Some Schmo wrote: You haven't read the article, so I don't really see a point in arguing with you about it. Your head is firmly planted in the sand, which makes you are a part of the problem.
If you want to read the article in the OP and comment on it, do it. Otherwise, you're just blowing out crap you've likely been regurgitating for quite some time now.
I actually totally support the idea of companies paying their workers more. As far as wage disparity goes, my company has a ratio of 3.4 for the highest paid "executive" and the average employee pay.
That appears to be pretty good.But he's totally out to lunch on the idea that raising the minimum wage will solve any of the social problems he's concerned about. He says:
Today in America, tens of millions of lower- and middle-class workers are routinely subject to poverty wages, unpaid overtime, wage theft, dehumanizing scheduling practices and the constant threat of automation or off-shoring.
These are the things that are most exacerbated by raising the minimum wage (although it should be pointed out that there are already laws against unpaid overtime and wage theft, so no changes are needed there). Sure, it might help out with some people getting "poverty wages", but there will be others that get fewer hours or lose their jobs, and have a more difficult time finding a job in the first place.
He's woefully ignorant to assume that he can predict the effects of raising the minimum wage will have for all companies and all workers. There are just too many variables. It will work out great for some, and it will be disastrous for others. Just like Henry Ford was great at running a car company but totally foolish to assume that he was driving up meaningful demand for his product by paying his employees more. No Henry, you were succeeding because you were providing a product that many people wanted and the price worked out that they could afford it; not because consumers were being paid artificially inflated wages but because they had jobs that were making a commensurate economic contribution to their companies.
It's also obvious that he is basing his theories on a shallow and clichéd view of economics when he says "It simply isn’t true that reasonable wages, decent labor protections and higher taxes on the rich would destroy the economy. Such were the norms back in the 1950s and 1960s when America’s growth rates were much higher."
The 1950s and 1960s were a time of extreme American economic exceptionalism as the world continued to rebuild after WWII and China and other economies were mired in the stone ages. And it was exceptionalism most tightly focused on white men in America. See if you can find a black woman who agrees that things were economically great in the 1950s and 1960s.
If we want to go back to the economic privilege of the 1950s and 1960s when a white man with only a high school degree could work in a factory and support a family, then we'll need to bomb the manufacturing capacity of Europe and Japan and South America into oblivion and then cut all the minorities and women out of the workforce. Voila! We're back to the paradise of the 1950s and 1960s.
Oh, and we'll have to outlaw computers too.
Of course, we'll have to accept a huge drop in our standard of living as well. We'll have to live in much smaller houses, drive fewer cars, and have a much smaller selection of food items and consumer goods to choose from.
I'm not defending "excessive" CEO pay. And I laud companies that treat their employees well and pay them well (and I like to think my company does. Certainly, employee retention would seem to indicate a high degree of satisfaction from those who work here.) But the idea that raising the price of something won't decrease the demand for it is absurd. The effects of raising the minimum wage become more and more obvious and predictable the higher it gets raised, as low-wage workers have found out in Seattle:
https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/file ... erview.pdfThe second Seattle minimum wage increase, to as much as $13/hour on January 1, 2016, resulted in:
- a 3% increase in hourly wages for low-wage employees.
- a 9% reduction in hours worked at wages below $19/hour. A disemployment effect of this size would occur if, for example, a business that employed 11 low wage workers per shift in 2014 cut back to about 10 workers per shift in 2016.
- a reduction of over $100 million per year in total payroll for low-wage jobs, measured as total sum of increased wages received less wages lost due to employment reductions. Total payroll losses average about $125 per job per month.
- The findings that total payroll for low-wage jobs declined rather than rose as a consequence of the 2016
minimum wage increase is at odds with most prior studies of minimum wage laws. These differences likely reflect methodological improvements made possible by Washington State’s exceptional individual - level data. When we replicate methods used in previous studies, we produce the same results as previously found.
And as noted above, survey data collected independently of this data analysis indicate that the inclusion of multiple
- location businesses would not significantly alter the results.