Do the experiment and be honest with the results.

[rubato]

http://ritholtz.com/2016/12/seattle-min-wage-update/

Seattle Minimum Wage Experiment is Over

...

So, almost two years later, how are things working out?

Well, in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett Metropolitan Division (MD), comprised of King and Snohomish Counties, BLS just reported (on November 30) this:

seabellev102016

Now, as good as that news is (and it’s pretty impressive), it does represent a two county area and not just the city of Seattle proper. Some may recall that in many of his pieces on Seattle, Mark Perry very inappropriately used the even larger three-county Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), and I called him out on that.

Well, as luck would have it, we can actually drill down to the city of Seattle proper and take a look at its unemployment rate (among other things). So, how’s Seattle faring?



seattle-new-cycle-low





The unemployment rate in the city of Seattle – the tip of the spear when it comes to minimum wage experiments – has now hit a new cycle low of 3.4%, as the city continues to thrive. I’m not sure what else there is to say at this point. The doomsayers were wrong. The sky has not fallen. The restaurant business, by all accounts, is booming (in fact, probably reaching a saturation point when one looks at eateries per capita). I think it’s safe to say we’ve got enough data – over almost two years now – to declare that Seattle has not suffered adverse consequences from its increases in the minimum wage, and has certainly not experienced the dire effects foretold by the anti-min wage crowd.

[Burning Petard]

Could be a footnote to any number of Paul Krugman newspaper columns. According to Krugman, there are political/ideological leaders and authorities in the USofA that are sometimes grouped as Republicans/conservatives who justify themselves via the academics of Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School of Economics. Hayek won the Nobel for economics, but on the other hand so did Krugman. Krugman's criticism is that these people speak loudly against various government programs, like the minimum wage, with great theoretical reasons why they are destructive, inspite of the reality that when these things have been applied in the last 30 years or so, their predicted bad things have not happened. Krugman argues, that there is no accountability because the actual evidence of reality does not change their theories at all.

snailgate

[Econoline]

• • ...their predicted bad things have not happened.

Also too...their predicted good things have not happened.

[rubato]

• • ...their predicted bad things have not happened.

Also too...their predicted good things have not happened.

?? The lowest wage increased to $15. That was the predicted benefit, and it did happen.


yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

"Their" in my post referred to the same people it referred to in snailgate's post, which I quoted:

...these people speak loudly against various government programs, like the minimum wage, with great theoretical reasons why they are destructive, inspite of the reality that when these things have been applied in the last 30 years or so, their predicted bad things have not happened.

These are the same people who keep insisting that "trickle down" economics works.