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Rejecting the evidence of 54 studies simply because none satisfy your arbitrary study design is frivolous. You lose.

Hogeye wrote:Rejecting the evidence of 54 studies simply because none satisfy your arbitrary study design is frivolous. You lose.

DOUG
You dropped names. You did not show facts. You did not support your claim with the evidence.

You had your chance. You could not show ONE state that had deliterious effects from a high minimum wage. Not one.

Doug wrote: You could not show ONE state that had deliterious effects from a high minimum wage.

DAR
I showed several states having excellent outcomes after raising their MW's (links given above). Economists are all over the place on this issue so anyone can make lists of studies going both ways.

Unfortunately what these rightwingers won't admit is that it is their attachment to the idea that it is wrong make an employer pay a minimum, decent, wage. That's what they can't stand. I don't think most of them give a rats ass about unemployment and the poor.

D.

Darrell, of course they don't give a rat's ass about unemployment or the poor. If they did, they'd be voluntarily paying a living wage and raising the minimum wage would be moot - in fact, it wouldn't be necessary, it wouldn't be an issue, much less a political issue, at all. That's why there are a number of small and mid-sized business owners - not mega-corporation CEOs, of course - who have publically come out in favor of raising the minium wage.

DAR
Then there is the Costco example. From the NYT's:

***
Combining high quality with stunningly low prices, the shirts appeal to upscale customers - and epitomize why some retail analysts say Mr. Sinegal just might be America's shrewdest merchant since Sam Walton.

But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.

Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."

SNIP...

Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco's workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.

"He has been too benevolent," she said. "He's right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden."

Mr. Sinegal says he pays attention to analysts' advice because it enforces a healthy discipline, but he has largely shunned Wall Street pressure to be less generous to his workers.

the rest

DAR
Darn liberal. What's he doing, trying to ruin America!

Doesn't seem to have hurt CostCo's business any. Their productivity rates are as good or better than other retail stores and their profit margin is as well. There's sometimes an unwritten contract between employers and employees of the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" variety, especially in companies that started as small family-owned businesses. Most only last through the first generation ownership, and few - if any - live through the incorporation process.

I'm going to try to explain it one more time.

The Claim: Minimum wage laws which fix a wage floor above the equilibrium wage for unskilled or marginally skilled workers result in higher unemployment among unskilled workers than would otherwise be the case.

It is a claim about unskilled (and marginally skilled) workers. Question: What populations should you look at to prove or disprove the claim? a. Lawyers, b. doctors, c. teachers, d. programmers, e. CPAs, f. food service workers, g. teenagers, h. ghetto youth? If you answered f, g, and h, you are correct. Obviously a - e constitute skilled workers who make significantly more than than minimum wage - they are uneffected by minimum wage laws. (Yet Doug rejects f - h, the very populations that are relevant to the claim.) Furthermore, it is clear that looking at unemployment rates among the general population would drown out information about the unskilled - you can't include doctors, lawyers, and all the highly skilled if you want to study the truth or falsity of the claim. No serious researcher would consider using such a population in his study. (Yet Doug insists on using this general unemployment figure.)

There is another reason that general unemployment numbers are unsuitable. The claim is a ceteris paribus statement - it specifies other things being equal for those who don't understand the Latin. But general unemployment numbers are not ceteris paribus. General unemployment numbers ignore general trends, new industries moving in (like Toyota plants), the sucking off of marginally skilled by wars and occupations, the effect of government contracts on e.g. munitions industries or govt subsidies on agricultural workers, and the myriad of other things effecting employment. Researchers who want to study the claim know better than this; they choose populations that are relatively uneffected by such factors and/or try to compensate for such factors.

Doug seems oblivious to such considerations with his insistence on raw general unemployment data. He seems hung up on irrelevancies such as artificial boundaries (states). It's as if I'm trying to convince a creationist about the veracity of evolution, and I've cited 54 species with ample fossil evidence of evolution, and the creationist insists that evidence is unacceptable and demands I find a study on animals in Tanzania.

Doug also seems obsessed about who enforces the price floor, federal or state governments. But this is entirely irrelevant to the claim; it doesn't matter whether minimum wages are enforced by state governments, federal governments, union thugs, industry thugs, or mafia types. All that matters is that the enforced floor is above the equilibrium price, i.e. what it would be without coercive intervention, and by how much. Which brings up a more subtle point: In a poor state like Arkansas, the federal floor may be 20% above the equilibrium, and have more effect on unemployment among the unskilled than a richer state with a higher price floor (above the federal level) but only 10% above their local equilibrium price for unskilled labor.

Barbara's ad hominem - circumstantial comment, of course, barely merits a response. Suffice it to say that what greedy capitalists think is not relevant to whether price floors on unskilled labor cause unemployment among the unskilled. Anecdotes about Costco are also weak - we know that on a macro level people don't pay more than they have to, just as most people don't offer to pay a dollar over the asking price for a quart of milk.

This whole thread shows how inadequate education is in the US. The effect of price floors (and price ceilings) is a very basic and elementary concept in economics. The fact that educated people dispute it is every bit as disturbing as educated people denying the theory of evolution. Every economic primer covers this, with simple diagrams of supply and demand curves and floor/ceiling lines showing the resulting over/under supplies. This is not heavy, folks! This is simple stuff. It is not controversial - it is basic theory agreed upon by all economists from the most statist Keynesian to the most anti-statist Austrian. Please read an econ primer or google "price floor price ceiling."

Hogeye wrote:I'm going to try to explain it one more time.

The Claim: Minimum wage laws which fix a wage floor above the equilibrium wage for unskilled or marginally skilled workers result in higher unemployment among unskilled workers than would otherwise be the case.

DOUG
a. The minimum wage laws don't apply to specific jobs, they apply to ALL jobs (with a few exceptions, such as waiters and waitresses).
b. OK, now you finally figured out what you are claiming. Now show that it is true. Or did you forget that part?

DAR
Well at least has learned to use the right term, "minimum wage." That's a start.
I think it would be a minor concern (pun) if we had high unemployment in the US. We don't. Raise the MW. As we have seen from the states which have done this will very good success, the effect seems to be minimal, to zero to perhaps even a positive as these low income people spend all of their money in their local economies.

D.

I suppose if I were a utilitarian, I wouldn't mind making some relatively wealthy "liberals" feel good at the cost of condemning some unskilled people to poverty. But I'm not a utilitarian; I think there are moral principles (or what Nozick called "side constraints"), and that interpersonal comparison of utility is invalid.

I see that what I wrote about the general unemployment rate went right over your head.

Hogeye wrote:I see that what I wrote about the general unemployment rate went...

DAR
Unread. I didn't make it past your reworking of your claim. I am not very interested in the MW issue, least of all your spin of it.