{"id":105,"date":"2014-02-24T15:52:25","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T19:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=105"},"modified":"2014-02-24T15:59:34","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T19:59:34","slug":"105","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=105","title":{"rendered":"A Glibertarian View of the Minimum Wage at a Poorly Named Web Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Whiskey Fire<\/em><\/a>, I now know about<\/a> a conservative online magazine called The Federalist<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 It looks like former Rick Perry policy analyst Sean Davis<\/a> started this thing last September.\u00a0 Davis also writes at Media Trackers<\/em><\/a>, and both offer a pretty standard glibertarian<\/a> conservative line with a splash of neocon and social conservatism for good measure.\u00a0 Ben Domenech<\/a> publishes The Federalist<\/em>, and employs David Harsanyi<\/a> and Mollie Hemingway<\/a> as editors, and this staff list makes me wonder about something:<\/p>\n

Why would a bunch of folks who would happily reinstate the Articles of Confederation<\/a> if they could just keep the Second Amendment name their magazine The Federalist<\/em>?\u00a0 Don’t they realize that a huge expansion of the Federal Government was the Founders\u2019 central political goal when they convened the Constitutional Convention?\u00a0 These guys have more in common with “Centinel<\/a>” and “Brutus<\/a>” than with Publius.<\/p>\n

Anyway, once there I caught a piece by Davis<\/a> complaining that Obama had left out some important things we all need to know about the minimum wage.\u00a0 This response to the President\u2019s SOTU section on the subject is not the standard (and incorrect<\/a>) \u201chiring will slow if labor costs more-supply and demand\u201d line \u2013 Davis directly responds to two specific items in the speech.\u00a0 The rest, however, looks like an argument that since most minimum wage workers are young, part-time fast food workers with poor skills, their labor is worth no more and probably less than the current minimum.\u00a0 But he never comes out and says this, so I\u2019m left with a few questions.<\/p>\n

First I should point out that Mr. Davis correctly challenged the President on two points \u2013 that far fewer people would benefit from an increase than Obama thinks, and that some full-time workers live in poverty.\u00a0 A quick look around shows Davis is right about both.<\/p>\n

This however begs the question: if only 1.6 million workers make the minimum wage, many of those only part time, some of them 16 year-olds working ten hours a week, then what\u2019s the big deal?\u00a0 At $10.10 an hour a worker doing forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, would earn a hair over $20K.\u00a0 Together, he and his low-wage colleagues get paid $32.3 billion.\u00a0 To get an idea of how this would just completely destroy the $16.2 trillion US economy, you need to know that Exxon Mobil could have paid every US minimum wage worker by itself<\/i> in 2012 – that\u2019s all wages, not just the increase from the current $7.25\/hour\u00a0 – and still banked at least $12.6 billion in profit.\u00a0 And yes, that\u2019s a \u201cb\u201d for billion.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also left wondering why the age, hours worked, industry and education matters.\u00a0 If Davis means here that some work just isn\u2019t worth that much, he should just say so.\u00a0 Anyway, the fact that firms employing these workers hired them at the minimum wage suggests that they are indeed worth at least that much.<\/p>\n

Finally, I\u2019d ask why it matters that a single person making minimum wage is not living below the poverty income line.\u00a0 He or she would be if supporting a family of four.\u00a0\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t it be great if one parent could support the family while the other raises the children?<\/p>\n

Increasing the minimum wage transfers wealth to America\u2019s lowest paid workers in a way Conservatives should support.\u00a0\u00a0 Think of it this way: it amounts to a tax on businesses that never passes through Government hands.\u00a0 Employers would subsidize their own workers rather than paying taxes which government agencies then distribute to eligible citizens.\u00a0 Wal-Mart could get its workers off welfare, for example, and presumably get more productivity out of workers inspired by their higher pay.\u00a0 Why wouldn\u2019t it prefer paying its own workers enough that they don\u2019t need welfare rather than paying taxes to support welfare programs?<\/p>\n

Right now, the invisible hand of the market has failed to match wages to productivity increases.\u00a0 That is, workers become more productive every day but employers are not paying them for this increase – they are pocketing the value produced as profits.\u00a0 This suggests a market failure that government should address.\u00a0 It also means that Davis is wrong with respect to whether labor is worth more than the pay it currently commands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Whiskey Fire, I now know about a conservative online magazine called The Federalist.\u00a0 It looks like former Rick Perry policy analyst Sean Davis started this thing last September.\u00a0 Davis also writes at Media Trackers, and both offer a pretty standard glibertarian conservative line with a splash of neocon and social conservatism for good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,33],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glibertarian","category-minimum-wage","tag-economics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}