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tptacek

I really dislike this framing. By any contemporary definition I'm a "liberal":

* I support higher taxes, particularly on higher income people, almost for its own sake.

* I oppose almost all military intervention abroad.

* I believe the federal government needs to intervene with local governments to prevent police abuses.

* I strongly support public schools and oppose public-funded charters.

... and I could go on and on this way.

On the other hand, I do not believe in a high national minimum wage, or in a small number of other "liberal" orthodoxies^h^h^h^h^hidees fixes (like universal college tuition, or single-payer health care).

Why am I meant to feel like my "team" lost something when a study confirms something that most economists have been saying for decades?

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For reasons not clear to me, the following statement is political suicide: "We tried something we believed would help low-income workers based on the best information we had at the time. The results have not met our expectations, so we will reassess whether it's a net benefit in our unique city or if we should suspend it and look at other proposals to help low-income workers instead."

"Why am I meant to feel like my "team" lost something when a study confirms something that most economists have been saying for decades?"

Because that "team" did, in fact, lose something - at least in relation to the very cynical (and probably correct) charge that minimum wage increases are vote-buying.

Also, I think it's worth considering that the very sound and considerable notion that "a wage price floor causes all other prices to catch up" is probably lumped right in with "the government collects the same amount of revenue at this point on the curve as on this point of the curve"[1][2]. Since that "team" is vehemently opposed to the Laffer Curve it's not surprising that they'd be vehemently opposed to other "voo doo economics".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA (jump to :37)

See, this is exactly what I mean. I'm a liberal. This study is not bad news for me. It does not follow that I somehow support supply-side economics. Literally the first bullet point I chose to wrote in describing myself as a liberal implies directly that I do not believe in supply-side policy. But your comment is written in such a way as to suggest that those are the only two options.

I'm sorry - that's not what I meant.

What I was trying to say was: "people who think (that team) is losing might be having a knee-jerk response to a (mistaken) link in their own minds between wage price floor theories and supply side economic theories".

No, I don't think they are the only two options and further I don't think they are related at all.

The Laffer Curve is only ever used as rhetoric, people that talk about it never show their work.

(it's an elegant illustration, but to implement policy concrete estimates of impacts on revenues are more useful than an elegant illustration)

Can I get you to briefly outline why you don't believe in raising the minimum wage?

I can't say that I agree with you, but you're generally a thoughtful guy and I would appreciate getting another perspective on the issue.

(Also, curious: is the word "national" operative there -- eg, do your beliefs differ between a national minimum wage and a local one like the Seattle measure?)

I'd just say that it's not settled whether sharp or nationwide increases in the minimum wage accomplish any clear public policy objectives. I could be convinced either way, but my perception is that it's not at all clear in the data that "$15 nationwide minimum wage" is a fight worth fighting.

I definitely don't oppose the minimum wage! There's no libertarianism creeping into my perspective here. :)

Although the question wasn't directed towards me, my problem with raising the minimum wage is that everyone else's wages (for the most part) have been stagnant while inflation continues. It basically pulls the rest of the middle class down while the upper class continues to go higher. Sure, some of the wages will trickle up because of competition, but not by as much as it should. I can't think of any better solutions though unfortunately

That is definitely not my concern with increasing the minimum wage.

I know this is unrelated to the post but I am genuinely/respectfully curious (since you left it as a bullet) as to the chain of logic that makes it okay to tax higher income people more. I've never understood that.

Full disclosure: if it were up to me, we would go with either a flat tax or something more sensible that an economist has proposed (i.e. Friedman's negative income tax). But that would, of course, largely abolish the need for the IRS and the thousands of jobs tied to figuring out taxes each year. In other words, I am definitely more keen on a strong vector toward Libertarianism.

Higher tax rates impact the quality of life of higher income earners less than lower income earners.

An extreme case would be that someone who earned a billion dollars and paid a 99.9% tax on it would still be much better off than someone who earned 16K and paid a negative 1% rate.

That's a true statement, but there's no logic here or reasoning as to why that makes it okay.

Oh, you want me to explicitly state it?

The starting premise is that taxes should be judged based on how they impact your quality of life, not on how much quantity of money they take.

Logically then, progressive taxes are better.

But that just shifts the question on to the starting premise. What is the chain of logic that leads you to conclude that it's correct to tax people based on how the taxes impact the quality of their life?

That becomes a moral judgement and doesn't follow from logic. Other alternatives also flow from moral judgements. There is no logical basis for taxing people on a fixed amount of a fixed percentage either. All of them appeal to a sense of fairness which is not a logical construct.

This is a widely debated topic that usually devolves into an argument about whether property is some sort of natural right or if it is a societal construct. Even on the natural rights side of the argument you will find adherents that believe any taxation is a violation of their natural rights.

I'm pretty uninterested in traveling the paths of Hobbes and Kant on an internet forum, so suffice it to say that its pretty clear to most people that there is a societal benefit to taxes and a societal desire to make those "fair". Arguing over what is more fair is unlikely to be resolved by logical proof but a lot of people think quality of life impact is the fair option.

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