Obamacare: Not enough doctors in CA to meet demand

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_Kevin Graham
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Re: Obamacare: Not enough doctors in CA to meet demand

Post by _Kevin Graham »

Eating at a restaurant isn't the only option for food though. When Subway has their $2 sandwiches in December, I eat there almost every day. When they don't, I bring my lunch from home.

Which means buying more food from the grocery store. What's the difference? Both need employees to sell their food.
You should send an email to the Employment Policy Institute and let them know, because you know way more than they do about this.

Notice that this article addresses the drop in "teen" employment rates. Not that overall employment had any change. This only means employers began hiring older adults instead of teenagers, which makes perfect sense given the increased pay rate would increase the number of interested adults. I don't see many teenagers at fast food places anymore. But does that mean no one is working the register or the grill? No, it just means employers are now more selective in who they hire. At a flippin $3.35 an hour, I worked at McDonalds back in 1987 as my first job. Virtually everyone I worked with was a teenager. Why? Because only high school kids would work at such a low rate of pay.

Look, you folks are the ones who need to demonstrate a clear case proving the minimum wage causes unemployment. The fact is this used to be the conventional wisdom among economists until more recent evidence has pretty much made it a moot point. According to the wiki:

"Until the 1990s, economists generally agreed that raising the minimum wage reduced employment. This consensus was weakened when some well-publicized empirical studies showed the opposite, although others confirmed the original view. Today's consensus, if one exists, is that increasing the minimum wage has, at worst, minor negative effects." ( "A Blunt Instrument; The Minimum Wage," The Economist, October 28, 2006)
_Kevin Graham
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Re: Obamacare: Not enough doctors in CA to meet demand

Post by _Kevin Graham »

EAllusion wrote:I was referring to a hypothetical $20 min wage in the McDonald's example, not a $9 min wage.


Well I don't know enough about McDonald's finances to say for sure one way or the other about $20, but I'm confident their 20% profit margin would allow them to bump pay up significantly higher than what it is now. Possibly $20, but neither of us can say for sure one way or the other.

And the more you pay employees, the more likely they are to be more productive. You'd be surprised how overall presence in the staff can persuade customers to pay a little extra for better service.
_cinepro
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Re: Obamacare: Not enough doctors in CA to meet demand

Post by _cinepro »

"Until the 1990s, economists generally agreed that raising the minimum wage reduced employment. This consensus was weakened when some well-publicized empirical studies showed the opposite, although others confirmed the original view. Today's consensus, if one exists, is that increasing the minimum wage has, at worst, minor negative effects." ( "A Blunt Instrument; The Minimum Wage," The Economist, October 28, 2006)



Wow. Things are really bad when you're citing "minor negative effects" as a victory.
_Kevin Graham
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Re: Obamacare: Not enough doctors in CA to meet demand

Post by _Kevin Graham »

Nice of you to ignore the qualifying phrase, "at worst." The point is you are the ones making claims that minimum wage increases will costs jobs. I'm pointing out that there is no consensus among economists anymore because there is a growing body of evidence from recent studies that have challenged that assumption.

You are stating something as fact when it isn't. This is the same thing you guys were complaining about with me in the other thread. What hypocrites.
_Droopy
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Re: Obamacare: Not enough doctors in CA to meet demand

Post by _Droopy »

Kevin Graham wrote:Nice of you to ignore the qualifying phrase, "at worst." The point is you are the ones making claims that minimum wage increases will costs jobs. I'm pointing out that there is no consensus among economists anymore because there is a growing body of evidence from recent studies that have challenged that assumption.


At least one of which was thoroughly discredited nearly 20 years ago and the rest of which are in process of same. These kinds of social science studies can be cooked, basted, grilled, fried, and served on a flaming platter to order, and always have been, which is why I prefer, not just the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence on such matters, which has for decades been unambiguously hostile to minimum wage laws, but studies which also have a serious grounding in a knowledge of the laws and principles of economics and the dynamics of human action and motive that drives economic life.

Then there's the other question about whether the state, and especially the federal government, have any business telling private individuals what they must or must not pay workers in a competitive, open wage labor marketplace in a, it is claimed, free society. As with most such economic questions, the question of the state's competence also ends in questions of its moral legitimacy in taking upon itself such coercive regulatory powers.
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