Sunday, August 14, 2016

Bill Mitchell — Seattle workers better off after significant minimum wage rise


And the Seattle economy did not collapse as predicted.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Seattle workers better off after significant minimum wage rise
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

10 comments:

Postkey said...

Is this ‘credible’ evidence?

“Early evidence from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Seattle’s monthly employment, the number of unemployed workers, and the city’s unemployment rate through December 2015 suggest that since last April when the first minimum wage hike took effect:
a) the city’s employment has fallen by more than 11,000,
b) the number of unemployed workers has risen by nearly 5,000, and
c) the city’s jobless rate has increased by more than 1 percentage point (all based on BLS’s “not seasonally adjusted basis”). Those figures are based on employment data for the city of Seattle only (not the Seattle MSA or MD), and are available from the BLS website here (data are “not seasonally adjusted”).”
https://www.aei.org/publication/early-evidence-suggests-that-seattles-radical-experiment-might-be-a-model-for-the-rest-of-the-nation-not-to-follow/

Ignacio said...

Well, it will drive many business which are useless (depend on lower wages to operate) out of business.

This cannot work without the state steeping in to provide an alternative for those jobs. In just half of the solution.

Ryan Harris said...


It would be interesting to see the data and which industries and firms move, automate or just raise prices. I doubt a few bucks an hour for the few minimum wage workers in the region go noticed very much. Very low productivity workers may be impacted but those firms that were sensitive to wage prices probably shifted work to lower cost areas long ago. To understand what has happened, we'd probably have to look toward the regions where the coastal elites send their impoverished economic refugees... nevada, utah, texas..etc in the coming years.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon can't account for 2.8 trillion in spending and has to make 5.6 trillion adjustment to the books. Because 16,513 of 1.3 million spending records went "missing." Oops. Curious how fascinated people are by raising minimum wage by 10s of millions in an entire region but trillions can be "lost" in the richest census area (Washington DC) as we have a CIA and DoD running amok in the MENA and no one really cares. I wonder what drives media and economists to be interested in what they report?

WillORNG said...

Ryan Harris David Cameron said it best "Money is no object" nuff said.

WillORNG said...

Ryan Harris David Cameron said it best "Money is no object" nuff said.

Matt Franko said...

Still a "deficit too small!" type of thing here...

"money comes from businesses!" etc...

Here is a quote from the latest Milwaukee riots its the same insight:

"Rich People Got All This Money… ‘Don’t Give Us None’ – So We Burn Gas Stations "

No analysis of leading flow into the Seattle area... maybe it increased...

Andrew Anderson said...

Wages aren’t the long (or even medium?) term solution because of automation.

And that automation is and has been financed with what is, in essence, the legally stolen purchasing power of the workers and general population via unethical fiat and credit creation.

Yes, we have had Progress but at a terrible, dangerous cost. I suggest we repent and provide restitution to the victims.

Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kaivey said...

It looks like a basic income is needed to get the economy going.

Ignacio said...

A basic income would be implemented in a way to be a (yet) an other subsidy to the elites. Same with a JG tbh.