Today both places are very much 'good luck, youre on your own' and staffed by people who seem like they very much don't want to be there.
Did they use to pay better, comparatively?
2) Another piece of it, speaking to your example, is that women in the workplace were much more often "second-earners" 50 years ago. This is much less true today.
> First of all, one consequence of federal minimum wage hikes can be job or hours loss for low‐ wage workers, as we’ve seen, which can create poverty. Second, a lot of people who earn the federal minimum wage or just above it are not poor, or will not be poor in the longer term (think of working students, or second‐ earners in relatively affluent households working part‐ time).
https://www.cato.org/commentary/case-against-15-federal-mini...
EDIT: Before you reply with what I know you will, the reason the first and second argument above are lumped together are because the are both essentially myths (for example, see the original article), and the Cato Institute cites no actual data that either are, generally speaking, true.
If the minimum wage has no effect on unemployment, then why stop at $15? Make minimum wage set at 20 pounds of gold per hour. Lets maximize our wealth.
EDIT: No one said it had no impact of employment (just as no one said there were no "student workers").
There is nuance to the cost/benefit of given minimum wages...
2) Even if we assume that a $15 minimum wage would eliminate a notable number of jobs, elimination of jobs is not equivalent to unemployment. We, as a society, are okay with, going by your own argument, eliminating all the $5/hour jobs (with state minimum wages being $7.25+) because it does not lead to significantly less overall employment. Do you have evidence this would not also be true with a $15 minimum wage?
No it really is this simple. Jobs that have negative economic value (wages do not cover value) are not maintainable in a free market for anything more than a short period of time. I'm sure some exist but jobs with negative economic value are not in any way plentiful compared to ones with positive or break even value. If I have a job that gives me $14/hr in value it does not make sense for me to offer it under a $15/hr minimum wage.
The ones actually acting in "bad faith" are those who fail to disclose to the ofter marginalized people working low wage jobs that their policy goals are to eliminate the only jobs available to these marginalized people, forcing them to operate on the black market or let their skills and work history decay in unemployment. The farther you slide the minimum wage bar right from zero, the more people you eliminate from the labor market: the nuance being if it is low enough it only destroys the earning power of the most marginalized that some of us are happy to forget about.
> We, as a society, are okay with, going by your own argument, eliminating all the $5/hour jobs (with state minimum wages being $7.25+) because it does not lead to significantly less overall employment
Well it does lead to significantly less employment for anyone who cannot provide minimum wage in value. But what happens is a mixture of elimination of those jobs and the pushing of those jobs to the black market, where those persons (including many illegal immigrants) just have to work in the shadows without any unemployment insurance or labor protections and have to live in constant fear the IRS will find out and also get them for unreported income. So they're definitely a lot worse off.
>elimination of jobs is not equivalent to unemployment
It is if there is no alternative job because you can't offer enough in value to make the minimum wage cutoff.
>Do you have evidence this would not also be true with a $15 minimum wage?
Do I have evidence that employers will have to eliminate jobs if the position doesn't create enough value to cover the wage? One example is when QFC had to close a couple Seattle stores due to mandated 'hazard pay' [1]. Simple logic tells you the jobs generating under $15/hr in value will either become black market or be gone, if it's illegal.
If you're in retail and can't find anyone to pay $15/hr, and think you are worth that, why not try it on the open market? You can come to my border city, where mexicans engage in retail without any boss whatsoever selling retail snacks and elotes. If you can really produce over $15/hr in value then go ahead and do it for yourself. I'm sure many of these street retail street vendors make more than that, and at least in my city the police don't care at all if you have a license or not.
[1] https://www.supermarketnews.com/issues-trends/kroger-s-qfc-c...
I feel like I must point this out, but no one is arguing that "jobs that have negative economic value" would somehow exist.
> Do I have evidence that employers will have to eliminate jobs if the position doesn't create enough value to cover the wage?
This is actually not at all what my second point was asking... The ask was, if we assume for a minute that a $15 minimum wage simply eliminates jobs (as opposed to bringing extracted employee value more in line with employee compensation and reducing employer profits), whether eliminating the jobs that cannot pay $15/hour would actually increase unemployment in such a meaningful way as to offset the potential benefits it would offer... The context being that we, as a society, have already decided that the benefits of eliminating (see assumption above) $5/hour jobs was worth whatever effect it had on unemployment.
With this is mind, it's obvious that QFC closing two stores is completely meaningless because it provides nothing close to an objective view on A) the effect on overall unemployment, nor B) the positive or negative effects it had on the employees whose jobs (according to QFC) were eliminated. That's not even to mention the fact that QFC has a vested interest in blaming regulation, or the fact that a single anecdote is not at all representative of the job market.
I'll just also add that it's very hard not to take what you're saying as simply constructing a straw man (as opposed to misreading or misunderstanding), given how completely unrelated anything you wrote was to my other comment.
We have eliminated some, but others we've simply relegated them to the black market so that those engaging them either do it entirely without unemployment insurance and other labor protections, or they do it as an independent business or contractor. Now a good deal of those jobs are instead taken by illegal immigrants (and I'm not judging these immigrants at all here, just noting what the effects are). What we really "decided" was it was worth making those jobs black market or self employment jobs -- and that is an opinion held by the tyranny of the majority against those who suffer under this regulation.
>With this is mind, it's obvious, that QFC closing two stores is completely meaningless
Somehow I doubt it was meaningless to the individuals who had the choice of move to a store not offering the hazard pay or lose their job. But meaningless from your priveleged perspective of not being immediately affected by the loss.
>I'll just also add that it's very hard not to take what you're saying as simply constructing a straw man (as opposed to misreading or misunderstanding), given how completely unrelated anything you wrote was to my other comment.
Rich from a person leading off with the straw man attacking Cato with the false argument that they had somehow claimed there weren't poor people making minimum wage.
Do you have any evidence that this occurs at any meaningful scale? This theory, while occasionally toted by conservative/libertarian think tanks, seems to rely on only 1 example (a New York city car wash that was already cutting jobs through automation), which was covered/written by a libertarian think tank.
> Somehow I doubt it was meaningless to the individuals who had the choice of move to a store not offering the hazard pay or lose their job. But meaningless from your privileged perspective of not being immediately affected by the loss.
No, the article you linked is meaningless specifically because it tells you absolutely nothing about those individuals (and also because it's purely anecdotal). When discussing wage increases (or hazard pay in this case), we typically care about the outcomes for workers. Not to mention the fact, as I said, that QFC has a vested interest in blaming regulation.
> Rich from a person leading off with the straw man attacking Cato with the false argument that they had somehow claimed there weren't poor people making minimum wage.
I literally linked the exact quote. They made two arguments, the second of which was that (verbatim) "a lot of people who earn the federal minimum wage or just above it are not poor, or will not be poor in the longer term." The entire point of the original article was that this is not true...
In particular, note you said that the Cato makes the argument that those making minimum wage are not "actually poor." In fact they make no such claim that there are not poor working a minimum wage job. Yours was a straw man.
>No, the article you linked is meaningless specifically because it tells you absolutely nothing about those individuals (and also because it's purely anecdotal). When discussing wage increases (or hazard pay in this case), we typically care about the outcomes for workers. Not to mention the fact, as I said, that QFC has a vested interest in blaming regulation.
Only if you're oblivious to the fact it tells you exactly what happened to the individuals, which is that they were forced to either lose their job or compete for hours with the established staff at other locations. Were you looking for a theoretical paper? I found a long one with all sorts of mathematical scribble about probalistic black markets and unemployment but I thought it would bore you and the lack of concrete examples wouldn't be terribly interesting nor convincing.
>Do you have any evidence that this occurs at any meaningful scale? This theory, while occasionally toted by conservative/libertarian think tanks, seems to rely on only 1 example (a New York city car wash that was already cutting jobs through automation), which was covered/written by a libertarian think tank.
One example of those who end up engaging in independent contractor / self employment for less than minimum wage is gig workers, who often earn less than minimum wage and yet voluntarily choose to do so anyway [1]. Presumably if jobs numerous enough for the number of people working these gig jobs existed that offered them employment protections, many would choose that over independent contractor status where they are on their own if anything goes wrong.
[1] https://illinoisepi.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/ilepi-pmcr-o...
> In particular, note you said that the Cato makes the argument that those making minimum wage are not "actually poor." In fact they make no such claim that there are not poor working a minimum wage job. Yours was a straw man.
I said "people making current minimum wage, or close to minimum wage, are not actually poor, or won't be in the long-term," they said "a lot of people who earn the federal minimum wage or just above it are not poor, or will not be poor in the longer term." I guess, for some reason, you assume the difference is "people" vs. "a lot of people," and that I therefore mean "all people." Your assumption does not make it a straw man.
> Only if you're oblivious to the fact it tells you exactly what happened to the individuals, which is that they were forced to either lose their job or compete for hours with the established staff at other locations.
This is an assumption. The ones that transfer to other locations now receive hazard pay, and, those unemployed workers potentially make hazard pay at new jobs, both of those are potential net positives... The article does, in fact, not discuss actual worker outcomes. Once again, even in the oversimplified world where jobs are simply eliminated, job loss is not equivalent to unemployment.
> Were you looking for a [...] paper?
Preferably, yes. "Concrete examples" are also called "anecdotes," and are not at all convincing of large-scale, job market-wide, patterns or effects.
> One example of those who end up engaging in independent contractor / self employment for less than minimum wage is gig workers, who often earn less than minimum wage and yet voluntarily choose to do so anyway [1]. Presumably if jobs numerous enough for the number of people working these gig jobs existed that offered them employment protections, many would choose that over independent contractor status where they are on their own if anything goes wrong.
That is another assumption. You "presume" that gig workers would choose non-gig work if given the option... With no actual evidence of that being the case at a meaningful level. People work "gig" jobs (e.g. drive for Lyft) for extremely varied reasons (some even do so in addition to other jobs, in fact, your source says most Uber drives do this).
Again, you claim was that it was said that those who make minimum wage are not actually poor. I am quoting you verbatim. Apparently you suffer from amnesia or disconnection from reality. Cato did not say this.
> People work "gig" jobs (e.g. drive for Lyft) for extremely varied reasons (some even do so in addition to other jobs, in fact, your source says most Uber drives do this).
Ignoring all your disengenous obliviousness to your straw man and refusal or indifference at any source that shows concrete effect of wage regulations, I'm glad at least you've come around to admit that many people working low wage jobs are doing it in addition to other jobs and for extremely varied reasons, one of which may be to use the job as a bridge. Which is exactly what Cato was saying. You've at least admitted now that Cato was correct.
>Preferably, yes. "Concrete examples" are also called "anecdotes," and are not at all convincing of large-scale, job market-wide, patterns or effects.
So where is your citation that minimum wage is good for people who cannot offer value reaching minimum wage? I've seen nothing at all from you showing these people who can't offer enough value to gain a minimum wage job benefit at all from raising the wage.
>That is another assumption. You "presume" that gig workers would choose non-gig work if given the option... With no actual evidence of that being the case at a meaningful level. People work "gig" jobs (e.g. drive for Lyft) for extremely varied reasons (some even do so in addition to other jobs, in fact, your source says most Uber drives do this).
I said I "presume" that many would choose. Not all would choose. In fact, I don't even have to presume at least one would choose because I was a gig worker once that would have liked to make minimum wage but at the time had nothing to offer yet that got me a minimum wage offer. I absolutely would have liked employment protections but did not get them, although after several years I was awarded some money in a class action lawsuit along with many others who made the same claim as me that we wanted and believed we should have been afforded employee status. So I guess I didn't presume at all, as it was born out through claims in the court system. Would you like a picture of my check as part of the class action of the many who wanted to be classified as employees?
Your constant dismissal of evidence whenever it suits you is little more than the dictatorial activity of a narcissist, a lying one at that who makes false claims about the statement of Cato.
...Or maybe there are things that can be good to increase some, but not good to increase arbitrarily.
The related concern that is real is that businesses that are solvent at current minimum wage might not be if they had to pay their employees 15 dollars an hour. The question is if we think it is more valuable that people get paid a more liveable wage for their effort, or if we value the jobs/services that businesses that pay under 15 dollars provide more than that. Second question is if the destruction of employers who rely on low wages to exist would also open up room for less exploitive employers to take their space in the business sector. A third question countering that is if lowered profits to business has a stifling effect on money-funded innovation. And then there are questions beyond that, that ultimately sum up to “Economics is complicated, and just looking at first order supply and demand effects never tells the whole story.”