A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news for liberals.
When Seattle officials voted three years ago to incrementally boost the city’s minimum wage up to $15 an hour, they’d hoped to improve the lives of low-income workers. Yet according to a major new study that could force economists to reassess past research on the issue, the hike has had the opposite effect.
The city is gradually increasing the hourly minimum to $15 over several years. Already, though, some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They’ve cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go, the study found.
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. The study, published as a working paper Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer reviewed.
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.
The paper’s conclusions contradict years of research on the minimum wage. Many past studies, by contrast, have found that the benefits of increases for low-wage workers exceed the costs in terms of reduced employment — often by a factor of four or five to one.
Everything the left does is destructive, everything. You’d think more people would see that.
In the arrogant mind of a liberal:
“Surely we can Fiddle with the Fundamental Foundations of Finance cuz we caused Global Warming and know how to resolve that too!”
I’ve yet to meet a leftist who understands economics.
Choose any issue, then think of the most absurd, hair-brained, idiotic approach and you’ll come to the left’s position. Works every time.
Check the fine print on all those previous studies. “Tax payers shall raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour by direct, individual, cash subsidy.”
Minimum wage is $0 – then we start negotiating.
WaPo is owned by Bezos – who definitely doesn’t want to pay his employees $15/hr
the results of the lefts policy regulations can no longer be called unintended consequences, they need to be called deliberate.
Give them $25 an hour that will really improve their lives.
When liberals throw a rock into a pool of water they only see where it lands. They do not see nor do they care to see the resulting concentric ripples.
If 15 an hour is good, then 30 would be better! Or, 50, or 100… hey, I’ve got it: pay everyone 1,000 dollars an hour and they’ll all be rich!
Minimum wage = Socialism = Democrats!
Socialism must be good as we have now accepted government mandated wages and government mandated health insurance!
Rush spelled it out perfectly yesterday. Liberals see any one who owns a business, no matter small, must have piles of cash just sitting around doing nothing. Unless it is financing expensive cars, vacations etc. It’s been pointed out time and time again with restaurant and eatery owners, they are operating on a very thin profit margin. Govt run by regressives think they are immune from tinkering with basic economic laws without consequence.
It must doubly suck to be a regressive small business owner. Conflicted with the loyalty you must self-pledge to be a regressive and seeing your business die before your eyes because your fellow regressives sold you a crock of crap on how business works.
I am shocked, once again, that democrats think all businesses has a secret stash of money meant to give untrained, unskilled workers more money. Dems can never see a train wreck coming.
Progressives are training people to believe that if they are a minimum wage worker, they need a “living wage” because they will always be minimum wage workers. That type of mindset must be horribly depressing – especially to younger workers. “You are a french fry cook, and you will never be more than a french fry cook.” No, I was a french fry cook because I needed to start somewhere, I learned that being a french fry cook sucked after a while, and I want to be something better. It was the first rung on the ladder, and the wage I was paid was really not all that important.
@even steven June 27, 2017 at 7:06 am
> I’ve yet to meet a leftist who understands economics.
I’ve yet to meet an economist that understands mathematics.
Analysis, a branch of mathematics that deals with steady change and with certain general sorts of processes that have emerged from
the examine of steady change, akin to limits, differentiation, and integration. https://math-problem-solver.com/ .
To start with, one’s skill lies within the collection of topics.