
Minimum wage hikes in six cities: big impact on pay, none on jobs - LiamBoogar
http://news.berkeley.edu/story_jump/minimum-wage-hikes-in-six-cities-big-impact-on-pay-none-on-jobs/
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poilcn
From the web: «In March 2016, the Albany Times Union reported on hundreds of
pages of emails from Reich’s research team that showed a close collaboration
between the research team and labor union groups that fund the movement to
raise the minimum wage. According to the article, “the relationship between
academic and funder seemed explicit” with one uncovered email showing that the
research team was seeking grant money to support its research "for local
groups engaged in work to raise the minimum wage" and “testimony/media work”
in California.» «In July 2017, Seattle Weekly reported it had obtained emails
through a public disclosure request showing that Reich had coordinated a June
2017 Seattle minimum wage study with a minimum wage advocacy group, a pro
minimum wage public relations firm, and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s staff. The
emails show Reich accelerated the timeline of his report to preempt a soon to
be released University of Washington study that came to the opposite
conclusion.»

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FranzFerdiNaN
Oh really? It was all just scaremongering from employers because they would
have to share a little bit of profit with workers? Who would have thought.

Workers wages are literally decades behind the growth of productivity, with
all of it taken by employers. amAnd yet enployers keep screaming about how
unfair it is they have to pay a wage that is barely livable for tens of
millions of people. It’s disgusting and a failure of our entire economic
system.

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informatimago
Yes, really. To understand it, just change the currency, where 1 minimum wage
is the unit for every price.

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FranzFerdiNaN
And yet here we are, with corporations having trillions of dollars doing
absolutely nothing of value with it. With central banks printing trillions of
dollars and euros to give to corporations. And yet barely any inflation worth
mentioning. But giving workers a wage to live on? Absolutely impossible, think
of the inflation!

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geezerjay
This isn't news at all. Minimum wage is just a price constraint, and if the
supply/demand equilibrium lies above the minimum wage constraint then the
optimal solution does not change.

Conversely, raising the minimum wage under these circumstances also has
virtually no effect on real income. In fact, under these circumstances workers
who earn minimum wage are far better served by applying and switching to
higher-paying jobs.

Minimum wage levels only impacts economies when they are raised to close to
the economy's supply/demand equilibrium point. Hence, minimum wage starts to
increase unemployment and deflate median wages in recessions when it becomes a
legal impediment to job creation.

