How can raising the minimum wage slowly shutdown businesses? I believe that the businesses are giving the public the business about this. They cut staff because they can. What happened to the days when making a reasonable profit was good enough for small businesses? Who says every business is entitled to or should be making vulture profits at the expense of customers and workers? This is what is happening all over.

Because it's equally likely that for some businesses, the employees will come across that same jurisdictional line for better pay and the business volume comes with them.

And in reading the whole piece, i suspect some cherry picking is going on.

It said it was too soon to tell but that all the bad outcomes that were predicted haven't panned out. So far.

Maybe the results would be different in New York City, where you can be be an hour or more away from the city line.

The study, published as a working paper Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, HAS NOT YET BEEN PEER REVIEWED.

The fact that it's not YET peer reviewed is a minor point.

It's also worth noting that the city of Seattle commissioned the study. This isn't some association of employers with lots of minimum wage employees.

"Very credible" was in quotes because that's the wording that an MIT economist (who wasn't part of the study) used to describe it.

It's always a race to the bottom for Cons.

Listen, our economy runs on small businesses. Many small business owners are great people who are chasing the American Dream and helping their employees do so too. But way too many small business owners are also greedy greedy greedy. They think owning any small business entitles them to be multi millionaires and for them it's always a race to the bottom for their employees. If you can't pay fair wages and still turn a profit, you don't deserve to be in business.

There needs to be a large scale movement in this country to only shop at places that pay living wages.

"The paper's conclusions contradict years of research on the minimum wage. Many past studies, by contrast, have found that the benefits of increases for low-wage workers exceed the costs in terms of reduced employment -- often by a factor of four or five to one"

I thought the "liberal" $15 min wage hike was included in our party's platform? Using a non peer reviewed study to attack Democratic policy's on DU..

Both "work" or "fail to work" depending on other factors than just the policy change.

In the case of raising the minimum wage, it CAN have an almost entirely positive outcome IF wages were effectively that high anyway. However - it's Econ 101 to say that raising the price for a thing will necessarily reduce the demand for that thing (in fact... that's WHY the minimum wage was first invented). The paper's conclusions are really well inside the mainstream of economic research into the subject.

Let me see if I can find it

Here it is--from 6 days ago

APNewsBreak: Study: Seattle Minimum Wage Hasn't Cut Jobs



By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle's $15-an-hour minimum wage law has boosted pay for restaurant workers without costing jobs, a new study shows.

The report, from the University of California at Berkeley, is certain to add to the debate as activists around the country push for increases in local, state and federal minimum wages.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press before its official release, focused on food service jobs, which some critics said could be disproportionately affected if increased wages forced restaurants to cut workers' hours.

Author Michael Reich says that hasn't been the case.

"Our results show that wages in food services did increase — indicating the policy achieved its goal," the study said.

Last year, University of Washington researchers found mixed results for the Seattle law, which phases in an increase to $15 an hour by 2021.

They said the law appeared to have slightly reduced the employment rate of low-wage workers even as it boosted pay.

In 2014 Seattle became one of the first cities to adopt a law aiming for a $15 minimum wage. San Francisco changed its wage around the same time.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2017-06-20/apnewsbreak-study-seattle-minimum-wage-hasnt-cut-jobs

The OP's story seems to study the minimum wage effect across "all sectors", leading them to their conclusion. The disclaimer at the end of the study states that within the restaurant industry, the net result is zero. This is corroborated by your own story and study, which states that wages -did- increase but overall employment decreased. This is backed up by the OP's study, which indicates that hours worked dropped by 9% but wages rose by 3%. This is then seconded by your linked study, which states that the law has "slightly reduced the employment rate even as it boosted pay."

Seems that the law has had the following effects.

*Less Overall Employment
*Less Working Hours
*More average pay

So instead of working 40 hours a week at 10/hour, now folks are working 30 hours and making $13/hour. That would match up with the OP's cited study that showed a very small drop in the average monthly pay. Makes sense, for the most part.

The only real difference in the studies is that the OP's study seems to encompass all low-wage professions, while your own cited study targets only the comparably minor restaurant industry. I'd be very interested to see both studies firsthand to draw a better conclusion, but I'm not forking over real money for the privilege.

Also interesting is the first one received little attention whereas the second seemed to be picked up by several news agencies.

Negative news draws readership. This old meme is brought to mind.

Between 1985 and 2001, the organization received $9,963,301 in 73 grants from only four foundations:

John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife)
Smith Richardson Foundation

Link: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research

The John M. Olin Foundation was a conservative American grant-making foundation established in 1953 by John M. Olin, president of the Olin Industries chemical and munitions manufacturing businesses. Unlike most other foundations, it was charged to spend all of its assets within a generation of Olin's death, for fear of mission drift over time and to preserve donor intent. It made its last grant in the summer of 2005 and officially disbanded on November 29, 2005

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Olin_Foundation

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (LHBF), formerly known as the Allen-Bradley Foundation, was established in 1942, describing itself as "a private, independent grantmaking organization based in Milwaukee."[1] According to the foundation's 1998 Annual Report and a 2011 report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation gives away more than $30 million per year.[2][3] In November 2013, One Wisconsin Now and the Center for Media and Democracy reported that the Bradley Foundation had given over $500 million to conservative "public-policy experiments" since 2000.

Link: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lynde_and_Harry_Bradley_Foundation

Sarah Scaife Foundation - According to its website, its funding is "primarily directed toward public policy programs that address major domestic and international issues."[15] In practice, the programs that benefit from the foundation’s grants usually seek to shift public policy to the right.[7] "The foundation’s biggest recipient over the last several decades has been the Heritage Foundation, which got over $23 million between 1985 and 2010 and probably much more in years prior to available records."[7] Other major recipients include the American Enterprise Institute (which has received nearly $9 million), the Media Research Center (which has received over $4 million), FreedomWorks, the Cato Institute, and the Center for Immigration Studies, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Hoover Institution, all prominent right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups.[7]

For a partial list of grant recipients, see the Sourcewatch article Allegheny Foundation.

Link: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scaife_Foundations

The Smith Richardson Foundation is financed by the Vicks Vaporub fortune. The Foundation reported assets of nearly $570 million in 2007 and gave away $25 million. [1]

The Foundation became active in supporting conservative causes in 1973 when R. Richardson Randolph became its president. Forbes estimates the Richardsons to have a net worth of $870 million, which makes it one of the U.S.'s richest families.[2]

Link: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Smith_Richardson_Foundation

Any business that can't pay a comfortable living wage doesn't deserve to exist.

Economic "productivity" as we now define it is a direct measure of the damage we our doing to the earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.

We ought to be paying people to experiment with lifestyles that have a very small environmental footprint.

We ought to tax the uber-wealthy out of existence, establishing a maximum income and wealth that's some multiple of the minimum wage and a minimum wealth.

How much do we, as a nation, want to revert back to primitive economic conditions? It's the 21st century and we've still got millions of people living in conditions of slavery and wage slavery, and asshole "economists" claiming this is somehow the "natural" order of things.

If a job can't pay a living wage, it's no job at all. If someone survives on substandard wages, it's because all the rest of us prop up that person while the employer underpaying that employee socializes its cost of labor.

If, as a business, you cannot stay in business while paying your employees a living wage, you do not belong in business.

He said he'd have to lay people off if the minimum wage was $15 an hour. He's in retail too, so he's feeling pressure from both sides: online retailers on one, and minimum wage on the other.

Businesses will just put more work on fewer workers, cut back service, or automate. Google the new McDonalds kiosks. They'll be taking your order in the future, not workers. And they've already invented an automated food preparing robot who can fix something like two hundred dishes. The era of minimum wage work is drawing to a close.

That's some magic right there. As though businesses haven't been cutting hours and decreasing wages steadily for much longer than this law has been around. As though businesses aren't making sure 'research' like this gets done and reported on despite its lack of peer-review and its clear flaws.

There are valid and specific criticisms of this study in the paragraphs the OP chose not to post. I suggest people click through and read the whole article.

eta: the real local, economic outcomes of this bill will be known when it is fully implemented and there are more dollars in the pockets of the working people. That's the purpose of this law.

It probably won't work as well unless it's done on a broader scale.

Slavery would be the preferred option for many businesses if it was legal. Then other businesses would say they needed slaves in order to compete!