PrincepsCyberius
Insert Witty Moniker Here
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2014
- Posts
- 4,580
An article to read:
Seattle Progressives Stick Their Heads in the Sand on Minimum Wages
Meanwhile, I looked into the UC-Berkeley "economist" they have now hired to do a new study to replace the one they didn't like. He publicly declares himself an enemy of capitalism and wants to end it in the USA. Yes, that should be an unbiased study!
Seattle Progressives Stick Their Heads in the Sand on Minimum Wages
Last month, a group of scholars commissioned by the city of Seattle to study the effects of hiking the minimum wage struck a blow at the national “fight for 15” movement.
Their findings, which were widely covered in the media, showed that Seattle’s $13 minimum wage — part of a gradual increase to $15 — had all the negative effects that opponents of the policy feared. Low-wage employees had their hours cut by 3.5 million in a single quarter, costing more than $120 million in lost wages. The average worker lost $1,500 of income per year, hardly something those struggling to support themselves or their families could afford.
When faced with this data, even left-leaning publications such as Slate questioned whether the “fight for 15” had gone too far and was hurting those it was intended to help. So what did the Seattle City Council do? They killed the messengers and stuck their head in the sand.
It turns out that Seattle stopped funding the University of Washington research team led by Jacob Vigdor last fall, after the council had seen preliminary results. (The contract was supposed to run for five years, but it relied on annual appropriations for funding.) Their replacement? Berkeley economics professor Michael Reich, whose research coincidentally shows that minimum-wage increases help low-income workers....
Meanwhile, I looked into the UC-Berkeley "economist" they have now hired to do a new study to replace the one they didn't like. He publicly declares himself an enemy of capitalism and wants to end it in the USA. Yes, that should be an unbiased study!