Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
You can't take one example and say that means that there is no scenario in which a raise to min wage costs jobs. There is some theoretical amount you can raise a min wage to that will cost jobs. If you raised it to $100, then there would obviously be job losses. So there is some number between where it is now and $100 that you will start seeing increasing job losses as it raises.
There are parts of the country that a $15 min wage is going to be a much higher percentage increase to min wage and average wage that it was in Seattle, and there just isn't data available for that type of increase and that is why job losses are being predicted for parts of the country.
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Yes, obviously there is a limit to everything, but there are also plenty of examples of high minimum wage raises with no negative effects.
For example Korea raised it's minimum wage 84% between 2005 and 2016 without any clear negative effects. In fact the overall effect on society has been so positive they ended up increasing the rate at which minimum wages increase, with yearly rises of more than 10%. (They started from a very low minimum wage.)
It's also just false to claim that a lower employment rate is bad, or call it "job loss", because that's not what's happening.
There is little evidence that when minimum wages increase, employers end up firing people or hiring less. What usually happens is that young people, especially those who live at home, choose to work less. Which is good. Teenagers shouldn't have to be working to support their families.
The maximum amount of people working minimum wage jobs for the maximum amount of hours is not a goal we as a society should be striving. A high employment rate is not a goal in itself. A low employment rate of teenagers is a good thing.
You can't just take a statistic like employment rate, point that it's going down and say that "this is a bad thing" and claim that this means there's now more young people who are looking for jobs but can't get them, when the evidence points to the contrary.
Young people should be going to school or studying or living their lives, not wasting their lives flipping burgers, and this is what they quite often choose to do if mom and dad are already bringing home enough money.
So yeah, 1.4M less young people working is a thing that might happen, but not because they are forced out of the workforce, but because they are no longer forced into the workforce.
Obviously there are limits to everything and minimum wage raises can have negative effects, and obviously in a big country like the US some bad effects will happen somewhere, but actual studies done of minimum wage raises very consistently show that the negative effects mostly vary between minimal and non-existent.