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Vintersorg posted:So someone on reddit, using papers he must have gotten from Google Scholar, is saying increasing minimum wage jobs is a net loss for society. Mostly, yeah, but some of this is how you interpret the results. The ~consensus view is that raising the minimum wage does depress employment somewhat (the employment change in both these papers isn't very big), but it depends on the exact setting, time-frame studied, and size of the wage. It's probably true that raising the minimum wage raises prices - I don't think that's necessarily a net negative for society if it means workers are getting paid more, and that Hungary paper finds that a chunk (not most, but 25% isn't nothing) of the new wages are coming from reduced profits, not higher prices. The same research team that put out the second paper you linked wrote a followup where they find that looking at a longer time frame and following workers outside the city limits flips the sign of the earnings change from negative to positive. (The prior paper only looked at employment within Seattle itself so that workers who say lost their job in Seattle but found a new one right outside were counted as making $0). Another big recent study that looked at 138 state-level minimum wage changes in the US over the past several decades found ~0 effect on employment.
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Aug 29, 2019 17:30
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Also focusing on “net loss” is just a way to distract from regressive policies. Just because the rich lose more than the poor gain doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. But good luck convincing a reddit libertarian of that goon friend
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Aug 29, 2019 17:36
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I still think its crazy that Ontario couldn't keep the 15 dollar minimum wage when in the USA right now you have progressives asking for a $15 dollar USD minimum wage, which in buying power is like 23-24 dollars an hour CDN. Could you imagine what that would do for a poor workers in Canada if they could actually afford things? We need a bernie here.
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Aug 29, 2019 17:40
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Instead we have a Bernie-r.
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Aug 29, 2019 17:41
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Minimum Wage increases tend to immediately result in reduced hours and job losses as small business owners over react and start cutting things. Then it ends up being a net positive for everyone over a longer time frame.
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Aug 29, 2019 17:42
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Charles Bukowski posted:Instead we have a Bernie-r. CanPol 2019: Bernier than thou
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Aug 29, 2019 17:49
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NZAmoeba posted:Hey The Butcher you should probably watch this to have a better idea of what "Gendered Lens" means and how it's actually super important for good legislation, and the effects it had in Sweden when it was applied As I mentioned I know it's a real (and good) thing, it's just silly to say you'll apply it to every piece of legislation. Obviously when applied to relevant things (like the transportation infrastructure example) it ends up making life better for everyone. It's a no-brainer. NZAmoeba posted:Stop thinking yourself as the default "normal" and that everyone else is abnormal and should instead be more normal like you. Oh buddy. I would not want to live in a world where everyone was my kind of "normal". Yikes.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:10
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DariusLikewise posted:Minimum Wage increases tend to immediately result in reduced hours and job losses as small business owners over react and start cutting things. Then it ends up being a net positive for everyone over a longer time frame. People react more to the immediate effect, higher wage costs, but then ignore that there's more people with more money able to buy the widgets you're selling. This can take longer to filter through if your clientele aren't the minimum wage earners, but it filters through eventually. People arguing against that are basically saying the economy would somehow be better if all money was concentrated in one spot and static, not flowing throughout the community.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:12
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Vintersorg posted:So someone on reddit, using papers he must have gotten from Google Scholar, is saying increasing minimum wage jobs is a net loss for society. Based on five minutes of skimming I'm already struck by the fact that the guy from Reddit is misrepresenting the results of the study on Seattle. Having just glanced through the paper, the authors did not find that the increase reduced hours worked for minimum wage employees. What they did find was that it reduced hours worked for low wage employees, a category they defined as $19 an hour (Seattle's minimum wage prior to the increase was $9.47). That's hardly an irrelevant difference. Also to be clear, the estimated loss for someone making $19 an hour was $74 a month. That's not irrelevant but it amounts to less than half a days labour, and the tradeoff was that a bunch of people making basically half that wage got a huge boost in income.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:13
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The Butcher posted:As I mentioned I know it's a real (and good) thing, it's just silly to say you'll apply it to every piece of legislation. Obviously when applied to relevant things (like the transportation infrastructure example) it ends up making life better for everyone. It's a no-brainer. bUt hOw cAn tRaNsPoRt bE GeNdErEd?! You don't actually know what it's relevant to until you actually get people who aren't old straight white men in the decision making loop.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:15
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^^^ Deffo. On an entirely different note, I think this is a new one for unhinged comment section ranting for me: quote:Health Canada again proves to be fascistic in nature, preferring profits, foreign and/or domestic, over the actual real-life health of Canadians. The name is a fraud, a con to dull the sheep's minds before the shearing. We absolutely must resist Health Canada and stop it from over-seeing/imposing their foul ideas upon us all via government edict. The have proven themselves the enemy of the Canadian people, again and again and again. Enough. Your fellow voters! The Butcher fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Aug 29, 2019 |
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Aug 29, 2019 18:16
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Thats like 80% of how all cbc comments read, only its always about the libs.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:21
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Don’t read the Winnipeg subreddit, it’s garbage. Full of people defending the white nationalist reservist that was fired.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:24
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Letting a foreign pharma company Shkreli a little girl into a $100k/year bill for eyedrops is indeed absurd, but that's the "free market"'s fault, not Health Canada's. If we had a nationalized pharmacare program with the power to tell these human roaches to gently caress off, this wouldn't be an issue.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:24
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vyelkin posted:CanPol 2019: Bernier than thou More Bernie than Bernie; Bernier
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Aug 29, 2019 18:30
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Helsing posted:Based on five minutes of skimming I'm already struck by the fact that the guy from Reddit is misrepresenting the results of the study on Seattle. Having just glanced through the paper, the authors did not find that the increase reduced hours worked for minimum wage employees. What they did find was that it reduced hours worked for low wage employees, a category they defined as $19 an hour (Seattle's minimum wage prior to the increase was $9.47). That's hardly an irrelevant difference. Well you can't check for "minimum wage employees" because who that population is changes when the wage changes, and it's not obvious what you should look at. If the wage increases from $11 to $12, should someone who was making $12/hour before the increase and still is after the increase be counted as a minimum wage worker for the purpose of calculating change in hours? It's not clear that the answer is yes, but it's not clear that the answer is no, either. What the authors do is set a threshold of $19 for their main results, which is semi-arbitrary sure, but also show you what the results would have been if they'd used other threshold for "low wage workers".  The dotted vertical line is what they use in the paper, and you can see that the estimate for number of hours lost gets bigger (and somewhat more precise) if you look at only at lower thresholds. (The bottom panel, representing the increase from 11 to 13, is where they claim they see a decrease. They find zero decrease for the top panel.)
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Aug 29, 2019 18:30
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I always love hearing the dummy argument of "But our BIG MAC will cost 15 DOLLARS?!"@!?"@!?# Like they can't fathom at all that labour cost of a fast food burger is not even half of the cost of the item anyways. The real world effect of a double cost of the increase of labour on a typical fast food item would only be about 1 or 2 dollars, not 3 times the price. And also that an entire new segment of the population would be able to afford to eat out sometimes.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:33
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vyelkin posted:small business middle class small business middle class small business middle class SMALL BUSINESS MIDDLE CLASS SMALL BUSINESS MIDDLE CLASS SMALL BUSINESS MIDDLE CLASS i want to die zapplez posted:I always love hearing the dummy argument of "But our BIG MAC will cost 15 DOLLARS?!"@!?"@!?# Juul-Whip fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Aug 29, 2019 |
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Aug 29, 2019 18:38
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NZAmoeba posted:People react more to the immediate effect, higher wage costs, but then ignore that there's more people with more money able to buy the widgets you're selling. This can take longer to filter through if your clientele aren't the minimum wage earners, but it filters through eventually. What about the small businesses that can't survive long enough to see the positive results? Not trying to be contrarian - I just can't fit that piece of the puzzle in to my mind.
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Aug 29, 2019 19:12
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Whiskey_Dick posted:What about the small businesses that can't survive long enough to see the positive results? Not trying to be contrarian - I just can't fit that piece of the puzzle in to my mind. They shouldn't have been running their business that close to the red line anyway.
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Aug 29, 2019 19:30
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Syfe posted:They shouldn't have been running their business that close to the red line anyway. So now I'm really confused. We're just supposed to say "too bad" to those mom and pops? What happens when they shut down and their employees get laid off?
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Aug 29, 2019 20:03
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Should a business exist if it can only survive by paying their employees sub-livable wages?
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Aug 29, 2019 20:09
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Whiskey_Dick posted:So now I'm really confused. We're just supposed to say "too bad" to those mom and pops? What happens when they shut down and their employees get laid off? If you have 4 part timers making 14 dollars and hour and now have to pay 15 dollars an hour, how does that make a business go under? Even if you had to increase labour costs to 20 dollars an hour. If you are so razor thin you wont make payroll, you will need to cut hours by 25% or lay off 1 person. The people with reduced hours are still making the same pay as before but have an extra 10 hours of leisure (or chance for another job) each week. Or one person has to go on EI and search for a better employer. Long term the small businesses end up raising their prices to reflect the cost of labour and you have the same market share for the "inflated" price of the products as before. Basically, only the shittiest of small businesses that couldn't survive a rent increase or interest rate change would end up being shuttered from minimum wage increases. And new businesses will take their place to capture that market share. Or more well run businesses well get larger. Charles Bukowski posted:Should a business exist if it can only survive by paying their employees sub-livable wages? Exactly, this is the classic walmart dilemma. People complain about increasing the minimum wage to a liveable wage, but don't realize right now the government and the tax payers are the ones contributing an extra 5-10 dollars an hour to cover for the low wages that businesses are allowed to pay. Most workers in the GTA making minimum wage are getting several other contributions to their income,whether from subsidized medical programs, free housings, food supports, etc etc. You cant live on 14 an hour in Toronto. So the gov/taxpayers make up the difference. Thats dumb. It should be the business that has to pay 20 an hour and figure out the rest. Why is the government subsidizing poor business practices? vincentpricesboner fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Aug 29, 2019 |
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Aug 29, 2019 20:12
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Whiskey_Dick posted:So now I'm really confused. We're just supposed to say "too bad" to those mom and pops? What happens when they shut down and their employees get laid off? Their employees find new jobs at the new minimum wage and live happy lives
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Aug 29, 2019 20:13
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Whiskey_Dick posted:So now I'm really confused. We're just supposed to say "too bad" to those mom and pops? What happens when they shut down and their employees get laid off? You seem to be thinking in a way that says Capitalism first! If you're so close to the red line that you cannot afford your business after minimum wage goes up, you weren't running your business well enough for your employees to be able to make a living wage. If you want to be a blessed small business job creator, then make sure they're jobs that pay a living wage and that you're business isn't shorting out so that when the means of living goes up you don't end up complaining to your staff that they don't appreciate you enough as a small business owner. Most people don't just shut out completely though, they refine their business for the short-term and then rehire again once they realize that it wasn't what they thought it was or was told it was. If somebody works 8 hours a day for you, they shouldn't have to worry if their wage will be enough to live on, if 1/3 of your daily life goes somewhere, you drat well better be able to make a goddamn living.
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Aug 29, 2019 20:13
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Whiskey_Dick posted:So now I'm really confused. We're just supposed to say "too bad" to those mom and pops? What happens when they shut down and their employees get laid off? According to ardent free-marketeers, if they were providing a service that the market really wanted then a new business will open to meet the ongoing demand that's no longer being met by their closed store. In practice, Seattle has seen employment in restaurants, for example, steadily grow in defiance of predictions that restaurant closures would lead to higher unemployment. Another study on San Francisco suggested that what minimum wage increases do by increasing restaurant expenses is shorten the time before business closures... for businesses that were already likely to close anyway due to unpopularity. Businesses that are already riding the razor's edge of popularity and profitability go under, but likely would have failed anyway in a slightly longer period of time because there is a ton of turnover in the small business world (one study found 17% of restaurants fail in their first year and the median survival for all service businesses is about 4 years). But the Seattle data showing overall employment in restaurants increasing suggests that any job losses from failing businesses failing faster is outweighed by growth elsewhere in the sector, among businesses that see continued success by being popular and providing something people like.
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Aug 29, 2019 20:18
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Charles Bukowski posted:Should a business exist if it can only survive by paying their employees sub-livable wages? I guess that's the dilemma. I have seen a lot of small businesses around me go the way of the dodo bird recently, and that didn't seem to be great for their employees either. Lots of them found new work, but lots are still looking. Edit: thanks for the responses everyone, appreciate your patient and thoughtful replies. Whiskey_Dick fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Aug 29, 2019 |
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Aug 29, 2019 20:19
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And if you're not an ardent free-marketeer the answer is that if your business is only profitable by not paying your workers a living wage, then your business deserves to fail because it is immoral.
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Aug 29, 2019 20:19
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I should also note that the safer people feel in their wages, the better they work. When we keep people in sub optimal wages we literally stagnate the work they produce too. 
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Aug 29, 2019 20:22
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Pinterest Mom posted:Well you can't check for "minimum wage employees" because who that population is changes when the wage changes, and it's not obvious what you should look at. If the wage increases from $11 to $12, should someone who was making $12/hour before the increase and still is after the increase be counted as a minimum wage worker for the purpose of calculating change in hours? It's not clear that the answer is yes, but it's not clear that the answer is no, either. Everything here is very back of the envelope and rushed so forgive me if I made some embarrassingly obvious error here or miscalculated something; I see that these charts show the aggregate number of hours they estimate would be lost at each hourly wage but that is only half the question. The more significant issue is whether the loss in hours is enough to cancel out the increase in wages. If you're making the same amount of money for fewer hours then that's a good deal. From what I can gather based on my quick perusal of the paper they estimate a 6% loss in hours worked for people making $19 an hour or less. But what about someone making $11 or $13? Do they estimate what the tradeoff for them would be between hours worked and compensation per hour? Lets say thanks to the minimum wage increase your hourly wage goes from $9.50 to $13. If you worked eight hours without a break at $9.50 an hour you made $76 during your shift. The same shift at $13 an hour would bring in $104. The paper estimates that the average "low wage worker" (defined as someone making $19 an hour or less) loses 6 percent of their hours worked. That would mean in this case that presumably your manager sends you home half an hour early. That half hour of lost labour reduces your wage by 6.5 dollars, so you take home $97.5 for your 7.5 hour shift when before the minimum wage increase you were taking home $76 an hour for 8 hours of work. If you already made $19 an hour then you were taking in $152 before the minimum wage increase. If your boss sends you home half an hour early then your daily compensation goes down to $142.5. So if you were in the higher end of what gets counted as a "low wage worker" then you're going to be bringing home less money, but if you were actually starting at or around the minimum wage then it looks like your pay increase would be enough to cancel out the reduced hours?
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Aug 29, 2019 20:25
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Syfe posted:I should also note that the safer people feel in their wages, the better they work. I'll have you know that money is a great motivator but only for me.
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Aug 29, 2019 20:25
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Helsing posted:Everything here is very back of the envelope and rushed so forgive me if I made some embarrassingly obvious error here or miscalculated something; I see that these charts show the aggregate number of hours they estimate would be lost at each hourly wage but that is only half the question. The more significant issue is whether the loss in hours is enough to cancel out the increase in wages. If you're making the same amount of money for fewer hours then that's a good deal. They don't quite show that, but it's a confusing chart. What they're showing is (for the example posted) "change in hours for the low income group, if the low-income group is defined as everyone making under X dollars/hour". As you noticed, the main specification from the paper defined "low income" as under $19/hour, and that's the estimates on the dotted lines. If you prefer your low income-definition to be "under $15/hour" or "under $22/hour" or whatever, then that chart tells you how their estimates would change if that was your preferred low-income group. You're using the % hours measure for the rest of the post so I'll post that chart:  If you look at the bottom left chart, you see their main estimate of 8.7% fewer hours for the "low income" group making less than $19/hour on the $19 line. If you prefer your low-income group to be $15/hour or less, then you can see there that they're estimated to be working 20% fewer hours than they would have otherwise. They don't redo the full payroll calculation that you're looking for for every definition of low-income group, and it's ambiguous if things would get better or worse looking at just bottom of the distribution than when using <$19 low-income distribution. The drop in hours in heavily concentrated in the lowest income group: yeah, it's true that if you were facing a 6-7% drop in hours, a move from 9.50 to 13 would still put you comfortably ahead, but that's not as clearly true if you're moving from say 11 to 13 (which a lot of people do!) with a 25% drop in hours. They don't give enough info in the paper to be able to tell one way or another. (Noting, of course, that this is a group-wide thing, and it's not the actual change, but the change compared to the hypothetical world where they didn't raise the minimum wage. What you have is a lot of people moving from $11 to $13, seeing little change in hours, and being a lot better off, maybe some people being laid off entirely, some people in between seeing a reduction in hours that probably still leaves them with higher pay, but a lot of the negative impact is from businesses not hiring when they would hired without the increase). In any case, the total payroll drop for low-income (<$19) folk is the weakest part of the paper and isn't even statistically significant - I think they put it in for illustrative purposes, not as their main finding.
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Aug 29, 2019 21:18
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Syfe posted:I should also note that the safer people feel in their wages, the better they work. I always think of the old Chris Rock bit on earning minimum wage and how it's your boss saying "Hey, if I could pay you less I would, but it's against the law".
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Aug 29, 2019 21:25
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vyelkin posted:According to ardent free-marketeers, if they were providing a service that the market really wanted then a new business will open to meet the ongoing demand that's no longer being met by their closed store. Yeah the thing free marketers always ignore (using their own logic) is that when you pay people more, more and better people are going to want to work for you. You can see this in Toronto now with a labour shortage in the restaurant industry, which leads to poorer quality and service, which leads to less customers, and you can fill in the rest.
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Aug 29, 2019 21:41
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To the goon who asked if a school district can run you out if they really want to, yes. The union will do its best, but a sufficiently motivated district can make your life a nightmare with procedure and bureaucracy, and vindication will come long after you've given up, if at all. It doesn't have to be that dramatic, either. There appeared to be a pattern of heightened scrutiny of union activists in my district this past year that is hard to accept as coincidental. It's all mental baggage that negatively impacts quality of life even if it's not necessarily going to go anywhere. To the other goon talking about wanting to improve the union to help deal with apathetic teachers, fair enough and apologies for the snark. On the topic of individual teachers making a huge difference, sure it happens but I think that the studies show that peer group, personality traits, and socioeconomic status are by far the biggest drivers of student outcomes. An exceptional teacher is still just a tiny cog in a massive machine. For myself, my goal is to nudge my students in a positive direction such that their children or grandchildren will have a better outcome than if I never taught at all. I don't really hope for anything more than that. BC Ed chat: The signals from on high are that mediation is going nowhere, which was expected. I have a very narrow view of the NDP -- how have the they been for other sectors?
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Aug 30, 2019 01:04
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just another posted:I have a very narrow view of the NDP -- how have the they been for other sectors? They are great for deck contractors and catamaran ferry builders.
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Aug 30, 2019 01:20
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McGavin posted:They are great for deck contractors and catamaran ferry builders. 
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Aug 30, 2019 01:23
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just another posted:To the other goon talking about wanting to improve the union to help deal with apathetic teachers, fair enough and apologies for the snark. On the topic of individual teachers making a huge difference, sure it happens but I think that the studies show that peer group, personality traits, and socioeconomic status are by far the biggest drivers of student outcomes. An exceptional teacher is still just a tiny cog in a massive machine. Working in the sector I reckon you're more of an authority than I am. I understand your point and agree that makes sense. Certainly there is the fantasy of the magical teacher who changes the lives of their students foisted upon us by media. I don't think my teachers necessarily fundamentally changed my path but those I appreciated definitely made my life much more tolerable during our time together and probably imparted something. I think that's a noble goal and I'm glad you're a teacher. Levin fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 03:11
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just another posted:To the goon who asked if a school district can run you out if they really want to, yes. The union will do its best, but a sufficiently motivated district can make your life a nightmare with procedure and bureaucracy, and vindication will come long after you've given up, if at all. They've been very well received in health care, if only because they're no longer openly antagonistic to the people who work there. Nobody's making that much more money--I think we were actually doing better with the "economic stability dividend" from a percentage-wage-increase standpoint--but I think in general everyone's breathing easier, we got contracting out language put back in the last round of collective agreements and the province is, blessedly, starting to bring all the housekeepers who got contracted out in 2004 back into the public sector and their superior collective agreements. In Victoria, for instance, the new Summit care home, which is replacing Mt. Tolmie Hospital and Oak Bay Lodge, is going to bring the housekeepers in on the Facilities CA instead of making them work for Compass. This means five or six bucks an hour extra plus a pension plus sick time (from eight days a year to about twenty) plus a lot more. If the NDP did nothing else for health care workers this would still be really great news, and my hope is that as contracts expire the authorities will start bringing more and more housekeepers back in house. Check out NRGH's history with c diff and MRSA outbreaks if you want to know what happens if you contract out housekeeping and treat them like garbage for a decade or so, it's not just the workers who'll benefit. stealth edit: one of the things that really sucks about the teachers' negotiation is that it seems like the other unions--HEU in Facilities, BCNU in nursing, HSA in the technical sector, BCGEU pretty much everywhere else--had relatively quick and painless experiences and got fairly similar contracts. I don't know why they singled out the teachers to play hardball, especially when the BCNU were the ones raiding other unions and getting all kissy with the Liberals. BC politicians just really hate the BCTF. I think you guys are cool though. MikeSevigny fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 07:46
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Pinterest Mom posted:
I really enjoy conversations like this one because they really get into how these studies are actually constructed. As this paper notes, most of the existing literature on the minimum wage's impact on employment are using the restaurant industry as a proxy for low wage workers in general. The fact the authors tried to find an alternative dataset that was more comprehensive is really interesting and demonstrates how much of modern social science is caught up in contested definitions of what is actually being studied. I'm not sure if this paper actually picked the right approach: a city probably isn't the ideal scale to be analyzing at and besides, they end up excluding a lot of their data set anyway because the statistics on a lot of low wage occupations like home care just aren't available. I'd be curious to know what your overall opinion on the use of the study is though. Based on what we've said so far I feel more or less affirmed in my original statement. I don't think this study supports the claim that increasing the minimum leads to "overall lower earnings on aggregate for all those who are in the minimum wage bracket". Anyone who was at the minimum wage when the policy was proposed would be almost certain to end up earning more annually under the new system, even with fewer hours worked. While it's far from idea to help out minimum wage workers at the expense of workers making only a few dollars more than them, that is a different concern than the one he raised.
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Aug 30, 2019 16:51
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