The other day, I saw one of my Facebook friends post this image:
The claim that minimum wage jobs aren’t supposed to be careers, and that consequently any adult who still has one deserves a wage that cannot be lived on, is dangerously misleading. Here’s why.
Continue reading “Misconceptions: “Minimum Wage Jobs Aren’t Supposed to be Careers””
There is a huge, gaping hole in the response right-wing politicians are giving to demands that the minimum wage be raised in the United States–they are assuming that employers generally behave in an irrational, inefficient way. Here’s how.
Continue reading “Minimum Wage: Rational Employers are Not Job Creators”
Congress has decided to let the extension in unemployment benefits it passed in the wake of the economic crisis in 2008 lapse. It’s estimated that 1.3 million Americas will lose their unemployment benefits completely, with 5 million seeing a reduction in benefit of some kind. This is a very bad idea. Here’s why.
Continue reading “Letting Unemployment Benefits Lapse is a Bad Idea”
It’s time for another (and perhaps the final?) round of the Stark/Studebaker Minimum Wage Debate. For those new to this back and forth, Stark, a broadly Keynesian blogger who has my respect, came out against Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour. I responded to his argument, and since then we have had a back and forth. Stark has done us the service of compiling the relevant posts in order here. Stark took issue with some of the casual terminology I employed in my last post, and in the interval between that one and this one we have messaged back and forth via Facebook to sort out for our mutual benefit precisely what one another means. In some cases, I thought Stark’s terminological criticisms pedantic, but in other cases he was right to press for clarification. Fundamentally, if I write a post and an intelligent person (which Stark is) has trouble sorting out what is meant, that’s on me. Now that we have sorted out our positions, Stark has posted his latest attack on the minimum wage hike, and I think myself ready to take it on. So here goes.
Recently I made an argument that the minimum wage should rise. In that argument, I sought to refute some of the things fellow blogger Rick Stark said to the contrary. Stark has done me the great honour of a thorough two part response. It demands answer–either I must concede his expanded, larger argument, or I must explain where I differ with it. Having read both posts in their entirety, I find myself still unconvinced. Here’s why.
Benjamin Studebaker 