It’s instructive to compare the vast interest in the econosphere over the question of whether higher minimum wages raise teen unemployment versus the crickets-chirping lack of discussion over whether higher immigration raises teen unemployment ... even though the most plausible answer to both questions is likely "Yes."
To put it very diplomatically, in the factory where I had my last summer job, I was the tallest person on the floor.
ReplyDeletethere's no inflation, so why do we need to raise the minimum wage?
ReplyDeletejust an idea for a reply to all the "There is no inflation" disinformation from the government.
since the price of not one thing is going up, and hasn't gone up for years, it follows that people can live perfectly fine on minimum wage. minimum wage was raised to 7.25 in 2009. the price of NOT ONE THING has gone up since 2009, so the idea that we need to increase the minimum wage AGAIN, after 5 years of NO INCREASE IN THE PRICE of ANYTHING, is a non-sequitur.
let's see economists chomp on that one.
or, perhaps let's do it this way. let's index minimum wage to inflation. economists, especially economics professors at the colleges i went to, were adamant about inserting inflation adjustments into the language of any pay or salary negotiations they did with the college.
ReplyDeleteso, inflation is 1%? then minimum wage goes up 1%. over and over they have claimed that inflation was all the way down to 1% in 2013 and that the federal reserve is actually fighting deflation. so, minimum wage goes up 1% from 7.25 to 7.32. enjoy your 7 extra cents per hour, and hope the government does not declare that inflation is 0% in 2014 as the federal reserve faces it's 'nightmare' scenario of deflation, while you, the wage slave, notice the price of all the things you need buy, steadily going up.
a gift from economists to the minimum wage class. put your money where your mouth is, economists. i suspect if held to these standards, they'd magically discover that inflation was higher than 1% as angry mobs of fast food workers direct their ire at a new target, the professor guy with the beard and glasses telling them that their annual raise will be 7 cents an hour.
Take a step back and ask a meta-question: why do policy makers and establishment pundits want inflation? What's wrong with money keeping a stable value? Or, to be more precise about it, why do we stoke inflation in some areas (health care, housing, education) and deflation in most wages?
DeleteEstablishment pundits would answer the first question by saying mild inflation reduces the burden of debt in real terms and encourages borrowing and investment. They'd be less coherent in answering the second question, but I could see scenarios in which either deflation or inflation across the board could result in higher living standards. But not with the current status quo.
The econosphere (cool word) is dominated by (which is to say stacked with) globalists.
ReplyDeleteGlobalists are liberals, and liberals are utilitarian totalitarians, which is to say, not democrats.
Thus, whereas democrats speak for the interests of the people, that is the people of the USA or whatever happens to be the jurisdiction, liberals deplore such narrow-minded nationalism.
Thus, in the utilitarian calculus of the liberal, immigrants are very much a part of the greatest number to whom must be done the greatest good.
To restore democracy, the United States and its tributary states must eliminate the bipartisan coalition against the people.
well comparing the states with higher than a federal minimum wage with the states furthest from the canadian border seems to indicate that minimum wage is not that much of an issue while being further from canada is severely detrimental to youth employment.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, minimum wages at the moment are below the wage supply-demand equilibrium even for the adolescent labor market. So I think the answer to the question is entirely immigration.
ReplyDeleteTake a step back and ask a meta-question: why do policy makers and establishment pundits want inflation? What's wrong with money keeping a stable value? Or, to be more precise about it, why do we stoke inflation in some areas (health care, housing, education) and deflation in most wages?
ReplyDeleteElites want to maintain their relative status, which is relative position and wealth. It's zero-sum. They want inflation in things they own like financial assets, real estate, etc., and deflation in the assets and wages of other people.
On minimum wage, of course economic theory tells us it increases unemployment. The policy question is the magnitude of the increase balanced against the gains to the teens. Since there's high turnover anyway, most teens would probably accept a large increased wage if it only slightly reduced the chance of finding or keeping a job. You have to look at data to find the answer and determine the tradeoffs; you can't just read Ayn Rand. This is heavily researched, and most research suggests the increased unemployment from a modest wage hike is so small that it's almost impossible to detect.
ReplyDeleteWith illegal immigration, unlike the minimum wage, I see no countervailing benefit to teen job seekers to econometrically balance against unemployment. So it probably isn't discussed because it isn't as methodologically interesting.
What drives post-1965 Immigration Policy is Mega-Corporate..the folks that own both the Republican and Democratic Parties..fear of a severe labor scarcity.
ReplyDeletePost-1965 Immigration Policy is a wealth theft labor policy. You can't both maintiain that you are for a high wage labor policy and at the same time oppose severe immigration restrictions because of the fear of a severe labor scarcity.
A severe labor scarcity should never be used as a justification for race-replacing the White Majority-and this is exactly what's being done by the Treasonous Elite Class. Larger point:there is no economic case for race-replacing the White Majority. And this is another way of saying that the economic argument against post-1965 immigration policy is not the fundamental issue:the Demographic issue is the fundamental issue. Although the economic issue does interact with the race-replacement issue in very pernicious ways:it is a form of economic violence inflicted upon the White Working Class.
Steve
I highy recommend that you do write about the enormous benefits of a severe labor scarcity for it would trigger a discussion with the enemy of the fundamental issue of White American race-replacement.
The US could quite easily be 100 percent labor self-sufficient just like China,Japan,Korea, and India-even though the Asia Fifth column in America demands that the US be completely dependent on Asia for its doctors,engneers,nurses, and scientists...kind of outrageous is't it.
Bill Blizzard and his Men
"Take a step back and ask a meta-question: why do policy makers and establishment pundits want inflation?"
ReplyDeletethe general idea is that if your currency enters deflation, then people will sit on their money instead of spending it, with the expectation that the 1000 dollars they hold today, will be worth 1100 next year, and 1200 the year after that. why use your currency as cash when it's performing a more useful function as an investment. consumers would pull back on spending and hoard cash, only buying things when they absolutely had to.
they describe this as the velocity of the money. when you get long term deflation, like in japan, millions of people just sit on their cash. not that japan is in any kind of bad long term situation. japan functions fine. but not to a globalist banker's mind. they hate how the japanese people save money and don't splurge. don't the stupid japanese know they should spend every paycheck on plastic crap, bigger houses than they need, giant SUVs. rack up a giant credit card bill you dumb japanese zombies. stop saving!
this is why janet yellen is said to actually even want negative savings rates in bank accounts - to penalize savers by taking away 2 or 3 percent of their money every year if it sits in there not moving, encouraging them to spend it.
basically the federal reserve people are never going to allow savers to operate normally ever again. they're going to try to flush everybody's money out by forcing you to get your money out of whatever savings scheme you have set up, and into the market, whether it be stocks, or the investment instrument de jure.
there's nothing wrong with money fluctuating in value between -1%, 0%, and 1% from year to year though, which is what it did for a century or more in the US, before central banking reared it's ugly head. a long term stable value for money is fine. it's only when you move into an extreme fiat situation, where we are today, that this year over year inflation requirement begins to emerge.
coincidentally this is probably why bitcoin cannot, in it's current instantiation, become money. it is inherently deflationary, and i'd rather sit on my bitcoins than spend them, with the expectation that they could go up from 800 back to 1000 in only 1 month, when money from china begins pouring in again. if i expect that, i'd incur a big loss using them as actual money instead of holding them and using US dollars to buy stuff instead.
ReplyDeletealso, not the same thing but related, i think we can expect democrats to start going after people's 401Ks within the next 10 years, raiding them for money. it's not clear whether they'll be able to get the money, but they will try. they are going to try to institute a wealth tax, saying that it's not fair you have a giant pile of money sitting there earning interest but you are not doing anything to earn or deserve that 'free' money. as if the government does jack to deserve the free cut it takes in taxes from a dozen industries which generate real value while the politicians just sit there collecting their percentage.
ReplyDeletesocial justice and economic equality are not served by some 55 year old hard worker having amassed a small fortune after 30 years of hard work and then living on the interest that generates, not while millions of slacker, profligate spenders who blew every paycheck for 25 years, have to keep working for 12 dollars an hour into their 40s and 50s. that's not 'fair', and income tax alone cannot correct this situation, so a wealth tax is in order. consider the attacks on mitt romney's fortune and his 15% capital gains tax rate during the 2012 presidential election, to be the opening shot across that bow.
The biggest cause of teen unemployment by far is illegal immigration as they take the low-skilled entry level jobs that teens used to do.
ReplyDeleteThere's a painless way to test the effect of a minimum wage hike on employment: apply it first, and more severely, to non-citizens. That way, if it really does cost people jobs, it would only be the jobs of the ones with the weakest claim to them.
ReplyDeletePeople also focus rather blindly on such laws restricting the bargaining ability of employers. They laugh if you point out that those laws also restrict the worker's right to bargain.
Okay, but let me tweak those statutes a tad:
1) Unpaid "internships", in which rich kids can spend several months in an expensive city doing scut work for nothing, in exchange for making valuable contacts the proletariat have no access to, will be abolished forthwith.
2) The minimum wage for all work done by members of labor unions will be $83/hr.
Now, all of a sudden (some) workers' right to bargain a lower wage will be rediscovered, loudly, by those who've heretofore denied it existed at all.
But that logic should apply to all minimum wages, or none.
But whether and how much citizens have a right to undercut other citizens wages, non-citizens have no such claim.
Therefore, raising the non-citizen minimum to somewhere north of the median wage harms no one. By definition.
"So it probably isn't discussed because it isn't as methodologically interesting."
ReplyDeleteOh yes, fer sure.
I'll have to remember that. Immigration isn't discussed because it isn't methodologically interesting.
Can't let the children get bored, eh?
The unemployment rate for black teens (July 2013 stat) was 28.2%. That number is basically all caused by immigration, as black teens no longer get fast food jobs, supermarket jobs, hotel jobs, etc. Indeed who wants to hire them with their terrible manners, lack of reliability and shiftlessness. But they used to get hired because blacks were given the low status jobs. Now employers happily give them to compliant, reliable, hard working Hispanics who haven't learned to scream "racism" every five seconds.
ReplyDeleteGood for the employers. Horrendously awful for blacks as generation after generation of young blacks aren't even attempting to learn to work. Also, of course, very bad for America.
Where are the black politicians screaming about immigration and the devastation it has caused in the black community? Few and far between, because black politicians are mostly just grifters on the make, and they know who controls the money, and they know what to support and what not to support.
jody said...also, not the same thing but related, i think we can expect democrats to start going after people's 401Ks within the next 10 years, raiding them for money.
ReplyDeleteI think this is inevitable as the gov't runs out of lenders. If it nationalized all private pensions but promised to pay out a "reasonable" annual interest rate on them, it might get away with it. I've given up thinking that Americans will put up much of a fight over anything.
…compliant, reliable, hard working Hispanics who haven't learned to scream "racism" every five seconds. --Peterike
ReplyDeleteUntil they're sworn in as citizens, that is.
As the father of a teenager, I have experience with this.
ReplyDeleteAccording to hiring managers, many companies have policies against hiring teenagers. Why? In North Carolina, it is because of child labor laws, with child being defined as anyone under 18.
Employers face fines of $10,000 per incident if a child works (when school is in session) more than four hours during a weekday, more than 20 hours total per week, more than four hours without a break on a weekend day.
Large employers such as fast food chains often have management software to help adhere to the law, so many of them hire teens. Most employers won't take the risk.
I know one restaurant manager who refuses to hire teens. He gladly hires illegals with their obvious fake IDs. There's no penalty for that.
Once upon a time in my area teens used to work in fields and packing sheds and restaurants. Now no one wants their 16 year olds working with 35 year olds from who knows where
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWith illegal immigration, unlike the minimum wage, I see no countervailing benefit to teen job seekers to econometrically balance against unemployment. So it probably isn't discussed because it isn't as methodologically interesting.
No, Steve is right. If you want to research immigration in economics, you need to try to figure out why it is a good thing. Now, any retard can see that it seems certain to decrease wages for the low-skilled and the black. This would make it both regressive and racist which, by the profession's usual standards, are bad things.
So, there is strong demand in the profession for research which shows 1) the wage-decreasing effects are not so bad, 2) there are weird, indirect, or otherwise implausible mechanisms which mean that immigration actually raises wages, or 3) that immigration has such large benefits on non-wage-stuff that these benefits overwhelm the small, regrettable wage decreases.
The go-to guy is Giovanni Peri.
Here is a link to a search though the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research---a high prestige "club" for high prestige economists) for work on immigration. Notice the emphasis on findings that "immigration isn't so bad for wages" and on combating an entirely imaginary conventional wisdom that immigration is bad for wages.
On the implausible mechanisms front, here is a little essay describing some work finding that immigration actually increases domestic wages because immigrants and natives are complements (instead of substitutes) in production. A different implausible mechanism is described here . Evidently, mass immigration causes firms to offshore jobs less ('cause why move to Mexico when Mexico is moving to here), and this causes demand for domestic labor to go up.
Also, immigration increases innovation evidently. But without crowding out innovation by domestic innovators.
Where are the black politicians screaming about immigration and the devastation it has caused in the black community? Few and far between, because black politicians are mostly just grifters on the make
ReplyDeleteIn other words:
... because Black politicians are like White politicians.