Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

One of the biggest opponent of minimum wage increase are the one who's in that category.

43% of Ohio voters voted against their own interest last week. Majority of them are in lower side of the income.




>43% of Ohio voters voted against their own interest last week. Majority of them are in lower side of the income.

What makes you think that raising the minimum wage would be in their interest? A comprehensive study[1] that factored in hours worked found that even though average hourly wage increased, hours worked went down, so total pay actually went down.

[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w23532


Since that study, pretty much all blue states had significant increase in minimum wage. Even in red states, the minimum wage has gone up and yet unemployment is historically low.


1. If you don't see any problem with this line of reasoning, I invite you to look at the unemployment rate after the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was passed.

2. Looking at "unemployment" is what the study was specifically trying to avoid, because you could cut someone's hours but keep them on payroll. If you only looked at unemployment figures and average hourly wages, you might conclude that raising the minimum wage was an unalloyed good. However, if you drilled down to hours worked you'd see that they were taking home less per week.


"lower side of income" != minimum wage


"lower side of income" means they are roughly linked to minimum wage. For instance, when I worked at a gas station as a kid, I explicitly got a wage $1 more per hour than minimum wage. Even if it's not so explicitly linked, the implicit link is there on all low end hourly jobs. If a wage goes from significantly above minimum wage to just barely above minimum wage due to a minimum wage change and the employer doesn't raise to match, they are going to have retention and recruitment troubles.


Minimum wage has no effect on inflation huh?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: