I'm sure Jennifer Hunt is alumni with Paul Krugman from Dr. Bolo's School of Cosmotology and Economic Studies. On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 2:28 PM, MJ <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Friday, February 15, 2013 > *Department of Labor: Minimum Wage Causing Unemployment Is a Myth > > * From the Department of > Labor<http://www.dol.gov/_sec/newsletter/#.UR23WqVORWx>: > The president's plan to raise the federal minimum wage will benefit 15 > million American workers, and have a positive effect on the economy. Still, > there are some common myths about raising the minimum wage. We checked in > with our Chief Economist Jennifer Hunt[...: Myth: Raising the minimum > wage reduces employment. False Minimum wage increases have little or no > adverse effect on employment as shown in independent studies from > economists across the country. Additionally, a recent letter by leading > economists including Lawrence Katz, Richard Freeman, Joseph Stiglitz and > Laura Tyson points out that "[i]n recent years there have been important > developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the > minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that > increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the > employment of minimum wage workers, even during times of weakness in the > labor market. > > Here's Murray Rothbard slamming <http://mises.org/econsense/ch36.asp>this > kind of nonsense: In > truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory > unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, > for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This > means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage > contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of > unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only > outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result. All demand > curves are falling, and the demand for hiring labor is no exception. Hence, > laws that prohibit employment at any wage that is relevant to the market (a > minimum wage of 10 cents an hour would have little or no impact) must > result in outlawing employment and hence causing unemployment. If the > minimum wage is, in short, raised from $3.35 to $4.55 an hour, the > consequence is to disemploy, permanently, those who would have been hired > at rates in between these two rates. Since the demand curve for any sort of > labor (as for any factor of production) is set by the perceived marginal > productivity of that labor, this means that the people who will be > disemployed and devastated by this prohibition will be precisely the > "marginal" (lowest wage) workers, e.g. blacks and teenagers, the very > workers whom the advocates of the minimum wage are claiming to foster and > protect. The advocates of the minimum wage and its periodic boosting > reply that all this is scare talk and that minimum wage rates do not and > never have caused any unemployment. The proper riposte is to raise them one > better; all right, if the minimum wage is such a wonderful anti-poverty > measure, and can have no unemployment-raising effects, why are you such > pikers? Why you are helping the working poor by such piddling amounts? Why > stop at $4.55 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? $100? $1,000? It is obvious > that the minimum wage advocates do not pursue their own logic, because if > they push it to such heights, virtually the entire labor force will be > disemployed. In short, you can have as much unemployment as you want, > simply by pushing the legally minimum wage high enough. > > It is conventional among economists to be polite, to assume that economic > fallacy is solely the result of intellectual error. But there are times > when decorousness is seriously misleading, or, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, > "when speaking one's mind becomes more than a duty; it becomes a positive > pleasure." For if proponents of the higher minimum wage were simply > wrongheaded people of good will, they would not stop at $3 or $4 an hour, > but indeed would pursue their dimwit logic into the stratosphere. The > fact is that they have always been shrewd enough to stop their minimum wage > demands at the point where only marginal workers are affected, and where > there is no danger of disemploying, for example, white adult male workers > with union seniority. When we see that the most ardent advocates of the > minimum wage law have been the AFL-CIO, and that the concrete effect of the > minimum wage laws has been to cripple the low-wage competition of the > marginal workers as against higher-wage workers with union seniority, the > true motivation of the agitation for the minimum wage becomes apparent. This > is only one of a large number of cases where a seemingly purblind > persistence in economic fallacy only serves as a mask for special privilege > at the expense of those who are supposedly to be "helped." > > > http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/02/department-of-labor-minimum-wage.html > > -- > -- > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. > For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum > > * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. > * Read the latest breaking news, and more. > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "PoliticalForum" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. 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