There is a fairly clear study being done on exactly this question: As a general statement, do higher minimum wages help or hinder workers? The experiment is called California, and the initial results do not look promising...
There is no doubt whatsoever that those workers who get and keep jobs at higher than the market rate are better off.
Different people are worse off if the minimum wage prices them out of the market. And low-skilled workers are hurt by the automating away of low-skill jobs - e.g. kiosks to order your fast food now instead of talking to an employee. So no experiment is ever definitive.
Upper middle class high school kids seeking part time or summer work are usually better off with high minimum wages.
Low skilled youth, especially inner-city ones, are usually hurt. Especially if they never gain experience and learn skills that will help them earn more.
But leftists like Reich don’t really care about the lower-income skills problems caused by the minimum wage that folks like Thomas Sowell made clear decades ago. For them, the minimum wage is part of a political strategy to get votes for leftists, just one more quiver in their arsenal that paints free enterprise as “evil capitalists out to screw their workers and their customers in the pursuit of evil profits.” That it traps some more people in poverty 90%+ of whom will vote for Democrats is just a politically sweet side benefit…
Robert Reich has been grifting, grafting and griping on a subject which is purportedly his field, but one in which he is entirely ignorant. And he suffers from Little Napoleon Syndrome. From Wikipedia "The Napoleon complex, also known as Napoleon syndrome and short-man syndrome, is a purported condition normally attributed to people of short stature, with overly aggressive or domineering social behavior. It implies that such behavior is to compensate for the subject's physical or social shortcomings." I won't even speculate on the size of his penis, but I'm betting he drives a souped up sports car or Corvette. Silly little man.
I've often asked myself just how it is that leftist "economists" like Reich and Krugman can really believe the bullshot they peddle. The only way it makes any sense to me is if they're more concerned with enhancing and keeping government power at the expense of actual economic principle.
Like many leftists, what they know is completely extinguished by what they need to proclaim to keep their rank and position within their pathocracy. Truth has no place in their delusional world.
Well, Reich has always been an unrepentant hard-core leftist. Doesn’t make him any more correct, but he’s easier to ignore and it’s much easier to believe that he believes his own leftist crap.
Krugman, OTOH, I think you’ve described 100% correctly. As an economist he knows better (he deserves his Nobel for the work he did way back when) than to advocate that high minimum wages are anything but net badness. That he advocates for them is demonstration that all he is now is an unrepentant hyperpartisan Dem party hack.
Reich the lifelong leftist, or Krugman the convert...
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Six one way, half-a-dozen the other. If they're advocating for what I disagree with now, it makes little difference to me anyway if their work ever had any merit.
Fair enough. The difference IMO though, is that Reich never had any credibility with anyone but the partisan left; Krugman HAD credibility and has been trading on it for years now, even as more and more people have finally recognized he’s become just a hyperpartisan hack.
Well written treatise on the subject, especially the concept of employers paying better wages for more skilled and/or experienced workers. Got that across splendidly. (sharing on FB and X for sure)
I think McDonalds hiring people at around $17.00 an hr to start these days. Minimum wage isn't even an entry level wage any more for most businesses. It has become largely irrelevant and the concept should be done away with.
I work in the construction trades and there are tons of unfilled positions that pay $20.00-$30.00 an hour. If you can work and WANT to work most companies are happy to pay you while they train you. Judging by the skunky odors wafting off many drywall finishing crews I encounter on a regular basis, you can even blaze up while grabbing those Benjamins.
You're not wrong, but I think your comment warrants a bit of a deeper dive. Minimum wage raises are, themselves, inflationary. The reason that no one in entry-level jobs makes 7.25 an hour anymore is because 7.25 won't buy you what it would 15 years ago. That dishonest little troll Reich knows it.
If someone can't demand more than minimum wage, that likely means he has no real job skills. So how can he get job skills? Perhaps by going to school. But at some point he needs real experience. So how does he get experience? By accepting some low-paying job, and working at it long enough to learn some basics.
Free market advocates often point out that the minimum wage means that some low-skill people can't get a job. It's worse than that. Because low-skill people can't get a job, they can't learn the basic skills that would qualify them to get a better job. So they don't just miss out on a job right now. The government has essentially condemned them to be unemployed FOR LIFE.
There is a fairly clear study being done on exactly this question: As a general statement, do higher minimum wages help or hinder workers? The experiment is called California, and the initial results do not look promising...
Wrong framing / wrong question.
There is no doubt whatsoever that those workers who get and keep jobs at higher than the market rate are better off.
Different people are worse off if the minimum wage prices them out of the market. And low-skilled workers are hurt by the automating away of low-skill jobs - e.g. kiosks to order your fast food now instead of talking to an employee. So no experiment is ever definitive.
Upper middle class high school kids seeking part time or summer work are usually better off with high minimum wages.
Low skilled youth, especially inner-city ones, are usually hurt. Especially if they never gain experience and learn skills that will help them earn more.
But leftists like Reich don’t really care about the lower-income skills problems caused by the minimum wage that folks like Thomas Sowell made clear decades ago. For them, the minimum wage is part of a political strategy to get votes for leftists, just one more quiver in their arsenal that paints free enterprise as “evil capitalists out to screw their workers and their customers in the pursuit of evil profits.” That it traps some more people in poverty 90%+ of whom will vote for Democrats is just a politically sweet side benefit…
Robert Reich has been grifting, grafting and griping on a subject which is purportedly his field, but one in which he is entirely ignorant. And he suffers from Little Napoleon Syndrome. From Wikipedia "The Napoleon complex, also known as Napoleon syndrome and short-man syndrome, is a purported condition normally attributed to people of short stature, with overly aggressive or domineering social behavior. It implies that such behavior is to compensate for the subject's physical or social shortcomings." I won't even speculate on the size of his penis, but I'm betting he drives a souped up sports car or Corvette. Silly little man.
I've often asked myself just how it is that leftist "economists" like Reich and Krugman can really believe the bullshot they peddle. The only way it makes any sense to me is if they're more concerned with enhancing and keeping government power at the expense of actual economic principle.
Like many leftists, what they know is completely extinguished by what they need to proclaim to keep their rank and position within their pathocracy. Truth has no place in their delusional world.
Well, replace “no place” with “not much of a place” and I’d agree with you.
Well, Reich has always been an unrepentant hard-core leftist. Doesn’t make him any more correct, but he’s easier to ignore and it’s much easier to believe that he believes his own leftist crap.
Krugman, OTOH, I think you’ve described 100% correctly. As an economist he knows better (he deserves his Nobel for the work he did way back when) than to advocate that high minimum wages are anything but net badness. That he advocates for them is demonstration that all he is now is an unrepentant hyperpartisan Dem party hack.
Reich the lifelong leftist, or Krugman the convert...
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Six one way, half-a-dozen the other. If they're advocating for what I disagree with now, it makes little difference to me anyway if their work ever had any merit.
Fair enough. The difference IMO though, is that Reich never had any credibility with anyone but the partisan left; Krugman HAD credibility and has been trading on it for years now, even as more and more people have finally recognized he’s become just a hyperpartisan hack.
That makes Krugman MORE dangerous, as far as I'm concerned. As always, YMMV.
Agreed 1000%. That was always my point.
Well written treatise on the subject, especially the concept of employers paying better wages for more skilled and/or experienced workers. Got that across splendidly. (sharing on FB and X for sure)
I think McDonalds hiring people at around $17.00 an hr to start these days. Minimum wage isn't even an entry level wage any more for most businesses. It has become largely irrelevant and the concept should be done away with.
I work in the construction trades and there are tons of unfilled positions that pay $20.00-$30.00 an hour. If you can work and WANT to work most companies are happy to pay you while they train you. Judging by the skunky odors wafting off many drywall finishing crews I encounter on a regular basis, you can even blaze up while grabbing those Benjamins.
You're not wrong, but I think your comment warrants a bit of a deeper dive. Minimum wage raises are, themselves, inflationary. The reason that no one in entry-level jobs makes 7.25 an hour anymore is because 7.25 won't buy you what it would 15 years ago. That dishonest little troll Reich knows it.
If someone can't demand more than minimum wage, that likely means he has no real job skills. So how can he get job skills? Perhaps by going to school. But at some point he needs real experience. So how does he get experience? By accepting some low-paying job, and working at it long enough to learn some basics.
Free market advocates often point out that the minimum wage means that some low-skill people can't get a job. It's worse than that. Because low-skill people can't get a job, they can't learn the basic skills that would qualify them to get a better job. So they don't just miss out on a job right now. The government has essentially condemned them to be unemployed FOR LIFE.