BigSteelThrill said:
Mark Davis said:
BigSteelThrill said:
Maurile Tremblay said:
John Bender said:
Now that we've cleared up the semantic aspect of what inflation is, is whatever Seattle is doing detrimental to the/their economy irrespective of how you want to classify it?
I suspect it will cause increased unemployment among the least-skilled workers,
Short term.
Why short term? You made this comment way back in the DC thread where Wal Mart was going to abandon building plans when DC wanted to make big box retailers pay a higher minimum wage. Where exactly is the replacement to those jobs in an economic sense?
More money at the local area on people who spend it. Long term it is a corrective measure of many of our ongoing economic issues.
There isn't more money though. At least in any econ class I ever took. Some people will get more, others will lose their jobs and have less. I run a small business that occasionally I may hire someone at minimum wage during my busier time. It's not always for tasks I can't do, sometimes it's merely to free up personal time. I may hire someone who it takes them an hour to what I could do in 20 minutes due to experience, but it's worth it to me for the freed up time. However, I wouldn't do so at $15. Sure, I'd still hire who I had to have in order to get everything done. But the reality is I would hire fewer hours and someone isn't going to be working who otherwise would have. So the people who I keep will get more dollars, but others lose their job entirely. My business isn't going away and isn't ceding any share of it's market to make that change, There isn't some other company coming into my market to hire these people. That's just one example.
It comes down to would you rather have those that keep their jobs make more, and in trade for that you put X number of people out of their jobs. It's a fair debate to have to say I want this and am willing to trade some losing their jobs for it. A minor increase means not that many would lose their jobs, but the more you increase the minimum wage, the more jobs that are lost. It's fine to want people to make more, but when you change the minimum wage it's not being intellectually honest to ignore that it comes at a cost of added unemployment. And not short term, it is permanent as those jobs are lost at that rate on a permanent basis. Those people are going to have to go find other jobs that will have to be created by some other means.