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Comment by hvs | Hacker News Reader

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].

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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.

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.

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