Complete lack of balance at Mayor Murray's Income Inequality Symposium
Yesterday, Kriss and I attended Seattle mayor Ed Murray’s Income Inequality Symposium at Seattle University. This was no balanced discussion of the potential impacts of increasing the minimum wage in Seattle to $15; instead, everyone involved seemed to have agreed ahead of time on the goodness of significantly increasing the minimum wage. All that’s left […]
Income Inequality Symposium: Trade-offs? What Trade-offs?
(Previous posts on the symposium are here, here, here and here.) At the same time as the panel I discussed in the last post, there was one that was held in another building, in a room with limited seating, titled “Strategies for investing in workers.” This was moderated by Maud Daudon of the Seattle Metropolitan […]
20th of March 2014
How public policy supports low-wage workers and the high cost of the minimum wage
There’s no dearth of good analysis on the effects of raising the minimum wage. Let me call attention to a few of them here. First, a look at the income supports available to low-wage workers, as shown in this graph from a short and incisive AEI blog post. AEI fellow Robert Doar concludes, So […]
13th of March 2014
Minimum wage lessons for Seattle's $15 won't be learned by looking at other cities
Earlier we looked at the wrangling over the effects of raising the minimum wage. When theory fails to provide clarity, a look at reality is appealing. So it’s not surprising that the Seattle Times seeks to learn lessons from San Francisco’s highest-in-the-nation $10.74 municipal minimum wage. The Times interviewed economists who have studied the effects, […]
6th of March 2014
Regional economist sets a low bar. Says a $15 minimum wage is "not outrageous." It's also not a good idea.
Regional economist Dick Conway told KPLU that a $15 minimum wage is “really not that outrageous.” Conway has been on record before; he was the economist Gov. Inslee cited by name at AWB’s legislative day (about 41 minutes in). As a benchmark for setting public policy affecting thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of employees, […]
Seattle's $15 minimum wage debate heats up; Jordan Royer article in Crosscut provides needed perspective
The Seattle City Council and the Mayor’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee held a joint public hearing last night on the $15 minimum wage proposal. The Seattle Times has the story. It sounds like quite a show. About 700 people, many wearing red T-shirts with “15” on the front, cheered calls to enact a pay increase […]
24th of February 2014
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 […]
18th of February 2014
Campaign for higher minimum wage inspired by the Occupy movement?
That’s one conclusion that could be drawn from this excellent NW News Network story by Austin Jenkins. But David Rolf of the Service Employees International Union says there was something missing: “Occupy didn’t have a long term theory of how to make change and it didn’t have very crisp demands.” Rolf says that started to […]