Biden Wants 15/Hour Min Wage

[Belsnickel]

(01-21-2021, 11:07 PM)Stewy Wrote: Ok let's be fair here.  As a scientist one publication does not usually become the gold standard of fact.  The authors themselves state that they are adding to overall story and that the variations they investigated are dependent upon how wage hikes are implemented.  Which essentially is what I was saying, that HOW you implement it matters to the overall effect.  A blanket increase will have much more negative effects than one adjusted for inflation or socio-economic conditions.

This is one piece of research adding to the story....a story that the authors themselves quoted on the first few pages.  They did not claim to replace the previous conceptions but add to them with more precise and recent data.  My question for you would be, since you quoted it, thus I assume you know the ins and outs, has this research become the gold standard?  Have all the previous authors basically said "Yep, the 2016 work is right and everything older is obsolete?"

Not to offend, but as a scientist, I find the quoting of one article to prove a point to be a decent argument, but not definitive.  Find me 5-10 articles sighting (and agreeing) the 2016 research and I'll be right there with you.  Otherwise it's one article in a sea of articles that has a different viewpoint.

And no I did not read all 55 pages....I don't have enough caffeine for that.  What was this a Master Thesis?

They did a little bit of a meta analysis on the topic, but there hasn't been much since that 2016 study because this isn't a very well research topic to begin with. Most studies on the effects of minimum wage increases focuses on the theory they lower employment levels (also not really supported by the research, btw). I did find a 2004 meta-analysis that had some very similar results from the Institute for the Study of Labor. 

From what I've read on the topic, which is again very limited, the study of the effects shows that the theorized economic effect on prices is not as large as economists tend to predict. These papers both come from highly regarded research centers on labor economics, focus on the United States, and share similar results. Given the dearth of research on this topic, this represents what 5-10 papers sharing similar results in a more focused upon topic would mean. 

Look, I'm a social scientist, so I get what you're saying in your skepticism, but I haven't seen a paper out there proving the theory that prices rise in a major way from minimum wage increases. The empirical evidence on this topic isn't exhausting, but what evidence there is points to a small price effect from increasing minimum wage, especially in the US.

Also, if we looked at a minimum wage adjusted for inflation, which I think is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, we would be looking at a minimum wage even higher than $15 right now if we based it on the history of the minimum wage.