Category: "employment"

Confounding people and wages

November 30th, 2016
Continuing the argument, the higher minimum wage puts real people out of work - individual persons lose their jobs if their productivity is significantly less than the mandate.  Employment is subject to a large number of factors that affect both supply… more »

Seattle's minimum wage experience - early results

November 28th, 2016
I have been attempting to make the point that people who retain their jobs with the higher minimum wage are likely to also spend more as a consequence, but in the mean time, the $15 wage puts another group of people completely out of work. more »

Here's where employment will decline the most in Washington

November 27th, 2016
The election has upset plans and expectations around the globe, but there's plenty of additional disapppointment to come with the fallout, I'm sure.  One likely place to look will be around the consequences of large increases to the minimum wage allowed… more »

legally challenging

June 7th, 2014
I-1358 would revert the local initiatives to the prior condition of State control of minimum wage. The expectation is that since such a high minimum wage as passed the Seattle City Council has not become state legislation, the new $15 mandate would essentially by voided here. [However], Imagine the far greater damage to people's lives if a $15/hour limit kept unemployed hundreds of thousands of people across all of Washington, rather than the fewer people affected by more concentrated damage done to workers in the I-5 corridor around Seattle and Sea-Tac. So while I am on record in opposition to increasing the minimum wage, I have reservations about supporting Initiative 1358. more »

counting the consequence

May 29th, 2014
This was a question I started the evening asking myself - what might the city do to track the actual effects of this wage mandate. How might they seek to understand the wreckage imposed on people's lives, people who are first thrown out of work, and then forbidden from future employment within the city. The answer is an audit, details to be determined. Who knows, the localized nature of the measure may make a good case study to add to the broad existing understanding of the detrimental effects of minimum wage legislation. more »

getting it good and hard

March 15th, 2014
The Seattle City Council appears predisposed to attempt raising the minimum wage to as high as $15 per hour (currently at $9.19 in Washington). The agenda planned for a council meeting on Tuesday (3/18) has an hour dedicated to presentations by supporters, and 20 minutes reserved for comments; no time allowed for opponents of such a measure. ... I am not hopeful for the fate of unskilled labor in Seattle - the local pols are stacking the deck for making a large increase to the minimum wage, and naysayers don't have much of a voice. As one member states - “If I were against $15, I wouldn’t be on the mayor’s committee” more »

self-righteous/interest

February 23rd, 2014
The people who lose their jobs in the coming months will less clearly see the connection. Those who are never hired at all will just be lost. My pessimistic streak makes me think that the responsible people - Nick Hanauer, Patty Murray, Suzan DelBene, and their ilk - will deflect their responsibility for this disaster and be off on a new crusade to make it all better with a new pronouncement to restrict how the rest of us make our way in this world. more »

barriers to entry

February 16th, 2014
Evidently, Nick Hanauer doesn't care that the alternative is no work at all, no production for the benefit of the community, and reduced living standards for everyone. Too bad that the minimum wage policy that he promotes condemns the least well off segment of the population to permanent unemployment. more »

proclaim wealth

July 30th, 2013
Evidently Seattle's Mayor McGinn thinks that proclamation is an effective method to improve the living standard of local citizens. Would that it were so. more »

benefits smorgasbord benefits

March 17th, 2013
... the smorgasbord option: it makes more alternatives available to match compensation to individual interests and circumstances. more »