A must-read column examines the $15 minimum wage from the perspective of a small restaurant owner who opposes it
Danny Westneat’s column in Sunday’s Seattle Times should be required reading for anyone concerned about the impact of a $15 minimum wage on Seattle businesses. I can’t do it justice in this post and encourage you to click through and read it now. He frames the column around restaurant owner John Platt, whom he describes […]
February 24 , 2014 - Richard S. Davis
After Friday's White House meeting, Inslee muses about raising the minimum wage for state workers
The Seattle Times reported Friday that Gov. Inslee is considering an increase in the minimum wage paid state employees and contractors. His comments came after he and other Democratic governor’s met with the president at the White House. As Brad Shannon writes in The News Tribune, it won’t be happening any time soon. “It’s going […]
February 21 , 2014 - Emily Makings
Labor costs and fruit packing technology
The Yakima Herald-Republic has a story today about the technologies being used by fruit packers. It illustrates how industries faced with increasingly high labor costs adopt technologies that automate the work to some extent, reducing demand for low-skill workers. Some excerpts: The job used to be done only by people with knives. But these days […]
February 20 , 2014 - Richard S. Davis
Confirming what you knew, the minimum wage campaign is all about politics
Union leaders meeting in Houston reiterated the importance of the minimum wage to their 2014 political strategy. (The politics of the issue were explained last December in the New York Times.) Gathered for their annual winter meeting, the nation’s labor leaders say that what they see as the best theme for reviving the union movement […]
February 19 , 2014 - Kriss Sjoblom
New policy brief: Washington's Minimum Wage and Teenage Unemployment
We have posted a new policy brief, Washington’s Minimum Wage and Teenage Unemployment, which includes a chart I made for the last meeting of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers. Here’s a link to the brief.
February 19 , 2014 - Richard S. Davis
CBO estimates of job losses caused by minimum wage reflect mainstream economic analysis
Following its estimate of job losses likely to result from lifting the federal minimum wage to $10.10, the Congressional Budget Office is on the receiving end of some none-too-gentle second guessing. For example, from this AP story, Jason Furman, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, and council member Betsey Stevenson referred in […]
February 19 , 2014 - Richard S. Davis
Rhode Island pension settlement seen as setback for reformers, raises questions that resonate here
The state of Rhode Island has reached an agreement with public employee unions that had filed six lawsuits challenging pension reforms adopted by the state. The Providence Journal points out that the deal comes with costs: Details were still emerging on the Friday afternoon of Valentine’s Day, but it appears the proposed deal would increase […]
February 19 , 2014 - Richard S. Davis
From SeaTac to Chattanooga, tracing the links between the minimum wage and union organizing in the South
Small elections have big consequences. We know that in Washington. Consider the SeaTac Prop. 1 vote for a $15 minimum wage (and a host of other labor-protection measures) and the Boeing Machinists vote that secured the Boeing 777X work here. A similarly consequential vote took place at the Volkswagon plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last week. […]
February 18 , 2014 - Richard S. Davis
New CBO report on federal minimum wage: 500,000 jobs lost if wage goes to $10.10; most increased earnings go to families not in poverty
Today’s minimum wage report from the Congressional Budget Office recasts the national minimum wage debate. Though couched in the carefully nuanced phrasing of the famously staid nonpartisan research office, it makes clear that hiking the minimum wage has employment consequences, contrary to the claims of proponents. The 40-page report, half of it a methodological appendix, […]
February 18 , 2014 - Emily Makings
More on public pension legal issues
Richard Epstein’s column this week asks, How can the government best roll back pensions in ways that satisfy key economic requirements without running afoul of serious constitutional concerns? The legal questions have arisen in several places (including Washington) and remain unsettled. Epstein: California pension law cases, without careful analysis, have evolved to freeze minimum pension […]