economics, General and Minimum Wage. 4 CommentsThe Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently released its unemployment rate for the year and a look at the report, see here, shows that many states (15 or so) have reached or surpassed their historically lowest unemployment level on record.
Is it a mere coincidence that at a time when the minimum wage is at a […]
Jan24th2007
The Minority Case Against The Minimum Wage
Published by in Discrimination, Economics, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues), Minimum Wage, Personal and Poverty. 14 CommentsMost of you have heard the standard arguments against the minimum wage - that it is a weak poverty reduction tool, it increases prices, increases unemployment, hurts small businesses, makes the economy less efficient, etc, etc, but what I want to write about today is the harm done by the minimum wage that is least […]
Jan15th2007
“Politicians like the minimum wage because the cost of financing it is paid by three groups—the workers (in the form of lower employment), employers (in the form of lower profits) and consumers (in the form of higher prices). Missing from that list is taxpayers—so for politicians, if the negative effects are hidden from most voters, […]
Jan8th2007
The Contradictions Of The Minimum Wage
Published by in Economics, General and Minimum Wage. 0 CommentsGreg Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard University, writes on the contradictions of the minimum wage:
Consider this policy aimed to help workers at the bottom of the income distribution:
1. A wage subsidy for unskilled workers, paid for by
2. A tax on employers who hire unskilled workers.
Now, if you think like an economist, you might wonder […]
Jan5th2007
“The reason I am a Republican is that, compared to Democrats, the Republicans tend to favor smaller government, lower taxes, and greater reliance on free markets. On many social issues, I find myself agreeing with the Democrats more than the Republicans, and I know that the Republicans are far from perfect on economic issues. (Don’t […]
Dec22nd2006
“It seems very likely to me that the small number of people made redundant as a result of a modest minimum wage hike are very likely to be the worst off of the poor: convicted felons, recovering drug addicts, welfare mothers, the cognitively disabled, high school dropouts, those whose backgrounds were too chaotic to impart […]
Dec15th2006
“A recent petition by over 600 economists, including 5 Nobel Laureates in Economics, advocated a phased-in rise in the federal minimum wage to a much higher $7.25 per hour from the present $5.15 per hour. This petition received much attention, and the number of economists signing is impressive (and depressing). Still, the American Economic Association […]
Dec13th2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, General, Minimum Wage, Poverty and Unions. 0 Comments“As a means of raising people from poverty or near poverty, the minimum wage is distinctly inferior to the Earned Income Tax Credit, which compensates for low wages without interfering with the labor market…So why are the Democrats pushing to increase the minimum wage rather than to make EITC more generous? Three reasons can be […]
Dec5th2006
“The most reliable and effective protection for most workers is provided by the existence of many employers. As we have seen, a person who has only one possible employer has little or no protection. The employers who protect a worker are those who would like to hire him. Their demand for his services makes it […]
Nov28th2006
“An increase in the minimum wage has several distinctive negative effects on the economy. While the wages of some low skilled workers would improve, it would reduce employment opportunities for teenagers and other lower skilled workers. They are pushed either into unemployment or the underground economy. A bigger minimum also raises prices of fast foods […]
Nov16th2006
The WSJ Explains The Harm Of The Minimum Wage In Simple Terms
Published by in Economics, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and Minimum Wage. 10 CommentsSo simple even Nancy Pelosi could understand:
Classical economics teaches that for a given job, there is a market-clearing price — the price at which both someone is willing to do it and someone else is willing to pay them to do it. If you raise the legal minimum above that price, you may get […]
Nov1st2006
David Neumark, an economics professor at UC Irvine, writes:
The central goal of raising the minimum wage is to raise incomes of low-income families and reduce poverty. There are three reasons why raising the minimum may not help to achieve this goal. First, a higher minimum wage may discourage employers from using the very low-wage, […]
Oct24th2006
‘The minimum wage is a blunt instrument for reducing overall poverty, however, because many minimum-wage earners are not in poverty and because many of those in poverty are not connected to the labor market. We calculate that the 90-cent increase in the minimum wage between 1989 and 1991 transferred roughly $5.5 billion to low-wage workers…. […]
Oct9th2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in Economics, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and Minimum Wage. 0 Comments“Poor people are not poor because of low wages. For the most part, they’re poor because of low productivity, and wages are connected to productivity. The effect of minimum wages is that of causing unemployment among low-skilled workers. If an employer must pay $5.15 an hour, plus mandated fringes that might bring the employment cost […]
Sep19th2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, General, Minimum Wage and Wal-Mart. 17 Comments“The nonsense we hear from liberals about “living wages” at Walmart is just another example of liberals trying to babysit everybody with their dumb economic ideas. Ideas which can be tested very easily, by the way. If Walmart isn’t paying enough, they should have a hard time filling openings, but if people are willing to […]
