Shorter: Cap’n Ed Morrissey


Above: Hair: It is growin’ on your head

Book: Minimum wage lowers earnings, produces unemployment

  • Dunce: Advertising copy for book mirrors conservative canard, is evidentiary.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


Note: Not to play the same game as Ed here, but as we understand things, it’s demonstrable that raising the minimum wage* will tend also to raise unemployment. But here’s the thing. A certain level of unemployment is necessary for an economy to expand (since otherwise there would be nobody to fill any new expansionary jobs). This makes unemployment a moral issue, and unemployment relief a mandate. Simply, if there must be unemployment, it is wrong to inflict unnecessary misery on those who must endure it. This is addressed in most advanced economies by a robust social safety net, which also — since it ‘catches’ the adverse effects of rising minimum wages — allows wages to remain generally high. Since Neumark and Wascher, the above authors, seem to study only the US, it would seem that any grand statements in their book on the inherent effects of minimum wage increases ought to come with a very big asterisk. Also noted: Ed is against the notion of a social safety net.

Also noted: Here’s another book like the one Ed ran across, except for the added bonus that it seems currently to be definitive work on the subject.


* I’m being (rightly) beaten up in comments for this assertion, although there’s a bit more to it than I managed to get across. See below for details.

 

Comments: 142

 
 
 

Shorter Ed Morrissey: Since I, as a conservative, refuse to do anything about the problem of unemployment, the least we could do is not make it slightly worse, and thus slightly harder for me to ignore.

 
 

Not to disagree with you, Gavin, but increases in the minimum wage have little to no effect on unemployment.

If it increases at all, it’s not clear that the raise is directly tied to the rise in wages and not to more nebulous functions like a rationale for getting rid of unproductive workers, which any downturn in the economy would produce anyway.

 
 

It is far kinder to starve the peons gradually through a pathetically low wage than to starve them quickly through unemployment.

 
 

Shorter Ed: Let them eat conservative ideology.

 
 

Religio-Econ 101 from the comments:

I’m hardly liberal. Obama is an Anti-Christ. Liberals fight on Satan’s side. I hate everything about liberals including the likes of McCain who cheapens the Republican brand.

But I believe in telling the truth as well. We cheapen ourselves when we tell lies to try to support an overly low minimum wage.

Yours from Satan’s Side,

A. Liberal

 
 

[still doing some proofreading and cleanup; sorry about that]

 
 

Well coming from the sort of people who wanted to screw the tips of minimum wage earning waiters for having the audacity to wear an Obama button this is completely unsurprising. I guess what really horrifies me is the desire to pay low income earners crap with the expectation that they should be grateful that they can only make ends meet by working 2 jobs.

 
 

Gee Ed, it would seem to me that holding down wages while prices on the basic necessities of life continue to climb might 1)create a credit bubble, where everyone is too maxed out in debt to continue buying much of anything and then 2)create a recession, since no one’s making enough to stay afloat, pay off their debts, AND spend money to keep the economy moving.

But what do I know? I’m just a person who approaches this stuff with an open mind, not an expert like you who already knows what’s what, regardless of what common sense and the facts may say.

 
 

I always figured even if everyone had an MD/PhD/JD/MBA some of us would still have to be janitors/fast food employees/wal mart greeters.

 
 

Book: Cap’t. Ed is a big ol’ dummy who will pimp any crap that confirms his 19th century approach to life.

The minimum-wage increases that enjoy such popularity among politicians generate much less enthusiasm among economists, and for good reason. It artificially inflates the cost of labor, especially in low-skill markets, which pushes employers to either reduce their labor through automation or scale back on staffing.

Could any of these cocksucking employers just for once actually take a few bucks a month less, or cut the payouts to parasite stockholders, rather than their first re-action to virtually anything being automation or job cuts?

And Skipper, you cretin, employers are looking to automate or ship jobs off-shore any chance they get. Don’t let them use crap like this to to justify it. Or don’t you love jobs for the American people?

 
 

Not to disagree with you, Gavin, but increases in the minimum wage have little to no effect on unemployment.

What actor said. The linked book from Princeton press supports what he said, but it’s also supported by intuitive reasoning. Why? Because if McDonald’s has to raise wages $1 per hour and they lose a few customers as a result, and their response is to lay off a few workers, it’s not as if the money that would have been paid to those laid off workers disappears. For one thing, the customers who decide that a Happy Meal is worth $3 but not $4 will spend that $3 somewhere else. The people who remain employed by McDonald’s will have an extra dollar per hour that they will also spend somewhere. That “spending somewhere else” will create jobs in other sectors of the economy that those workers laid off from McDonald’s can, theoretically, fill…so other than the momentary upheaval of unemployment for those few who do get laid off, in the long run, there is no net loss of jobs. The more likely scenario is that there will be some slight inflation in prices as a result of an increase in minimum wage, but it will not be as great as the wage increase itself.

Conservative arguments about “job losses” are nothing more than a convenient excuse to enforce wage slavery on behalf of their corporate masters.

 
 

Book: Eeyores eat thistles, reject haycorns.

 
Economics is bunk
 

If going to have to echo actor212

If by demonstrable you mean by drawing some supply and demand curves then sure whatever.

If by demonstrable you mean using empirical evidence then well:

Sadly, no

 
 

I’m inclined to agree with the argument that raising minimum wage produces higher unemployment, but with a really strong caveat: Like the Laffer Curve of supply-side fame, there’s a certain level at which this must be true — for instance, and reductio ad absurdum, that unemployment would result if the minimum wage were raised to ten billion dollars per hour. It’s not possible that such an increase would leave unemployment untouched.

Where I strongly disagree with the free-marketeers is in where that level might be. To conservatives, we’re always past it, just as we’re always past the level at which tax cuts produce more revenue. To them, an increase of two cents over a wage of eighty cents per hour will necessarily produce some amount of unemployment. In reality, wages that low wreck the economy just in themselves, while increases that small don’t remotely reach the threshold.

But that’s just where I’m coming from. I might be wrong, and should maybe add a footnote… [reading your comment again]

 
The Goddamn Batman Is Technically Unemployed
 

Shorter Cap’n Ed: I got mine, Jack.

Also: the Laffer Curve is just a notion that some guy named Laffer sketched out on a cocktail napkin; empirical evidence is lacking.

 
 

Love him? Hate him? How do YOU feel about our soon to be former President? Take part in a chance to immortalize your views in book form by visiting http://goodbyegeorgew.com/ and letting your opinion be read!

Check out the following article about http://goodbyegeorgew.com/:

GOODBYE GEORGE W. WEBSITE STARTS NEW MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

With the whole world watching the Obama transition kick in it’s easy to forget about the outgoing warmongerer-in-chief who rode to political power on his daddy’s coat-tails. Without so much as winning the popular vote the first time around George W. Bush took the White House in 2000. In 2004 he stayed the course for a second term thanks to classic Klan-style intimidation tactics in battleground states that squeaked the Bush /Cheney team back in for a total eight years on Pennsylvania Avenue. Surprisingly enough some semblance of Planet Earth survived and in retrospect we will miss the factual misstatements and grammatical blunders of the Presidential Poster boy for “No Child Left Behind” education.

Before he leaves office U.S. citizens and people form around the world are finally getting their chance to tell President Bush what they think. The new website http://www.goodbyegeorgew.com is building the democracy that the Bush Administration has worked so hard to erode. While welcoming sarcasm it is providing a general forum to write to the soon-to-be-unemployed President and give him your candid opinion by speaking out.

Letters are actively being sought to put the democracy and free speech back into America despite the hard work of the Homeland security team to eradicate it forever.

Of course this Goodbye George W. site comes replete with great political memorabilia on sale for the “historical” collectors. But what caught my attention is that the founder, Kate Wheeler, who I recently spoke with, is not making a hard sell on her goods but is more interested in putting the participation back into democracy and American politics.

This farewell to Bush will later be published into an e-book so anyone leaving their comments will be a part of this historic catharsis and collector’s item in itself.

I hope that the incoming President will get a hint from this as well and seek his own avenues to stay in touch with the opinion of the people that he was elected to represent. Once in office it wouldn’t be a shock if he gives his ears principally to the likes of Citigroup and J.P. Morgan, who were among the 10 biggest donors to the Obama campaign, (despite his “no strings attached campaign” propaganda).

The real change America needs is a White House and Government that listen to the people and http://www.goodbyegeorgew.com is a step in the right direction. It gives ordinary space for people to send our opinions to Washington. Of course, in this case, we’re giving our opinion to the man who is packing his bags (hallelujah), but it’s a good start on bringing back real democracy.

Anyone interested in setting a new course for democracy in this country should click over to this website and write their own heartfelt send off to the man who stole the presidency and steered a course into the diplomatic dark ages.

 
 

Actually, IMHO, whether or not the minimum wage level affects unemployment rates, Gavin M. makes a very important point about the role of the safety-net in promoting economic growth.

Sometimes it seems that much of economics 101 type discourse is too dominated by trust-fund babies who don’t have to work for a living. For most of us, however, having a job is a need and not a want. This renders the supply of labor extremely non-elastic. OTOH, in order for labor markets to be well behaved and follow Econs 101 type principles, they must be elastic. How do you get an elastic labor market? Well … by having a strong safety net!

 
 

A certain level of unemployment is necessary for an economy to expand (since otherwise there would be nobody to fill any new expansionary jobs). This makes unemployment a moral issue, and unemployment relief a mandate.

To expand on this, I’d like to point out that “full employment” actually means “2-7% unemployment” as used by just about everyone. The powers that be actually take proactive measures to ensure partial unemployment, e.g. by raising the federal funds rate to “cool off” an “overheating economy.”

 
 

Actually, raising the minimum wage does not increase unemployment. Studies have mixed results, but Studies with controlled comparisons between states with higher and lower minimum wages showed a net reduction in unemployment. On balance, it would appear that that the effects are small and approaching 0.

 
 

Cap’n Ed might cast his beady eyes over this:

Higher Crime Rate Linked To Low Wages And Unemployment, Study Finds

Then again, it uses science and comes from a college, so you know it’s got that reality bias stench all over it.

 
 

Gavin – obviously the amount wages are increased could have a big impact. Tripling the minimum wage would no doubt result in a lot of layoffs. But even with wage increases of 50% above the current minimum, what we’d see would be a short-term increase in the unemployment rate, as any of those laid off due to the increase found positions elsewhere (at the new higher wage) thanks to the increased economic activity of those who both got the wage increase and kept their original jobs.

 
 

Its stunning how an increase in the minimum wage will devastate the economy but $100,000,000 salaries NEVER cost consumers anything.

 
 

Added a footnote.

Empirically, I’m empty-handed.

But then, let me argue a little bit further. If you look at the mostly-excellent Slate article, it says that studies say that a small number of lousy jobs are lost at the bottom of the income scale, from the small, not even cost-of-living-adjusted increases in the comparatively extremely low minimum wage that we’ve had in the US.

But look at the European tradeoff: high wages and guarantees (and high social security) for high unemployment. Here you have a system in which minimum wages have been livably high and increases more significant, and unless I’m wrong, it’s generally recognized in Europe that the factors are related and their effects predictable.

Again, though, I’m prepared to be schooled.

 
 

But look at the European tradeoff: high wages and guarantees (and high social security) for high unemployment. Here you have a system in which minimum wages have been livably high and increases more significant, and unless I’m wrong, it’s generally recognized in Europe that the factors are related and their effects predictable.

Sadly, no. High unemployment in Europe is less a function of high wages than it is a function of credit markets, if this author is to be believed.

However, some findings were more puzzling. In particular, wage moderation from the early 1980s on did not translate into the increase in employment that one would have expected. For Europe as a whole, real wages are now back on (or below) their benchmark growth path, yet unemployment remains high. Another reflection of this fact is the dramatic decline in the labor share that has taken place in Europe since the early 1980s. In many countries, the share of labor in the business sector has declined by 5 to 10 percentage points of GDP, a very large shift by historical standards.

What MAY be a function of higher wages is a form of hyperinflation, an argument that could be used against wage increases in times of recession, to be sure.

Keep in mind that European companies have to deal with all sorts of other non-wage concessions, like increased paid time off and shorter work weeks, which might actually reduce unemployment.

 
 

To expand on this, I’d like to point out that “full employment” actually means “2-7% unemployment” as used by just about everyone.

tigris – I know the “2 – 7%” figure gets tossed around by a lot of people, but I would never accept either one of them – 2% is way too low and 7% too high. I think about Clinton’s second term, where for a couple of years the rates were at 4.5% and 4.2% – that was when all the burger joints had “help wanted” signs promising at least $2 – $3 more than the minimum wage of the time. Employers were actually needing more workers than they could get, and it forced them to pay more. Leads me to guess that the sweet spot for “full employment” lies somewhere in that 4 – 5% range.

 
 

Jennifer, traditionally, 4% was used as the benchmark for full employment.

Until the Reagan years when suddenly people were being tossed out of work left and right and then miraculously, it was determined that, well, maybe 5% is more accurate. Or 6. Or 7.

And then unemployment was redefined to include only people actually out looking for work who had been unemployed for a stated period of time (usually a year). Those who exceeded the time frame or stopped working were redefined off the “unemployed” to some nebulous “not employed” status.

Soft bigotry of low expectations, that sort of thing.

 
 

Sometimes it seems that much of economics 101 type discourse…

It was ECON 202 for me (Intro to Macroeconomics) which I just completed with a B+ (where’s my cookie?). It listed minimum wage, along with union wages and efficiency wages as factors determining rate of natural unemployment in labor force. Supposedly, without these things natural unemployment would be nearly zero (you would only have unemployment from people being in active process of changing jobs).

What this introductory course of course did not go into detail, was actually explaining what amount of shift in the natural unemployment rate such things actually cause. There weren’t hardly any real formulas involved in the entire course. Mostly it was just concepts.

 
 

So, starve the people who do have jobs, because if you paid them more they wouldn’t have jobs?

 
 

M. Bouffant said,

December 16, 2008 at 17:23

Religio-Econ 101 from the comments:

I’m hardly liberal. Obama is an Anti-Christ. Liberals fight on Satan’s side. I hate everything about liberals including the likes of McCain who cheapens the Republican brand.

But I believe in telling the truth as well. We cheapen ourselves when we tell lies to try to support an overly low minimum wage.

Yours from Satan’s Side,

A. Liberal

“An Anti-Christ” not THE Anti-Christ?

Well FUCK! How many more are we going to have to elect?

Remember folks, January 20th, 2009 is date of THE RAPTURE.

Anyone here on Jan. 21st is just another damned soul waiting to burn forever…

 
 

BTW, I’m pretty sure Cap’n Ed is wearing the Jan Brady wig from The Brady Bunch Movie.

 
 

Looks more like a Phil Spector wig to me.

 
 

“An Anti-Christ” not THE Anti-Christ?

I believe Newton’s Seventh Law of American Politics states that there exists an inverse square relationship in which the more Bible-thumpingly “Christian” you are, the less likely it is you’ve actually read the Bible.

 
 

Loneoak said,

It is far kinder to starve the peons gradually through a pathetically low wage than to starve them quickly through unemployment.

Well put.

That’s what I’ve never understood about these arguments that minimum wage raises unemployment; even if we accept the premise, what do people like Ed intend to do?

Ed seems to think the problem of low wages can be solved if every person in America becomes a highly skilled worker, thus earning performance based pay raises.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s how the economy works.

 
 

Also noted: Ed is against the notion of a social safety net.

Ed would be foursquare in favor of the social safety net if he ever needed it. All of a sudden, it would be the most vital and important thing that America could offer disadvantaged citizens.

Of course, once he got back on his feet again, it would again become just another entitlement for slackers and faggorts.

Ohhh, for a communicable empathy virus…

 
 

Ed seems to think the problem of low wages can be solved if every person in America becomes a highly skilled worker, thus earning performance based pay raises.

Ed believes every American is above average.

 
 

Ed would be foursquare in favor of the social safety net if he ever needed it.

Nah Gun Hap Pin. There will always be wingnut welfare for the disingenuous.

 
 

It is far kinder to starve the peons gradually through a pathetically low wage than to starve them quickly through unemployment.

Loneoak wins the thread, although that requires reading ‘kinder’ in the conservatard sense of ‘easier for the Plantation Patriots’.

 
 

The NBER report is interesting and seems to be put together soundly. It also seems a bit lonely, but I haven’t drilled down into the cites yet and shouldn’t really say anything until I can.

It’s not that I don’t want to be fundamentally wrong about this, because a rising minimum wage is a strong net good, and even a moral imperative. But there’s never not a tradeoff, never a shifting of resources that results only in the desired effect. You know?

 
 

Jennifer, I think the 2-7% range comprises the opinions of economists; the Fed has usually acted at 4%, making that a more “official” full employment level, i.e. government mandated unemployment rate.

 
 

Ohhh, for a communicable empathy virus…

You just want to solve the overpopulation problem through mass suicides. Hmph, lie-bruls.

 
 

There are 6 definitions of the Unemployment rate, conveniently defined by the BLS here:

U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force

U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)

U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers

U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers

U-3 is the publicized rate. It also is the most ‘mucked-with’ statistic. Over the years the “Official” definition has changed to decrease the reported rate of unemployment.

 
 

Gavin,

OK, that I can support. The economic circumstances of a minimum wage hike are too complex to unravel and definitively say “this is a good/bad thing.”

For example, when is the MW usually raised during an economic cycle? Usually when things are peachy keen, so it’s likely that any unemployment effect is mitigated by economic growth. The hikes that have occured ahead of a downturn probably had far less effect on unemployment than the mere fact that, well, the economy stumbled.

As to the moral effect (and the psychological effect, too), I think anyone who disagreed that paying the bottom dregs of society more is a good thing is probably sociopa–

Oh, wait, that’s Cap’n Ed!

 
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
 

Ohhh, for a communicable empathy virus…

Seconded.

You might like this book.

 
 

As a sociopathic dreg of society, I resent being compared to asshat Ed.

 
 

I always figured even if everyone had an MD/PhD/JD/MBA some of us would still have to be janitors/fast food employees/wal mart greeters.

If we all had advanced degrees, maybe we could invent a self-cleaning toilet.

And, you know, we’d be able to figure out how to get a shopping cart without someone there to help us.

 
 

Agree with Gavin. The problem is you can’t tell where you are on the curve with regard to raising the minimum wage and the effect it has on jobs. Ditto the Laffer curve. There is no way to tell where you are on the curve. That is why implementing a policy to get a specific result (i.e. tax cuts will pay for themselves) or drawing a cause and effect conclusion about a specific policy recommendation is absurd in these two areas.

There are too many other variables.

 
 

Christ, did Gary just say something sensible?

There is no way to tell where you are on the curve. That is why implementing a policy to get a specific result (i.e. tax cuts will pay for themselves) or drawing a cause and effect conclusion about a specific policy recommendation is absurd in these two areas.

The rub is that this is a feature, not a bug. Such right-wing mythologies are dreamed up to prevent sensible governance and guarantee the funneling of most of the money to the already-rich.

 
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
 

And, you know, we’d be able to figure out how to get a shopping cart without someone there to help us.

Ha! No, I’m afraid advanced degrees don’t teach the real necessary life skills. If you count an MBA as an advanced degree, you don’t even need to be literate.

 
 

Yea Christopher, the economy or the work place.

I remember the day my manager said to me, “Son since you are better at doing my job than I am I think I will give you a promotion to be my boss. Will that be OK for you?”

 
 

(After re-reading the thread here’s some more non-humorous persiflage.)

An increase in the minimum wage throws the economy into an autocatalytic reaction. VERY briefly, an AR is a self-referential process that plots along an asymmetrical curve, upwards or downwards, until the affects wear off.

Since the majority of economic activity is consumer driven, a Minimum Wage increase has a tendency to increase economic activity driven from the increase in disposable income. Example: one million dollars of a companies gross income given to the owner – keeping things simple – means one person buying more stuff; one million dollars divided by 100 workers means 100 people are buying more stuff. Obviously, 100 people buying more stuff is better than 1 person buying more stuff as that stuff has to be produced by other people working in other companies.

The downside of a Minimum Wage increase is the ability of the trans-national corporations to do a wee bit of “Labor Wage Rate Arbitrage.” This is when they produce stuff in a low cost Labor Wage Rate area, e.g., China, and sell in a high cost Labor Wage Rate area, e.g., the US. As the Labor cost is a prime determining factor of the Cost of Living these companies can give a “Good” wage in the former and undercut the selling price of companies located in the latter. Which is what we’ve been seeing since the mid-60s: jobs moving from high-cost areas to low cost areas.

Again, VERY superficially, a Minimum Wage increase, unless there is a corresponding increase in tariffs or the imposition of other fiscal barriers to international trade an increase in the Minimum will only briefly increase national economic activity. Eventually the flow of money to purchase stuff will divert from nationally based companies to the trans-nationals.

 
 

Ed seems to think the problem of low wages can be solved if every person in America becomes a highly skilled worker, thus earning performance based pay raises.

No, that’s the excuse. There will always be the lowest paid worker, and Ed thinks it’s their fault.

 
 

The fact is, I also believe that taxes should be geared move heavily toward individuals rather than corporations. There are too many loopholes and too much tax leakage in the corporate world. The options for individuals to avoid taxes, while plentiful, pale in comparison to what corporates can do. Given this, systemically, tax policy should target the individual.

 
 

Gary, I agree with you that the corporate tax leakage is the worst possible situation, but I would probably go in one of two other directions: 1) flat corporate tax or 2) no corporate tax along with very high taxes on dividends and executive income.

 
 

i love the ‘fro on Ed. It is teh funny.

 
 

oh, and, umm…low wages are bad.

 
 

Also, it should be noted that anyone who goes to “work” for Michelle Malkin can’t really be considered a voice of authority on economic issues.

(I’m talking about you, Ed.)

 
 

That’s what I was getting at. Lower rates for corporates. Higher rates on individuals and capital gains.

 
 

Official statistics regarding either unemployment or economic growth are pure bullshit, & have been for many years now … factors are plugged in or edited out on a whim to serve the needs of the corporate sector &/or to make the current administration look good. So any argument that uses those numbers to “prove” its merits is suspect.

Higher wages are a powerful economic stimulus – much better than high-income tax breaks, as wages are more likely to go directly back into the economy. Past a certain point, overinflation of wages will hurt the economy, especially small businesses … but it’s mighty damn rare to see that happen.

Artificially deflated wages are the norm, along with the economic stagnation they produce … which is what leads to risky moves like jerry-rigged interest-rates or stock-market deregulation to artificially stimulate the economy. Our governments wouldn’t need to play such dangerous games with the economy if they’d ever bother to grow a pair & start representing regular working stiffs instead of their rich bum-buddies.

We’re now forced to survive the results of cooking the economic books to make up for weak wages. We peons didn’t have the scratch to play the market & reap the rewards of this latest circus – but we’ll sure as hell get handed shovels & told to clean up after the elephants in its wake.

 
 

The existence of the Laffer curve relies on two premises:
1) If the government collects no taxes (0% effective tax rate), it collects no revenue;
2) If the government collects every red cent in taxes (100% effective tax rate), it collects no revenue.
The fundamental theorem of calculus takes care of the rest: since revenue is 0 (and increasing) at 0% tax and 0 (and decreasing) at 100% tax, then there is at least one tax rate between 0% and 100% which produces the maximum possible revenue. That’s really a trivial claim, though, and there’s no point in attacking it. Determining exactly what the Laffer curve looks like, and how fast and in what ways it changes, are problems for real economists, not slack-jawed onlookers like me. Conservatives like to invoke the Laffer curve to justify one of their articles of faith, namely that cutting taxes is always good–but they’d say that anyway, so they’re not very good judges. The mathematical assumptions behind the Laffer curve are good, and so is the conclusion–but while such a thing as the Laffer curve must exist, you’d need a lot of additional information to predict the effect of any particular tax cut.

The analogy with minimum wage and unemployment is an excellent one, because you can construct a curve in approximately the same way. Clearly if the minimum wage is $0, only the very desperate will take minimum-wage jobs, and unemployment will be high; likewise, if the minimum wage is $100 per hour, very few businesses will be able to afford employees, and unemployment will be high. Somewhere between $0 and $100/hour, therefore, there exists (at least one!) ideal minimum wage that minimizes unemployment. Like the Laffer curve, though, it’s extremely hard to suss out exactly what shape the relationship takes–not to mention the fact that different economic circumstances undoubtedly produce different wage-unemployment curves.

It’s likely that, in some cases, the effect would be exactly what Gavin (and even Cap’n Ed) describes: increasing the minimum wage drives some people out of a job. Whether that’s the case right now, and how big an effect we should see from a particular wage change, is something that should be left up to trained and experienced economists. Even if Ed’s claim were true, though, it would still be up to Americans to decide whether the danger of increased unemployment is outweighed by the moral good of making sure that you can survive on minimum wage.

 
White Male, Jew of Liberal Fascism
 

Yeah, if we could only get rid of that minimum wage, our nation could enjoy widespread prosperity, just like our Latin American neighbors.

And I bet Cap’n Ed would love to live in Iraq, because there’s not only no minimum wages, there’s none of them pesky unions, either.

And no taxes or gun control laws! Woo hoo! A neo-conservative paradise!

 
 

blah MW blah blah

MW is a red herring. More or less. I tend to approach MW discussions much the same as, say, “gay rights.” Very few people on my side of “gay rights” have ever promoted “gay rights.” We have, at times forcefully, insisted on equal rights for gays. Alas, once the issue is framed as “gay rights”, it is, ipsa, a biased playing field.

Let’s talk about “living wages.” Even the noted bigot and leading anti-semite of his day Henry Ford recognized that he (and everyone else) was better off when the people who made his cars could afford to buy them.

All the talk about “minimum wages” is a red herring far as I’m concerned. Framing the discussion in terms of some arbitrary “minimum wage” is an effective way to divert attention from, for instance, the fact that the sub living wages paid at WalMart are a form of corporate welfare. They get to pay poverty level wages and the gap is taken up in public (read: taxpayer) assistance.

Curious that the frantic cries of “socialism!” were never heard from the WalMarts and MacDonalds when they they have been, all along, primary drivers of and the long slow under the surface trend toward socialism in the US.

Fuck, not one bit oif snark comes to mind so I’ll apologize now for this inappropriate comment.

 
 

primary drivers and beneficiaries of and the long slow

 
 

Have I stumbled upon Ms. McArdle’s econo-blog in some wacky web error?

 
 

The authors of the book that Ed is plugging argue that instead of raising the minimum wage “policymakers should instead look for other tools to raise the wages of low-skill workers and to provide poor families with an acceptable standard of living.”

I’ve got an idea. Soak the rich (higher cap gains taxes, higher inheritence taxes, higher taxes on luxury items, no more corporate tax loopholes, etc.) and use the money to fund a massive green infrastructure investment, nationalized health care, and strengthen the social safety net.

Then you probably wouldn’t need to give the McDonalds fry-guy an extra quarter.

 
 

I’m cooking up my special tapioca rice in with white sauce right now!

 
 

Long ago and far away, in another thread:

Simba B said,
December 16, 2008 at 5:15 (kill)

Hey guys,

Since we seem to be having trouble with trolls of late, I decided to update the killfile script that’s already out there to add one important feature—instead of killing the comment body the parent node is deleted.

I present you with Sadly, No! Total Commenter Death. Be careful using it because there is no easy way to un-kill people. It’s possible but not straightforward.

A Firefox extension providing quick access to about:config (and all the other “about” thingies): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4155 — makes it easy to edit your killfile.

Smut Clyde said,
December 16, 2008 at 6:17 (kill)


But it does not add dancing badgers!

Okay, so here’s a dancing badger killer:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/38775

But the badgers depend on the continued existence of the file
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/badger2.gif

 
 

The authors of the book that Ed is plugging argue that instead of raising the minimum wage “policymakers should instead look for other tools to raise the wages of low-skill workers and to provide poor families with an acceptable standard of living.”

I’ve got an idea. Soak the rich (higher cap gains taxes, higher inheritance taxes, higher luxury taxes, higher Soc Sec cap, no corporate tax loopholes, etc.) and use the moolah to fund a massive investment of green technologies and infrastructure, start a nationalized health care program, offer no-cost adult education, strengthen the social safety net, etc.

Maybe Ed will like those ideas better than giving the McDonalds fry-guy an extra quarter.

 
 

The problem is you can’t tell where you are on the curve with regard to raising the minimum wage and the effect it has on jobs.

Sure you can. You raise the minimum wage. No real jobs loss. You’re on safe ground.

Unlike taxes, where we are clearly wayyyyyy too undertaxed.

 
 

but $100,000,000 salaries NEVER cost consumers anything.
Increasing the salaries of CEOs benefits consumers by motivating them to make better decisions.

Thread needs more persiflage. However, thanks to ~F, my dancing-badger requirements are filled at last.

 
 

I always figured even if everyone had an MD/PhD/JD/MBA some of us would still have to be janitors/fast food employees/wal mart greeters.

It used to be a standing joke back when I was in graduate school that one of the minimum requirements to be a cabbie in NYC was a Ph.D. in Philosophy. Fortunately I have mine in anthropology, which qualifies me to work as a greeter at Wal-Mart.

 
 

which qualifies me to work as a greeter at Wal-Mart.

I’ll bet they don’t give you hazardous duty pay. Here’s hoping you’ve got a decent insurance plan – which they don’t offer either.

 
 

“An Anti-Christ” not THE Anti-Christ?
If (pace Austin) there are multiple ways of not being real,* then it makes sense for there to be more than one opposite of Christ, including “Insufficiently buoyant Anti-Christ” and “I’m sure we started out with more food Anti-Christ”, to name but two.

* “The function of ‘real’ is not to contribute positively to the characterisation of anything, but to exclude possible ways of being not real”.

 
You Can't Put Lipstick On A Repig
 

> The fundamental theorem of calculus takes care of the rest: since revenue is 0 (and increasing) at 0% tax and 0 (and decreasing) at 100% tax, then there is at least one tax rate between 0% and 100%

Sadly, no.

If the mathematical space that the economy exists in had only two dimensions, this would be correct. In reality, the reality-based economy is an n-dimention Hilbert Space that follows a higher math than basic Calculus can deal with.

This is one of the problems with economists, as even the best of them rarely get any math past multivariate calculus, which is kinda crude in describing reality (but great for uber-simple things like DC circuits)

 
 

I always figured even if everyone had an MD/PhD/JD/MBA some of us would still have to be janitors/fast food employees/wal mart greeters.

We live in a society that requires shit jobs to function and which lacks the automative ability to dehumanize those shit jobs altogether. Generally, the best policy is foisting those shit jobs onto people for whom making a barely-living wage scrubbing human shit out of the grease traps is an enormous step up.

This is why you need a constant immigrant treadmill for a capitalist society to work. Take away the people born and raised in places where $10,000 a year is middle-class stuff and you are, in fact, forcing people with degrees to take Walmart welfare.

 
 

Its stunning how an increase in the minimum wage will devastate the economy but $100,000,000 salaries NEVER cost consumers anything.

Win.

 
 

I’ll bet they don’t give you hazardous duty pay.

Actually, I am one of the lucky few with a real academic job. When I graduated, only 20% of anthropology Ph.D.s got academic jobs. About another 20-30% got professional jobs using their anthropological training outside of academia. At least half, however, never used their degrees. One friend from graduate school went to work delivering bottled water back home in south Jersey.

 
 

Oh and my university does not give me hazardous duty pay for teaching monster freshman introductory courses (230 students) either.

 
 

I hope I’m not geeking dorking out too much here, but I wrote another script—this script filters the RSS comments feed. Considerably more technically advanced than the Greasemonkey stuff. You should know, or know how to find out, if your RSS reader will accept a computer program to execute instead of an address to a feed, and you should know how to run Python programs.

Finals are over and I have nothing better to do…

 
 

Thanks Simba. I use a few RSS readers but I’d really rather just use plain Firefox to look at the feed. Any way to manhandle the script into Greasemonkey?

 
 

Any way to manhandle the script into Greasemonkey?

Maybe. It uses the DOM interface which is certainly portable (in fact I was originally going to write this in Javascript, but command line Javascript…not so good), but I don’t know if Firefox will allow you to run scripts on an RSS feed. Are you talking about the RSS preview window where there’s that “Add to feed reader” box at the top?

That’s XUL, and that’s tricky to mess with. Might require writing a full fledged extension, which I have never done.

 
 

Sorry LIEbrals, you lose again! Stop beating around the bush and admit that Daily Kos is a left-wing site that favors the opinions of progressive DEMONcraps.

Conservatives: 89,528

LIEbrals: 0

 
 

Have I stumbled upon Ms. McArdle’s econo-blog in some wacky web error?

No. You can tell because the original post, and most of the comments that have followed, are about economics.

 
 

Simba, here’s a hint. Start with closing the tags.

Whaaaat?

 
 

Why won’t Cap’n Ed and his buddies just tell us what parts of the social safety net they want removed? Social Security? Medicare? Unemployment benefits? Those of us on this side know the answer. But the Cap’n would rather have a wankfest.

 
 

Fun fact—the last thing I had to do to make the script work was specify Unicode instead of ASCII when sending the feed back to the reader. Since someone recently used a non-ASCII code in comments, it would throw a Unicode exception and the error text being inserted into the feed would make the feed reader choke.

 
 

Have I stumbled upon Ms. McArdle’s econo-blog in some wacky web error?

No. You can tell because the original post, and most of the comments that have followed, are about economics.

I came here looking for a gift guide. I need a vegan recipe book for a shut-in this yr.

 
 

Can’t go wrong with the Veganomicon, which would allow your shut-in friend to both cook healthy vegan food and invoke the Elder Gods to destroy our puny worthless planet with much crushing and smearing.

 
The Reality-Based Dave
 

Another Special Ed post discussing the minimum wage:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/001154.php

Shorter: Fuck the employees! I wanna sell more pizza!

 
 

Dr. Dick – The fact is, I have a BA in English Lit and Anthropology AND I have an MBA. What does that qualify me for?

 
 

Are you talking about the RSS preview window where there’s that “Add to feed reader” box at the top?

Yeah I guess, if you want to call that “preview” and not “exactly what I want but with filtering”.

http://righteousbubba.blogspot.com/2008/12/rss-and-filtering.html

 
 

Could any of these cocksucking employers just for once actually take a few bucks a month less, or cut the payouts to parasite stockholders, rather than their first re-action to virtually anything being automation or job cuts?

honestly? no. it’s not their job to make less money, it’s their job to make more money. it’s their choice to with their money and their investment what they see fit – isn’t that what freedom is all about?

more importantly, why should businesses be expected to make less money? they don’t have some sort of grand moral obligation to anyone but those parasites you’re railing against. in the current economic climate, are you willing to take a tax increase? are you willing to give less to your family in order to employ someone else?

And Skipper, you cretin, employers are looking to automate or ship jobs off-shore any chance they get. Don’t let them use crap like this to to justify it. Or don’t you love jobs for the American people?

first, employers should run their business in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible. that’s what separates successful businesses from unsuccessful businesses. second, outsourcing jobs overseas isn’t automatically efficient or cost-effective in every case. it’s a very laborious process and can be a big gamble for any company. have you ever stopped and thought about why jobs are outsourced to begin with?

 
 

Gary – Stocking the shelves at your local Shop ‘n’ Shit.

 
 

Jennifer: I like your reasoning! There is lots and lots of evidence to support that a higher minimum wage HELPS the economy overall, including the merchants who pay it. Why they screech against it is hard to understand. I guess its just the mere IDEA of paying more to poor people, given they truly believe “The Poor” are really parasites, lazy, dishonest and so on. All the things most (well-off) Repugs are in fact. More Projection I suppose.

As for spending for NASA, it used to really irk me when people complained about the cost. Pallets of cash were not being sent into space! The money stays here, and only a hunk of metal (big hunk) goes away. And the Space shuttle comes back.

A very LOW estimate of the returns on Space-flight Research is a RETURN of at least $15 for every dollar spent. But since the money made goes into the general populace, I guess it is considered wated by the very rich.

 
 

The fact is, I have a BA in English Lit and Anthropology AND I have an MBA. What does that qualify me for?

Liar of the Year.

 
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
 

employers should run their business in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible.

i.e., non-profit.

 
 

first, employers should run their business in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible. that’s what separates successful businesses from unsuccessful businesses.

Wrong.

Businesses should be run for a normal profit, which means to maximize revenues while maintaining costs at a reasonable level in order to produce a return on their investment commensurate with the industry they are in.

A cursory glance at any long-existing, well-run company shows that cost-efficiency is the LAST thing any of them preach. Yes, they’ll manage costs and expenses, but bottom line, if a little bit of waste helps them produce an increase in revenues or productivity, then there will be waste.

Period. There’s more profit in taking in more revenue than in eating away at your cost structure. That’s a Year One B-School axiom.

 
 

The fact is, I have a BA in English Lit and Anthropology AND I have an MBA. What does that qualify me for?

Megan McArdle? Is that you??

 
 

A cursory glance at any long-existing, well-run company shows that cost-efficiency is the LAST thing any of them preach. Yes, they’ll manage costs and expenses, but bottom line, if a little bit of waste helps them produce an increase in revenues or productivity, then there will be waste.

Period. There’s more profit in taking in more revenue than in eating away at your cost structure. That’s a Year One B-School axiom.

There’s also an axiom in that Bible which Special Ed’s people are always banging on about: Do not muzzle the ox that treadeth out your grain.

Starving one’s employees is explicitly anti-Old-Testament, as well as anti-Jesus. In fact, if you accept the theory that the Old Testament writers got that maxim from Hammurabi, then as long as there’s been laws written down, good bidnismin knew cheating the help was Teh Stoopid.

 
 

No luck with Live Bookmarks. I can get the script to execute successfully but by the time Greasemonkey loads it Firefox has already read in the feed and displayed it. It might be possible to manipulate the user interface code but that’s going to be disproportionately hard to do.

 
 

Oh well. Many thanks for giving it a shot.

 
 

“Ed seems to think the problem of low wages can be solved if every person in America becomes a highly skilled worker, thus earning performance based pay raises.
————————————————————
Ed believes every American is above average.”

If I had to hazard a guess, I would think that Ed thinks only certain people with the proper skin color, religion, and economic status are above average. If the people of New Orleans are stuck living in flooded slums, it is obviously their fault, and they are below average. Conservative logic.

Still, makes you wonder what “average” is.

Anne Laurie – the OT has provisions for low-wage workers. It involves piercing their ear with a nail to your lintel, and if they want to marry your daughter, you own – I mean, employ – them for the rest of their life.

Actually, that does sound like a Conservative Wet-Dream.

 
 

The fact is, I have I six Cadillacs, five Lincolns, four Fords, six Mercuries, three T-Birds, Mustang. Plus, I’m a lover.

 
 

The fact is, I did my thesis on marriage and kinship customs among the Tamil people of the Indian sub-continent. Then I went and got an MBA in finance.

 
 

more importantly, why should businesses be expected to make less money? they don’t have some sort of grand moral obligation to anyone but those parasites you’re railing against. in the current economic climate, are you willing to take a tax increase? are you willing to give less to your family in order to employ someone else?

According to this poll, 64% of Americans would be willing to take a pay cut in order to save the jobs of their coworkers. It’s called compassion, nimrod. Try it, you might like it.

have you ever stopped and thought about why jobs are outsourced to begin with?

Obviously the decadent American worker is too spoiled to realize what a great deal $3 a day for twelve-hour sweatshop shifts really is. Luckily, the Chinese, despite being dirty reds, are quite happy to to do factory work in exchange for a bowl of rice and not getting shot in the back of the head.

 
 

I have two Mercedes, a BMW, a Mustang, and a VW. We got rid of the Cadillacs, BMW 2002s, and the Jaguar E-Type. They took up too much room.

 
 

Um, EXCUSE me? I was told there would be no math?

O/T: I saw “Milk” today. Very excellent movie. Sean Penn is wonderful.

That is all.

 
 

The fact is, I have Ph.Ds in Lattice Gauge Theory and perceptual psychology AND I have a B.Sc., but I got rid of the Ph.Ds. They took up too much room.

 
 

..”well, I’ll jump, but you’d better catch me” Anti-Christ

 
 

..”how much do you want for those pigeons?” Anti-Christ

 
 

If raising the minimum wage increases unemployment, then the obvious answer is to do the opposite. Let’s instead LOWER the MAXIMUM WAGE. See how many jobs that creates.

 
 

“Taxes shmaxes, render half the money unto me and I’ll keep my mouth shut” Anti-Christ.

 
 

RB: Does this approximate what you’re looking for? You can add usernames by separating them with bars:

bad_users=The%20Truth|Gary%20Ruppert|alec

etc…

It won’t stay at that URL so don’t depend on it, but if people find it useful I’ll spend a little bit more time fixing it up and slap it into my Passenger setup.

 
 

..”hey, WTF, I thought you said is was shallow here!” Anti-Christ

 
 

(it)

 
 

..”what are you waiting for – he cut off your damned ear!” Anti-Christ

 
 

It does seem to work, Djur. Although I put in RB’s name simply because he was a recent commenter whereas anyone on your sample link was not.

 
 

“A truth function is a mapping from a domain of atomic propositions (or propositional functions) onto a domain of molecular propositions” Anti-Christ.

 
 

…”well, the fossil record seems pretty conclusive to me” Anti-Christ

 
 

RB: Does this approximate what you’re looking for?

Yeah, that’s it, though maybe with the pie script’s tolerance of chunks of names as opposed to complete ones.

I recall having a thing on the toolbar of my Safari which was a javascript spoofer: I could click it and my browser would identify itself as an IE variant for stupid sites. My memory is not the greatest so if it sounds nutty please disregard.

 
 

The fact is, you liberals don’t know how to deal with me when I am making sense.

 
 

Okay, implemented partial matching and put together a dopey little form to put together your shitlist:

http://desperance.net:8000/

If people like this I can give it a permanent URL and improve the caching a little.

 
 

…”why the hell can’t they improve the caching” Anti-Christ

 
 

“You really ought to fertilise that fig tree” Anti-Christ.

 
 

…”it’s people like you who bury their money under a rock who caused this recession!” Anti-Christ

 
 

Thanks Djur. The maintenance of the feed seems like it might be a little weird: re-enter every time? I’d also feel bad about pounding your site all day on the off chance that someone’s come up with a filthy limerick.

 
 

(a small price to pay for a filthy limerick, IMHO)

 
 

The maintenance of the feed seems like it might be a little weird: re-enter every time?

Bookmark the URL that you get after hitting “Gimme that feed”.

 
 

“I thought you Samaritans had your own drinking-fountains” Anti-Christ.

 
 

…”well, yeah, you can start work at noon, but don’t expect me to hire you back on tomorrow” Anti-Christ

 
 

Bookmark the URL that you get after hitting “Gimme that feed”.

“DUH” button not working.

 
 

I don’t seem to have a “DUH” button.

 
 

What Simba said about the bookmark.

Don’t worry about the load on my server. It’s a tiny little app which does very little, and my server has about as much traffic as… uh… some sort of lightly-trafficked thing or place.

 
 

I am Ruppert, hear me roar.

 
 

I am ruptured, hear mere oar.

 
 

Iam raptured, heir mere o’er

 
 

The fact is, you liberals don’t know how to deal with me when I am making sense.

Sure we do: assume you’re someone else.

 
 

Yam rope turd, whore mirroire.

 
 

If one is against using a tool like the minimum wage to try to increase the earnings of those at the bottom but still wants a direct policy to try to do just that, the only other option is an income support such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. Obama proposed to expand this (or something very similar) during the campaign but was widely ridiculed as a communist/socialist redistributionist by many on the right. How does Captain Ed proposed to bridge the two ideas?

 
 

…cut the payouts to parasite stockholders…

Brain melting… Capitalism: you’re doin’ it wrong!

 
 

I believe Newton’s Seventh Law of American Politics states that there exists an inverse square relationship in which the more Bible-thumpingly “Christian” you are, the less likely it is you’ve actually read the Bible.

Actually, this is one wingnut who’s right. In the Bible, the word “antichrist” appears in the Bible in plural form more often than not. Look it up. The idea of there being a singular Anti-Christ figure is a very recent invention by the armageddon-chaser sect.

Luckily, the Chinese, despite being dirty reds, are quite happy to to do factory work in exchange for a bowl of rice and not getting shot in the back of the head.

They wish. The unemployment here is unbelievable and the social safety net all but nonexistent, so anyone not from a middle-class family is pretty well fucked if they’re out of work for too long, and the widespread use of prison labor pretty much makes labor a useless commodity. Seriously, this place would be a glibertarian paradise were it not for all the Chinese people.

 
 

Ohhh, for a communicable empathy virus…

Scott, read Raising The Stones by Sheri S Tepper – she posits this organism which she calls the Hobbs Land Gods which has that effect. Fascinating conception of what the response from outsiders would be.

 
 

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