Landslide Logan’s Ready To Deal

Imposition of a $15 minimum wage in other states has been shown to increase the income of the most experienced and talented low wage workers but it will also result in an overall reduction in entry level and low wage workforce numbers.

Business owners simply don't absorb an expensive government mandate. They will pay for the mandate by employing and loading up work on the few best and most reliable workers, but will lay off and not employ the least experienced.

As a result of this kind of price fixing, the number of entry level jobs will simply be less. Is that what people want?

$30.00 a hour would be better. And now to the homeless,,,,,,,,,,,,

More on Seattle's min wage law. The emerging conclusion is that rapid high wage hikes have negative consequences. Vigdor pointed out that their law raised min wage 37% in just nine months.

Raising the minimum wage is a pro-growth, pro-business strategy that is a proven success.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-24/what-minimum-wage-foes-got-wrong-about-seattle

excerpt: "...there potentially is a problem with having a lead researcher — economist Jacob Vigdor, whose affiliations among others include the right-leaning Manhattan Institute — whose impartiality is open to question."

indeed.

Manhattan Institute is a Koch network front group, a prominent part of the State Policy Network, a Koch lobbying and influence operation.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research

Recycler

Here's another quote from your posted article, which shows that authors accusations are either uninformed or biassed.

"As was demonstrated back in 1994 by economists Alan Krueger and David Card, modest, gradual wage increases have not been shown to reduce employment or hours worked in any significant way."

The whole point of the Vigdor study I mentioned was that Seattle's increases we're too fast. Your author Barry Ritholtz is either ignorant of that or is just trying to use this issue to sell his book.

Recycler

Vigdor point was that the increase was too rapid, something your author admits.

So, the NHI is now resorting to the Trumpian method of assigning people nicknames? Ned Lamont .
won with a margin of less than 3%. Logan won by less. They both WON, in a campaign season which saw more than its fair share of close races. Why after nearly 3 weeks the NHI is still calling him "Landslide Logan", which doesn't appear to be a term of endearment, or am I missing something here?

I hope the NHI and society as a whole aren't following Trump's leadership and using childish name calling to fire up our bases.

[Paul: Thanks for the comment! no insult at all intended for Sen. Logan. We were kidding about it on air.]

Vigdor is not in fact making some narrow point. He is producing a specific talking point dressed up to look like rigorous analysis that people will repeat - without any nuance or qualification - as part of the broad, very well documented, campaign to cap and ultimately repeal the minimum wage.

The broad point, again, is that one must know one's sources.

The Manhattan Institute is in no sense an objective source, it is part of a well documented, very sophisticated, and very successful propaganda operation funded by billionaires with a radical agenda. Vigdor is a guy on their payroll.

That doesn't mean that from time to time a more or less valid point or observation won't be offered. It does mean that any such point is, by virtue of having been offered by Vigdor and Manhattan Institute, to be viewed with a great deal of skepticism, if not suspicion, or even tainted.

That said, there is no evidence of the dire consequences alleged. It isn't empirically arrived at. It isn't accurate. Vigdor is not advancing a valid argument. And he is not someone who can be cited as an authority on this, or any, subject. He's just a tarted up shill.

ReCyler - Why should the minimum wage be pegged at a paltry $15? Why not $20, $25, or more?

Recycler,

If an economist/professor who got a PhD from Harvard is a "tart" there's not much reason for me to debate you....ad hominem.

I said he's a shill. It's an accurate statement of his role. Suggest you check the definition of ad hominem, incidentally.

and, by the way, "...professor who got a PhD from Harvard..." arguing from authority is an actual logical fallacy. Just sayin'...

Hi Jeff -
$15 is not a big number around here but it's a huge number in about half the states of the country where it is above or very close to the median wage in that state - not the minimum-wage, the median wage.

Needless to say it would be very disruptive in those states to raise it to $15 immediately and in fact that's not what anybody believes would actually happen including the people who are the developers of that policy proposal (some of whom are colleagues).

Here in Connecticut to bring the wage to $15 it would probably rise at the rate of about a dollar and change a year over a period of four years. The economic impact of that would be very positive and none of the dire predictions that we heard about raising the minimum in Connecticut to $10.10 have manifested.

That said if we were to bring the minimum-wage into line with inflation - that is, wages have been suppressed for most of the last 30 years - the actual figure to bring it to having kept pace with the last time it was something like a living wage - is probably near $24.

Just to keep things in perspective ...

Recycler,

You've made no argument of abuse of authority based upon facts, just the associations of the person. Ad hominem. Just sayin.

Just wrong robn. Not only is your position explicitly arguing from authority, but the entire Manhattan Institute project is an excercise in argument from authority. It presents itself as an authority, and then - wittingly and not - various others repeat their ideologically driven assertions as though they are facts. Pointing that out is not an ad hominem argument. It is simply accurate. I understand your frustration, but facts are facts.

RECYCLER,

Here's the Vigdor data...
https://www.nber.org/papers/w23532.pdf

Here's the (abbreviated by me) conclusion...
...we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased, implying that the Ordinance lowered the amount paid to workers in low-wage jobs by an average of $74 per month per job in 2016....

robn -
That isn't data, it's an interpretation - actually, it's an excerpt of an interpretation of whatever concoction that particular publication intends. So, this is simply dissembling.

The definition of a shill is someone posing as something they are not. The author is on the payroll of an organization posing as engaged in rigorous academic research, when it is a matter of record that it is not in that business at all. That's shilling.

Again, the point here is the source is tainted and so, even if something it presents is valid viewed in isolation, it cannot be cited as authoritative, and must be viewed very critically as to what the intents and purposes of what is being presented.

Koch funded "think tanks" reverse engineer their "research" to give it the appearance of scholarly rigor. That's called begging the question. The whole enterprise is a project of exploiting logical fallacies and creating what Kelly Anne Conway memorably called "alternative facts." Alternative facts, as someone pointed out to her, are not facts. They're lies.

Sophisticated lies, but lies nonetheless. Not facts. Not research. Lies.

Not to put too fine a point on it, robn, but NBER itself is part of the Koch network's shilling complex. It is funded by leading conservative "philanthropies" including the John M. Olin Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife), Smith Richardson Foundation.

Guess who else receives funding from these organizations. Why, Manhattan Institute, of course!

Every one of these (and there are a whole bunch more) has a well documented track record. The subject of what these organizations actually do is eye opening and a whole other discussion, but for our modest purposes here, they are where the money comes from to fund the ideological and political mission. They call the shots.

Quick review then, the author, his employer, and the publisher are all part of the sophisticated echo chamber shilling operation run by the Koch organization and its network.