
A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news - dalfonso
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=.cded324bd79c
======
lend000
The problem I have with the minimum wage is that it transfers wealth from the
very poorest to the mid-working class/lower middle class.

Who am I to tell a homeless person that she is legally forbidden to engage in
a voluntary, hourly employment contract for less than $15/hr? I would
effectively be guaranteeing that she stays unemployed/homeless. Regardless of
practical effects (which are ambiguous at best), it's wrong on moral grounds.

On the other hand, the minimum wage definitely benefits middle class teenagers
on their first jobs (if they can get a job), and has questionable benefit for
millennial humanities college grads who have yet to start a career. For them,
the higher wage comes with fewer hours, according to this study.

In the long run though, the more we raise the minimum wage, the sooner the
local price inflation catches up. Getting a casual meal in Seattle is NOT
cheap right now.

EDIT: I'll throw in that I think a very basic income with no minimum
wage/unemployment/other welfare is much smarter fiscally and economically, and
is the only way to largely eliminate extreme poverty. And it's sad that HN
readers flagged this article because it challenges a conventional liberal
talking point.

~~~
coldpie
> On the other hand, the minimum wage definitely benefits middle class
> teenagers on their first jobs (if they can get a job), and has questionable
> benefit for millennial humanities college grads who have yet to start a
> career.

This is the problem. Everyone working 40 hours per week deserves a living
wage, whether they're fresh out of high school or 8 years into a humanities
degree. There's this weird sense out there that working in food service isn't
a "real job," or as you say they haven't started their "career." This is how
you end up with people working 60 or 80 hour work weeks, or two or three jobs,
to provide for themselves and their family. Every 40 hour job is a "real job"
and deserves a living wage. Otherwise you're just making people depend on our
social safety net, and no one wants that.

~~~
dreta
>Everyone working 40 hours per week deserves a living wage (...)

You can earn a living wage for 40 hours a week doing anything in the US. You
just can't afford a new iPhone. All the minimum wage does is makes it
impossible to employ low-skill workers. So while before the minimum wage you
could make a living, now you either can't make a living or you're effectively
in the lower middle class.

Ask your dad or granddad what they had to go through to get you to a position
where you think 15$ an hour is merely a "living wage".

~~~
nkoren
> You just can't afford a new iPhone.

Or a home. Or a car. Or healthcare. The idea that minimum-wage life in America
is in any way up to developed-world standards is horribly, laughably,
tragically wrong.

Not saying that minimum wage is the answer. Personally, I support abolishing
it in favor of a Universal basic Income. But suggesting that the problem it is
trying to address _isn 't even real_ is... just not correct.

~~~
dreta
Yes, it does afford you healthcare the way US works right now, if it doesn't,
that's a failing of Obamacare. Also, you want to be able to afford a car and a
home by working at McDonald's? What are you talking about? And your solution
is to not even have people work, just be given money. That's borderline
insane. What cozy life do you have to be living to think that you're entitled
to these things.

~~~
coldpie
You support, and vote for, universal healthcare and advanced and subsidized
public transportation systems, right?

------
tptacek
I really dislike this framing. By any contemporary definition I'm a "liberal":

* I support higher taxes, particularly on higher income people, almost for its own sake.

* I oppose almost all military intervention abroad.

* I believe the federal government needs to intervene with local governments to prevent police abuses.

* I strongly support public schools and oppose public-funded charters.

... and I could go on and on this way.

On the other hand, I _do not_ believe in a high national minimum wage, or in a
small number of other "liberal" orthodoxies^h^h^h^h^h _idees fixes_ (like
universal college tuition, or single-payer health care).

Why am I meant to feel like my "team" lost something when a study confirms
something that most economists have been saying for decades?

~~~
rsync
"Why am I meant to feel like my "team" lost something when a study confirms
something that most economists have been saying for decades?"

Because that "team" did, in fact, lose something - at least in relation to the
very cynical (and probably correct) charge that minimum wage increases are
vote-buying.

Also, I think it's worth considering that the very sound and considerable
notion that "a wage price floor causes all other prices to catch up" is
probably lumped right in with "the government collects the same amount of
revenue at this point on the curve as on this point of the curve"[1][2]. Since
that "team" is vehemently opposed to the Laffer Curve it's not surprising that
they'd be vehemently opposed to other "voo doo economics".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA)
(jump to :37)

~~~
tptacek
See, this is exactly what I mean. I'm a liberal. This study is not bad news
for me. It does not follow that I somehow support supply-side economics.
Literally the first bullet point I chose to wrote in describing myself as a
liberal implies directly that I do not believe in supply-side policy. But your
comment is written in such a way as to suggest that those are the only two
options.

~~~
rsync
I'm sorry - that's not what I meant.

What I was trying to say was: "people who think (that team) is losing might be
having a knee-jerk response to a (mistaken) link in their own minds between
wage price floor theories and supply side economic theories".

No, I don't think they are the only two options and further I don't think they
are related at all.

------
startupdiscuss
"In particular, to avoid confusing establishments that were subject to the
minimum with those that were not, the authors did not include large employers
with locations both inside and outside of Seattle in their calculations.
Skeptics argued that omission could explain the unusual results."

~~~
surfmike
Quote from study: "as shown in Table 2, in Washington State as a whole,
single-site businesses comprise 89% of firms and employ 62% of the entire
workforce (which includes 2.7 million employees in an average quarter)" [2].

------
runako
>> to avoid confusing establishments that were subject to the minimum with
those that were not, the authors did not include large employers with
locations both inside and outside of Seattle in their calculations.

I read this to mean that the study therefore would exclude employers such as
Seattle-based Starbucks, Seattle-based Amazon, Seattle-based Costco, Seattle-
based Nordstrom, McDonald's, etc. Based on that reading, it seems like quite a
leap to draw any conclusions from this data.

Am I reading this incorrectly?

~~~
rukittenme
I'm not intelligent enough to say either way. I do think that excluding them
was a good idea. If the only businesses that can survive a law are massive
multi-national corporations, we've got a problem...

~~~
runako
That's a separate issue, also worthy of study.

But it does seem ridiculous to assume the validity of a study of low-wage
workers in Seattle while omitting data from companies like Starbucks that
presumably employ many people affected by the change.

~~~
surfmike
The reason they excluded it was because the data they were provided for those
companies did not differentiate between workers in Seattle and workers
outside. That said the economics of hiring an extra shouldn't be significantly
different for a big company. Costco and Starbucks probably have some wiggle
room to cut down on the number of staff at a certain time.

Also, to quote from the study: "as shown in Table 2, in Washington State as a
whole, single-site businesses comprise 89% of firms and employ 62% of the
entire workforce (which includes 2.7 million employees in an average quarter)"
[2]."

------
zeteo
> raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per
> hour in 2016.

> we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in
> low-wage jobs [...] while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3
> percent.

Sounds like some pretty intense statistical manipulation. The second wage
increase was ~18% ($2/$11) not 3%. So they've fished for a larger pool that
only had a 3% increase in wage and arbitrarily designated these as "low-wage
jobs". Also very conveniently they've chosen to highlight only the second wage
increase; it sounds like no data massaging could make the first one look bad.
If they were honestly aiming at statistical significance the best approach was
of course to bundle the two increases together. An overall 37% change in
minimum wage should have much clearer effects than its individual halves.

~~~
tptacek
That's the point of the study: the real increase in wages to workers isn't the
nominal statutory increase. For example, many people in the low-wage labor
market in Seattle were already making more than the minimum wage.

~~~
zeteo
Sure, but when the nominal increase is 18% and the selected group only shows
3% there's a big question about group selection. If you can cherry pick groups
and variables then you can use phenomena like Simpson's paradox to prove
pretty much anything with statistics.

------
JumpCrisscross
"Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below
a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13
reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages
in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell
for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage
employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence
attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an
effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all
wage levels, comparable to many prior studies."

[http://nber.org/papers/w23532](http://nber.org/papers/w23532)

------
hirundo
Opponents of a minimum wage need only believe that increasing the price of a
thing tends to proportionally decrease the demand for that thing. This is
simply a statement of the law of supply and demand, which is (though weaker)
the economic equivalent of physics' F=MA.

Proponents of a minimum wage need to believe that in this particular case,
raising a price does not proportionally decrease demand. While this may be
true (economics ain't physics), the burden of proof lies with the proponents,
since it would be a contradiction of probably the most well established "law"
of economics.

If you feel that the data in this and similar studies are inconclusive, to the
extent that you respect the discipline of economics, you should oppose a
minimum wage.

~~~
PatentTroll
Your conclusion lies on the assumption that rational economists must oppose
any measure which decreases demand.

~~~
hirundo
This particular decrease of demand is of work hour and jobs, and thus an
increase in misery of particularly vulnerable people. If an economist is both
rational and compassionate, they would need to believe that such price fixing
has benefits that outweigh the increased misery.

I'm not familiar with those offsetting benefits. If they exist, please
enlighten me.

------
coldcode
Looks like the "credible" report is an approximation of a series of guesses
and omissions. Measuring economic impact of almost anything is difficult but
this one seems more vague than usual. If you want to discuss overall impact,
you can't simply leave out things that are hard to measure but still wind up
with a solid conclusion.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _If you want to discuss overall impact, you can 't simply leave out things
> that are hard to measure_

They're not leaving out things that are "hard to measure." They're being
honest about the limitations of their data:

"Employers are required to report actual hours worked for employees whose
hours are tracked (i.e. hourly workers), and report either actual hours worked
or total number of hours assuming a 40 hour work week for employees whose
hours are not tracked (i.e. salaried workers)" [1].

These data allow these researchers to make incredibly accurate measurements
about the price and quantity demanded of labour. Because "the data identify
business entities as [unemployment insurance] account holders...firms with
multiple locations have the option of establishing a separate account for each
location, or a common account." This means the researchers could only
"identify business location only for single-site firms and those multi-site
firms opting for separate accounts by location." Excluding multi-site single-
account businesses from the analysis avoided muddying the precision of the
hourly and quarterly wage data with geographic uncertainty.

In any case, the study only purports to measure employment effects amongst
"single-site businesses," which "as shown in Table 2, in Washington State as a
whole, single-site businesses comprise 89% of firms and employ 62% of the
entire workforce (which includes 2.7 million employees in an average quarter)"
[2].

[1]
[http://www.nber.org/papers/w23532.pdf](http://www.nber.org/papers/w23532.pdf)
_page 13_

[2] _page 14_

------
austincheney
tldr;

* The study uses more precise data than similar prior studies and comes to a sharply different conclusion.

* Economists generally want to disbelieve this study, because the results aren't promising, but the method used is largely credible and the data is more precise.

* The impact, according to the study, is that to compensate for the higher wages employers are continuing to hire but only highly skilled candidates thereby displacing the lowest wage earners or "removing the bottom rung".

~~~
tptacek
"Economists" want to disbelieve the study? Can you support that with evidence?
There are definitely liberal economists and conservative economists, but I
don't think it's at all clear that the mainstream of economists broadly
support a sharply increased minimum wage.

~~~
austincheney
Nope. It is the sensation I (myself) got from reading the article.

------
atemerev
There is an excellent free (and very short) book, "Economics in one lesson" by
Henry Hazlitt, which explains very logically why minimum wage, rent controls
and other "band-aid" economical measures always end badly:

[https://mises.org/system/tdf/Henry%20Hazlitt%20Economics%20i...](https://mises.org/system/tdf/Henry%20Hazlitt%20Economics%20in%20One%20Lesson.pdf?file=1&type=document)

It is like 2-hour reading, but very enlightening.

~~~
taw55
And very ideologically biased...

~~~
greggyb
And yet presents a framework of analysis that is objective and a case study in
the application of bias to an objective technique.

The lesson of the book is more than the ideology of its author.

It is hubris or naivete in the extreme to assume that someone you disagree
with has nothing valuable to say.

~~~
taw55
Austrian economics is not "objective".

~~~
greggyb
> > It is hubris or naivete in the extreme to assume that someone you disagree
> with has nothing valuable to say.

You think you disagree with me, and you clearly disagree with Austrian
economics. Yet, with less than one page's worth of reading, you can identify
the core lesson of the book, excerpted below. That the author then applies
this lesson in ways you find objectionable is no judgment on the lesson
itself.

Chapter 1, Paragraph 1:

    
    
        While  certain  public  policies  would  in  the  long
        run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one
        group only at the expense  of  all  other  groups. The
        group  that  would  benefit  by  such policies, having
        such a direct interest in them, will argue for them
        plausibly and persistently.
    

Chapter 1, Paragraph 2:

    
    
        there is a second main factor that spawns new economic
        fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of
        men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy,
        or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect
        to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will
        be not only on that special group but on all groups. It
        is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.
    

In case you feel any desire to actually engage with the ideas of the book, it
can be read for free, in full, here: [https://www.mises.org/library/economics-
one-lesson](https://www.mises.org/library/economics-one-lesson)

------
kccqzy
I sometimes really like the approach in Singapore better. Instead of mandating
a minimum wage, which essentially tells businesses that they have pay their
workers a minimum, the businesses can pay their workers at the market rate and
the government gives the workers extra income-based subsidy. This strikes me
as better than minimum wage: operating costs for businesses remain the same,
yet workers have the equivalent of a minimum wage.

------
blacksqr
"employment overall did not change"

"The number of workers making over $19 an hour increased abruptly"

This is the bad news.

~~~
rayiner
No, this is the bad news:

> The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio
> of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists
> at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city.

~~~
WalterBright
> were commissioned by the city.

We'll see if the city ever commissions them again!

------
davidw
I find this to be credible - at some level, it'll certainly hurt. The problem
as I see it is that some people say "aha, see, that doesn't work", but then
stop there. There is a real problem in that _some people_ (not all who make
minimum wage, and not only those who make minimum wage) have real problems
making ends meet. What's the best way to help them?

~~~
dtehranian
Many have trouble making ends-meat because they lack skills that the market
will pay for. Long term solution: Get more people skills that employers will
pay for.

Another solution to help low wage/low skilled workers, is a negative tax rate:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit)

~~~
bradleyjg
The problem with a negative income tax, especially when coupled with many
other means tested programs at the state and federal level, is that you create
a situation where there are very high effective marginal tax rates. Sometimes
even exceeding 100%.

------
noodle
So low wage workers are getting cut but unemployment is still at 3.2%? Which
is ~1.5% lower than the national average?

Kind of sounds like this study might be looking at only half the story.

~~~
thehardsphere
The unemployment rate only counts people looking for work. If they quit the
labor force completely, they're no longer counted as unemployed.

Minimum wage workers are usually the lowest skilled workers in the economy.
When they're displaced they have the fewest alternative jobs available to
them, so they tend to drop out of the labor force. Either temporarily, while
they go and learn new skills, or permanently.

~~~
noodle
But that's really flexible, though, right? If a lot of people lost their jobs
from minimum wage increases, wouldn't you expect the unemployment rate to
increase at least temporarily around the same time while they initially look
for new work before falling out of the market?

------
PKop
"On the whole, the study estimates, the average low-wage worker in the city
lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum."

------
dahart
> On the whole, the study estimates, the average low-wage worker in the city
> lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum.

This study seems interesting, and I'm open to the idea that this wage hike and
it's effects could be an example of unintended consequences. But more than
anything else in the article, the above quote rubs me the wrong way. Based
only on what is reported in the article, this appears to be an abuse of
statistics. They intentionally left out large employers, and are focusing on a
narrowing wage range, so you can't say _anything_ about the effect on the
average low-wage worker. Not only that, it's a purely bimodal distribution. If
what this study says is true, then there were no people who lost $125, there
were people who gained some money, and people who lost jobs, and nothing in
between. It's so misleading to cite an average.

------
alexandercrohde
I think people are missing the forest for a single tree. Minimum wage is just
a small token in the larger discussion of distribution of wealth. Minimum wage
is a _means_ to solve the fact that incompetent people monopolize wealth
through political connections and spent it on yachts while other people just
as smart and motivated try to pay off their college debt.

Let's not make this an "us" and "them" issue. A study can cast doubt on a
means, but not on an ends. The fact is that those low-skill jobs will
disappear, McDonalds is already replacing its employees with self-order
kiosks, Uber isn't trying to hide its plans.

Minimum wage is not the answer, because it doesn't go far enough. Minimum wage
doesn't work? Great, let's do universal basic income then.

------
Kiro
The successful Scandinavian model doesn't have any minimum wages for a reason.

~~~
gaius
Nor does Germany with some of the best working conditions in the world...

~~~
falcolas
What Germany does have is a better social safety net so such minimums are not
required to pay for basic needs.

A minimum wage worker in the US is likely working 2-3 such jobs to cover food,
rent, and other such necessities.

~~~
thehardsphere
Minimums weren't imposed help people to meet basic needs. They were imposed to
keep Chinese immigrants from participating in the labor market.

~~~
falcolas
I would be super curious to look at the source on that. And, for whatever
reason they were imposed, they are currently used to help people meet those
basic needs. Should there be another mechanism to help people meet those
needs? I think so, but that's another discussion topic entirely.

------
vcdimension
Its interesting that none of the "welfare state" economies of Scandinavia have
minimum wage laws. Instead they allow collective bargaining by unions.

~~~
thehardsphere
How is it that collective bargaining by unions relevant?

I mean, we have collective bargaining in the US, so I'm trying to understand
how exactly that is different from Scandinavia.

~~~
vcdimension
I think you have more anti-union laws in some US states, such as Michigan and
Wisconsin.

~~~
thehardsphere
Well, OK, but I think Washington is not one of those states. So, again, how is
it relevant?

~~~
vcdimension
Because if other states which do have anti-union laws are thinking about
imposing minimum wage laws to improve the lives of low wage workers they might
want to think again. Scandinavia is often upheld as a model for low levels of
inequality and high standards of living. I'm sure there are plenty of other
things to take into account, but it was just a simple observation.

~~~
dragonwriter
Seattle is not a state; there are reasons to think that local minimum wage
increases have different effects than statewide increases, which have
different effects than national increases. Each time you increase the size of
the jurisdiction, the opportunity for business to simply reroute to a lower
cost jurisdiction (or entities not impacted by the smallwr-jurisdiction rule
even if located in the jurisdiction) is reduced.

~~~
vcdimension
Yes, and as with all previous statistical studies on minimum wage there are
other caveats aswell. I think the main one is the fact that the minimum wage
is so much higher in Seattle than elsewhere:
[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/seattles-minimum-
wage-h...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/seattles-minimum-wage-hike-
may-have-gone-too-far/) However, this appears to be the best study so far.

------
lukeschlather
It sounds like the study doesn't take into account cost of living. Even for a
minimum wage employee, time is money. Assume for the sake of argument that
this study accurately describes wage losses. [1]

Assume that the average minimum wage worker was working 2 different jobs for a
total of 40 hours a week with no benefits. That's a total of 160 hours a
month, or $1440. A loss of $125/month equates to $1315, or 102 hours a month
at $13/hour. [1] So the worker loses $125/month and gains 58 hours. To
translate that into one dollars example, childcare in Seattle costs around
$10/hour.

There are of course lots of ways to save money with that free time. More sleep
means fewer minor accidents leading to injury and sickness around the house.
Childcare costs around $10/hour in this city, so by that metric there was
basically no point in going to work before this wage increase if you had
children to take care of. Saving 50 hours of work equates to saving $500
dollars. Obviously, it's not going to be 1:1, but even assuming you were
spending just 15 hours in childcare would make our hypothetical worker better
off, with an extra 35 hours to go to school, or just relax and keep their
health.

[1] It sounds like this study is looking only at small businesses, for whom
the rate is $13/hour. Since it ignores most businesses that actually must pay
$15/hour, the headline seems wrong by definition.

~~~
thehardsphere
Oh, I see, so, the poor people who work to live should be thankful that they
can do their own childcare now that they've been comdemned to never be
employed again because nobody wants to pay them $15/hour.

Do you realize how privileged you sound saying this? Do you really think these
people made enough money to pay for child care to "enjoy" the cost savings now
that they're sitting around at home? What does America look like from inside
your limousine? Do you have any Grey Poupon?

------
harimau777
This seems like an interesting study, but I'm not sure its conclusion makes
sense to me. Am I understanding the facts correctly:

1\. Employment stayed about the same.

2\. Employees overall were payed a lot more.

3\. The number of low wage employees (which I assume means those making the
new minimum wage) dropped. However employees overall were payed more. My
understanding is that this means that employers switched to paying more of
their employers above the minimum wage.

4\. They say that the average low payed employee made $125 less. However, its
not clear to me what that means in light of the other points.

5\. The study did not include larger corporations that have employees in
multiple cities.

Several different interpretations were suggested:

1\. Companies are hiring more skilled employees for higher wages and pushing
less skilled employees out of the market.

2\. Small businesses are being hurt and large businesses are taking their
place.

3\. Companies are paying employees more.

4\. The results are due to some aspect of the economy that wasn't controlled
for.

It seems to me that the conclusion that this is bad for those who advocate for
higher minimum wages isn't very strong unless they could show that it was
actually pushing low skilled employees out of the market.

~~~
surfmike
I think your assumption (1) is incorrect. Quote from article: "They've cut
their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their
workers go, the study found."

~~~
thehardsphere
Also, the unemployment rate does not count individuals who have dropped out of
the labor force completely, which displaced low skill workers are especially
likely to do.

If there are labor participation rate statistics available (probably not yet),
you'd see the drop there.

------
dixie_land
A local bar I favor added a 5%! "minimum wage surcharge". It's just an excuse
for business to raise prices without actually improving the income of the
servers. (Let's be realistic the 5% is not gonna go all to the servers and
people will tip less out of spite)

------
miguelrochefort
> Who am I to tell a homeless person that she is legally forbidden to engage
> in a voluntary, hourly employment contract for less than $15/hr?

Very eloquent.

------
petraeus
The truth is those jobs will just go to automation resulting in negative
benefits for those making under $15 currently.

------
wnevets
All of the economists said Ford was nuts for offering higher wages and less
hours. I would argue it worked well.

------
itsdrewmiller
Whatever the underlying paper says, this article is terrible. It never
explains why a bunch of low paying jobs being replaced with the same number of
high paying ones is bad, other than some hand-waving about low skilled workers
being left out. Where did all these new high skilled workers come from?

------
gbacon
Why is this post flagged?

------
em3rgent0rdr
also what is not being talked about is these lost jobs are going to automation
anyway. Increasing the minimum wage simply hastens the transition.

------
adamsea
Article says the stdy is not peer reviewed yet

------
davidf18
[http://www.nber.org/papers/w23532](http://www.nber.org/papers/w23532)

At my local grocer in Manhattan, some prices suddenly went up 25% or more on a
number of items and I was told by a senior manager of the food store chain (I
was calling to complain about something else and inquired) who said it was
because of the first minimum wage increase for not only the stores but the
distributors which are also located in NY State.

NY State passed a minimum wage from $11 to $13 to $15 by 2018 or so. The
current rate is $11.

A lot of people receive food stamps and/or are on a fixed income (think
retirees) and this puts a substantial increase in their cost of living. This
is only the first hike. One can only imagine how much higher food prices will
be when it finally goes up to $15.

Meanwhile neither NY State nor NY City has dealt with the real problem which
is the high cost of living which is very hard on low-wage people in particular
because of zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark
status. These zoning density restrictions are a huge windfall for wealthy
landlords as they make renters pay far, far higher rates for apartments than
they would in an efficient market. It is a huge regressive "tax" that makes
landlords like Donald Trump far wealthier than they otherwise would be in a
efficient, functioning real estate market.

------
SomeStupidPoint
> In particular, to avoid confusing establishments that were subject to the
> minimum with those that were not, the authors did not include large
> employers with locations both inside and outside of Seattle in their
> calculations.

Wait, so are places like corporate McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, etc excluded
from the study? ...What about grocery stores? ...Clothing stores, mall shops,
etc?

It seems like failing to include those would be a _major_ bias in the effects
of the study.

Edit:

"Indeed, while employment overall did not change, that was because employers
replaced low-paying jobs with high-paying jobs. The number of workers making
over $19 an hour increased abruptly, while the number making less than that
amount declined, Vigdor and his colleagues found.

Vigdor said that restaurateurs in Seattle -- along with other employers --
responded to the minimum wage by hiring more skilled and experienced workers,
who might be able to produce more revenue for their firms in the same amount
of time."

Oh, so their "loss" to low-paying jobs can be explained by a rise in jobs
paying above their cutoff for "low-paying"?

I have a lot of questions about this study; particularly since it doesn't
agree with the other study mentioned in the article (with this study using
"new" methods and the other using more "traditional" methods).

------
douche
Granted, I'm a redneck from the back woods, but there are lots of people I
know that don't make $15/hour in skilled trades, let alone minimum wage jobs.
If you're going to pay minimum wage of $15, then all other wagesshould
correspondingly increase

------
accountyaccount
Probably an unpopular opinion, but: Isn't raising the minimum essentially
trying to save a sinking ship by adding more water to the ocean?

Seems like time would be better spent ensuring that everyone has food,
housing, and healthcare no matter what they do (easier said than done, of
course).

~~~
thehardsphere
It's more like trying to save a sinking ship by telling the crew on the ship
they can only use high-quality licensed ship repair equipment, instead
patching the holes with whatever they can improvise.

Yes, it would be better if they used high quality hull repair equipment, but
sometimes it's not available and insisting that's the only thing you're
allowed to use while the ship is sinking and people are struggling to survive
is not helpful at all.

~~~
accountyaccount
Yeah, fair. People need help now. But how long can we continue kicking this
problem down the road. We need to tie this thing to inflation or just admit
that it's not the solution.

~~~
thehardsphere
It was never the solution. It's actively making things worse for most of the
people it was claimed to be intended to help. Tying it to inflation is just
going to make displacement of low skilled workers increase automatically every
year.

------
CiPHPerCoder
.

~~~
thehardsphere
Ok, your moralizing tone is condescending, it is rude to pretend to "ask
questions" when you're really pushing a thesis, and the thesis you are
presenting has no explanatory power. Thus addressing those "questions" is
largely uninteresting.

------
c0nducktr
If your business cannot pay employees a livable wage, it does not deserve to
exist.

~~~
bpicolo
Thanks largely to the internet, fewer and fewer can.

------
Apreche
Uh, businesses. You are supposed to raise prices, effectively taxing those
rich customers. Did you forget that part?

~~~
CompanionCuuube
Uh, if they raise prices, you're effectively taxing ALL customers. That's why
consumption based taxes are worse for the mid to low wealth consumer, a
greater share of their income is spent on consumption. You'd have to find out
which products the rich customers are buying exclusively and increase the
prices on those.

