Economics: Minimum Wage, Who Gets Hurt?

[jediuser598]

Here is a CBO study on what would happen if the federal minimum wage was raised:

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995

[Ph64]

I’ve often thought the same about UBI. You think the small segment of the workforce earning minimum wage is going to hurt you with wage increases, what is handing *everyone* with a pulse $1800 a month going to go?

How is that possibly going to shake out other than things costing what they do now, plus prices/inflation taking into account that everyone now has $1800 a month?

It defies logic, and yet ... the proponents of the idea only grow stronger.

“If we raise minimum wage then other jobs need pay increases too, otherwise rising prices whacks us”

“If we give anyone who asks a home loan, housing prices become astronomical”

“When we give federal student loans to pretty much everyone, the cost of education skyrockets!”

“Hey, I have a great idea everyone. Free basic income for everybody, what could go wrong?”

We'll need lots of robots pressing ctrl-P at the Fed continually.

[SuburbanFarmer]

[PartyOf5]

I'm on board for $15 then. If you can make do with fewer employees, great. If anything, it's going to affect Megacorp Inc. 1000x more than ma n' pa, so sign me up.

I say it's the opposite. Megacorps like McDonalds will automate their minimum wage jobs. Mom and Pop or the taco truck on the street won't be able to afford that, so they will raise prices or go out of business.

In the end, $15 will reduce the number of minimum wage jobs from 2% to about .5%.

[PartyOf5]

Will minimum wage raise the price of things like milk?

Well minimum wage right now is 11.50 in my state. Price of milk was 2.38 last I checked? What's the price of milk for you?

What state are you in and where does your milk come from (location, not cows)?

Raise Minimum wage to $15 and your local restaurants will get more expensive to eat at. Or they will just disappear.

[DBTrek]

This endless fascination with milk prices ...

Do cow milkers make or pay minimum wage? No? Then why people expect the price of milk to be a leading economic indicator of the effects of raising minimum wage is a mystery to me.

Why not look at something like ... the hours worked and job growth or loss of minimum wage positions following the change?

[jediuser598]

Will minimum wage raise the price of things like milk?

Well minimum wage right now is 11.50 in my state. Price of milk was 2.38 last I checked? What's the price of milk for you?

What state are you in and where does your milk come from (location, not cows)?

Raise Minimum wage to $15 and your local restaurants will get more expensive to eat at. Or they will just disappear.

Washington State, Winco.

It's been a long time since I've eaten at a local restaurant, I wouldn't know.

Here's the price of a burger near me:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_ ... ngton.html

[PartyOf5]

How many people in this country make less than $15 an hour?

http://fortune.com/2015/04/13/who-makes-15-per-hour/



This as well:

About 20.6 million people (or 30% of all hourly, non-self-employed workers 18 and older) are “near-minimum-wage” workers. We analyzed public-use microdata from the Current Population Survey (the same monthly survey that underpins the BLS’s wage and employment reports), and came up with that estimate of the total number of “near-minimum” U.S. workers – those who make more than the minimum wage in their state but less than $10.10 an hour, and therefore also would benefit if the federal minimum is raised to that amount. The near-minimum-wage workers are young (just under half are 30 or younger), mostly white (76%), and more likely to be female (54%) than male (46%). A majority (56%) have no more than a high-school education.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... imum-wage/

This shows just how absurd $15 an hour min. wage is. Let's suddenly give 42% of U.S> workers a raise. Where do you think that increase will come from? The CEOs salary? Shareholder profits?

Then you have everyone currently making $15 wanting a raise because burger flippers are now making their wage. So you give the $15/hour workers $16. Then the $16 workers want more, and so on. Other countries would love to see us do this. Outsourcing would increase, jobs would be lost, and you'd have the people who lost their former $15/hour jobs now taking the new $15/hour jobs. The burger flipper who demanded $15 is now unemployed because a higher level worker took their job.

[jediuser598]

This endless fascination with milk prices ...

Do cow milkers make or pay minimum wage? No? Then why people expect the price of milk to be a leading economic indicator of the effects of raising minimum wage is a mystery to me.

Why not look at something like ... the hours worked and job growth or loss of minimum wage positions following the change?

I did in fact post the CBO's estimate that if the minimum wage went up to 10.10 it would lose the economy 500,00 jobs. I'll re-link it.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995

Effects of the $10.10 Option on Employment and Income
Once fully implemented in the second half of 2016, the $10.10 option would reduce total employment by about 500,000 workers, or 0.3 percent, CBO projects (see the table below). As with any such estimates, however, the actual losses could be smaller or larger; in CBO’s assessment, there is about a two-thirds chance that the effect would be in the range between a very slight reduction in employment and a reduction in employment of 1.0 million workers.

[jediuser598]

This endless fascination with milk prices ...

Do cow milkers make or pay minimum wage? No? Then why people expect the price of milk to be a leading economic indicator of the effects of raising minimum wage is a mystery to me.

Why not look at something like ... the hours worked and job growth or loss of minimum wage positions following the change?

There is this prevailing myth that if minimum wage goes up, the price of everything else will go up so you'll actually be making nothing more than you used to make when you were making less. That is demonstrably untrue, and the "what's your minimum wage, what's your price of milk?" demonstrates that.