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States That Raised Minimum Wage See No Slow-Down In Job Growth
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Department of Labor has released data that some proponents of raising minimum wage are touting as evidence that higher minimum wage promotes job growth. While the data doesn't actually establish cause and effect, it does "run counter to a Congressional Budget Office report in February that said raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, as the White House supports, would cost 500,000 jobs." The data shows that the 13 states that raised their minimum wages in January added jobs at a faster rate than those that didn't. Other factors likely contributed to this outcome, but some economists are simply relieved that the higher wage factor didn't have a dramatically negative effect in general.
Economic activity is increased by more people having more money to spend ?
Inconceivable !
That is because the additional money goes back into the local economy and not into an offshore account.
Moving to the state whose laws work best for you may work for people who can move, but I expect the people affected by these laws are pretty closely representative of the set of people who can't move.
Show me an area with a high minimum wage and I'll show you an area with a large illegal labor force making less.
I travel all around the country and that's a very constant result. If you want to increase wages then 1) invest in education, and 2) change Free Trade to Fair Trade.
Actually, why don't you show us? Give us the stats, man, or you're just one more trickle downer refusing to accept the idea that people who make some money, spend some money.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When it pays more to be unemployed, just having jobs isn't enough, you need jobs that pay a livable wage.
I grew up in a farming area in the 1950's. Before welfare blacks and poor whites picked the produce. They were the migrants, working South to North. After harvesting apples and potatoes in Maine and Vermont they went back to south Florida for the winter. After welfare they didn't need to do that so the growers who had depended on them made agreements with work crew leaders to bring in illegals.
You seem thoroughly confused. You talk about an industry of illegals and then suggest we look at those legally here on H2B visas as an example.
Are you suggesting that there's a huge amount of US workers just waiting to pick fruit and plant pine trees? And the only thing holding them back is that the minimum wage is too high?
JAIL TIME for those that hire the undocumented.
Jailing non-violent people is idiotic. America already imprisons more people than any other country. The solution to illegal immigration is to deal with the fundamental causes. Mexico is no longer a net source of immigration (as many Mexicans return home as arrive). The biggest net sources are Central American countries experiencing extreme drug gang violence, such as Honduras and El Salvador. Ending the drug violence will allow these countries to stabilize and create local jobs for their people. And the best way to do that is broad legalization, which is already successfully happening in Colorado and Washington. Other states will hold referendums on legalization this November. We should be jailing a lot less people, not more.
Namely, our native poor aren't as desperate as they used to be.
This whole attempt to steer the discussion to one of illegal immigration is a cute trick, but it skirts the real issue. The minimum wage (which hasn't been adjusted for inflation in decades) isn't enough for someone working 40 hours a week (whether picking fruit or stocking aisles at WalMart, etc) to live on without some form of public assistance. So either:
1) Accept this - and lobby for public assistance to make up the difference instead of against it.
or
2) Accept that the wage needs to be raised, because it's more important to the American ideal for a full time worker to be able to support themselves - if not themselves plus their children, than it is for employers to be able to squeeze every last bit of profit from their labor.
or
3) Admit that you're okay with America not being a place where all people who work can afford food, shelter and health care (i.e., perhaps not The Greatest Country On Earth (tm)).
But the point of the article is that the argument that 'raising the minimum wage will kill jobs' has been disproved. To continue to scream it is to lie. But many of those are the same ones still touting that 'lower tax rates raise revenue' - despite the fact that that's not really what the Laffer curve says - and experience shows that we're on the part of the curve where that's not true anyway. In other words, it's a lie, based on a fantasy and/or propaganda - in the face of actual experience that demonstrates the opposite. That letting gays marry will destroy marriage and hurt children. I could go on...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
It's called basic human dignity, and if you think working a full-time job should not by itself be enough to support oneself, you clearly do not believe in it.