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Comment by bcatanzaro | Hacker News Reader

Clearly, there is some minimum wage that would hurt the economy, cause inflation and cost jobs. Is it $15/hr? How about $100/hr? So we shouldn’t be arguing about a principle (“minimum wages don’t hurt the economy”), but rather an amount (“$15/hr doesn’t hurt Seattle’s economy”).

Articles like this irritate me because they’re about proving “the other side” wrong rather than engaging in reasonable debate.

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There was a lot of fearmongering. As other communities are evaluating or adopting a similar strategy to Seattle, I would say it's a relevant article, because now we have better data to rely on.

It's similar to when cannabis was legalized in Colorado. There was a lot of panic and fear. Other communities waited and observed, then embraced.

I also thought the article could have a good purpose in at least asking the other side to consider questioning its assumptions. Too much in economics is considered dogma; those who question it end up effectively committing apostasy.

On the contrary, much of modern economic thought is not dogmatic. It only seems dogmatic because the most accessible pieces of the discipline are picked up and refracted through a political lens. It's hard to get access to what economists actually think if your source is e.g. Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT, reddit, HN, etc.

Ok, but I have some formal training in economics and I wholeheartedly disagree. I'm mostly talkibg about macro, public policy and political economy here.

It has always been this way. It took the Great Depression to usher in Keynesian econ--theories riddled with previously crackpot ideas--and that had to be done by a well-connected and- respected insider, with trendy language and trendy, but to be fair elegant and clever, maths.

Most of the John List's in econ really do become truckers. It's not science or engineering where results matter. Almost alll the results dont matter.

And I never was able to question the min wage dogma in undergrad.

And the question is whether minimum wage ever does anything good on net.

The real increases in quality of life would come from nationwide paid time off minimums, removal of "exempt" employees from overtime, removal of tipped employee exemptions, and removal of health insurance benefits for employers.

That would force employers to hire more people, increase demand, and therefore increase pay, at the same time as giving people a decent quality of life.

Sorry, I don't understand. How would outlawing jobs help people?

We don't have minimum wage laws where I live, and it's one of the most affluent societies on the planet. So perhaps I am missing something.

I don’t see where I suggested outlawing jobs.

I thought we were talking about outlawing low paying jobs?

It also depends on where you raise the minimum wage. Seattle can absorb a large rate hike much easier than Kansas City or [insert random small town].

I'm not sure that's true. I've lived long enough to see Wal-Mart move into my home town (rural NC, population 5K) and see it obliterate local businesses, in part because it paid it's workers low wages compared to incumbent family businesses that paid employees well.

It really doesn't. Every year, the US does numerous natural experiments as states raise (or don't) their minimum wages while similar states do the opposite. Every time, without fail, the states which raise their minimum wages do better economically. Doesn't matter if they're a rich state or a poor state, coastal or inland, populous or not.

Do you have a link to read more about that? Maybe something from FRED?

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02....

That doesn't answer the question of whether or not it is causal. Usually states that increase their minimum wage do so because of political pressure and that happens when prices have been rising, so they may have been on the upswing to begin with.

Do you believe that the researchers who study these sorts of things are, without exception, complete idiots who never thought of the possibility that there might be other factors changing at the same time as the minimum wage change?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

You might want to ask yourself "why was it important for me to try to find some reason why this information was wrong?"

because I've been poor when they increased the minimum wage and it didn't do fuck all for me, I was a contractor, and all it did was increase the cost of living around me.

I don't have an informed opinion on whether or not there's a causal relationship between wage hikes and economic growth, but "This didn't help me" != "This didn't help my city/state".

no the point is that the idea of the goodness of a minimum wage is very much tied to a very middle class idea of what constitutes labor, and the reality is that large classes of people are not necessarily in a situation where it is a useful societal tool. As typical, one of the hidden costs - increased cost of living - hurts the least privileged the hardest.

The parent’s claim was “the states which raise their minimum wages do better economically”, which is not the same as “every person benefits from an increased minimum wage”. You’re arguing a counter-point to a point that nobody has made.

The other important consideration is illegal aliens who are likely working off the books and paid less than minimum wage. Without strict rules regarding employment of illegal aliens, businesses will continue to take advantage of illegal hiring practices.

I think the 'rules' are pretty clear, you cannot hire illegal aliens, and also illegal aliens are not allowed to work. You must mean strict enforcement? Strict enforcement leads to strict deterrence. Absent enforcement, employer and employee have a much reduced set of disincentives.

It's a consideration, but the article claims that reported restaurant employee-hours is increasing, so we can determine that off the book labor is not cannibalizing the restaurant industry's on the book labor.

You are not able to ascertain the degree to which restaurant employment would increase if there was a lot of illegal employment or no illegal employment because the statistics are, by nature, unreported.

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