As to your own argument, I’m actually in agreement with you. Once the minimum wage has been raised to the point where it is a livable wage, further incentives and aid for the poorest should indeed by done through methods such as changing the EITC. You’ve made a compelling argument for that in the past.

Bunk. Teenagers living at home in SoCal with mom and Dad in a $1,000,000 house with a household income over $200,000 a year don't need a livable wage. This is just errant nonsense. Further, there is no strict and easy definition for what is "livable". This is like poverty, there is no strict definition of that either.

So working through the EITC alone is a more reasonable and feasible approach, IMO. It isn't perfect, but it is better than the minimum wage.

And yes, your mischaracterization of James' comments is a strawman. He isn't saying, "But look at the poor university professors", he is pointing to them and noting the economic disparity exists there as well. Your characterization is grossly unfair.

However, your thinking on raising the minimum wage is linear and simplistic. Your objection about school leavers could easily be addressed by having different min. wages for different age brackets, as is done in the UK.

Talk about simplistic. Who do you think is going to end up getting the bulk of the lowskill jobs then? The younger workers will have the advantage all other things considered. Hence the very people you want to help, the working poor with a family, are going to end up, to some extent, being priced out of the market. Brilliant!

The Low Pay Commission monitors economic effects of the minimum wage - and I suggest that a study of what has in fact happened is worth any ten studies of what mightHere is their 2006 report

Please Cernig, I have read quite a few studies on the minimum wage.

The purpose of the economy is to serve the people, yet you seem to think it should be the other way about.

Nope, quite the contrary. My feeling is that the economy is where people come together and engage in voluntary transactions that each side percieves as making them better off. As such, I see it as a good thing and that while in theory the government can "make things better" it often times screws things up really badly as well.

A wage that cannot be lived on is uncivilised and has no place in a modern democratic society.

Again with this vague ill-defined concept. What is a livable wage? Must you be able to afford an apartment? If so where? How big, what kind of neighborhood? How much food, and of what quality? Personally I think not having a bottle of Lagavulin is uncivilized, but it doesn't follow that a minimum wage worker should be able to afford that luxury.

Find some other way to tweak your precious economy instead of witholding food and shelter from the least priveliged among us.

Are you being obtuse on purpose? I have, that you are unaware of these alternatives does not reflect badly on me.

The purpose of the economy is to serve the people, yet you seem to think it should be the other way about. A wage that cannot be lived on is uncivilised and has no place in a modern democratic society. Find some other way to tweak your precious economy instead of witholding food and shelter from the least priveliged among us.

Sorry but the world does not owe you a living. Instead of crying about how it's 'uncivilised' to have to work at low wage jobs maybe people should try to improve their skills so they can earn more. Or maybe they should just whine and bitch about what the world owes them.

Like James, I think you are talking from the wrong end of the trumpet. My argument can be summarised as follows:

The purpose of the economy is to serve the people, yet you seem to think it should be the other way about. A wage that cannot be lived on is uncivilised and has no place in a modern democratic society. Find some other way to tweak your precious economy instead of witholding food and shelter from the least priveliged among us.

Regards, Cernig

Here is the Low Pay Commission's 2006 report.

Regards, C

I feel my characterisation of James' argument is an accurate and succinct summary of its points. It isn't a strawman just because you say it is.

As to your own argument, I'm actually in agreement with you. Once the minimum wage has been raised to the point where it is a livable wage, further incentives and aid for the poorest should indeed by done through methods such as changing the EITC. You've made a compelling argument for that in the past.

However, your thinking on raising the minimum wage is linear and simplistic. Your objection about school leavers could easily be addressed by having different min. wages for different age brackets, as is done in the UK. There, the min.wage for a 16 and 17 year old is around $6 while that for an adult is now about $11. The Low Pay Commission monitors economic effects of the minimum wage - and I suggest that a study of what has in fact happened is worth any ten studies of what mightHere is their 2006 report.

We have seen no evidence to suggest that the introduction of the wage has had any adverse effects on employment or created incentives for young people to leave full-time education. It has, however, benefited some young people by outlawing clearly exploitative wages.

and

Since its introduction in 1999 the minimum wage has been a major success. It has significantly improved the wages of many low earners; it has helped improve the earnings of many low-income families; and it has played a major role in narrowing the gender pay gap. But it has achieved this without significant adverse effects on business or employment creation.

The Commission monitors minimum wage levels each year, consults with both businesses and workers, and can decide to lower the minimum wage as well as increase it. It came very close to making the former decision this year and may well do so next year.

I recommend reading the Commission's last three years of annual reports for a detailled look into practise instead of theory.

Regards, Cernig

Your argument in response to the plight of the poor seems to be “but what about the professors?” along with “you’re hungry but you’re free”.

No Cernig that is merely your own strawman of James' comment. I suppose you'd find it somewhat unfair for me to claim that your argument is: okay so your a slave, but at least you aren't hungry.

I suggest that isn’t a reasonable response to 37 million Americans. Raising the minimum wages is, however, the beginning of one.

As I've written here, and elsewhere there are better ways to improve the plight of the working poor, e.g. the EITC. Raising that vs. raising the minimum wage would probably yeild a better result. There is quite a bit of research that says there are undesirable outcomes from raising the minimum wage upto and including high school students dropping out to take a minimum wage job. Not all the research supports this, but there is this distinct possibility.

A single parent of two young children working full-time in a minimum wage job for a year would make $10,712 before taxes - a wage $4,355 below the poverty threshold set by the federal government. (U.S. Department of Labor; U.S. Census Bureau.)

Yes, and I note a complete lack of any concern for incentives on your part. Basically what you are implying here (whether you intend to or not) is that you want more families living under a minimum wage. You see, there is a pretty good rule of thumb: when you subsidize something, you get more of it.

And, in keeping with one of the topics of James' post, one of the downsides of the minimum wage is sort of like an externality. The minimum wage is in many ways like a tax which comes with its own peculiar form of inefficiency. See here as well.

Your argument in response to the plight of the poor seems to be "but what about the professors?" along with "you're hungry but you're free".

I suggest that isn't a reasonable response to 37 million Americans. Raising the minimum wages is, however, the beginning of one.

A single parent of two young children working full-time in a minimum wage job for a year would make $10,712 before taxes - a wage $4,355 below the poverty threshold set by the federal government. (U.S. Department of Labor; U.S. Census Bureau.)

But raising the minimum wage and decreasing unemployement isn't enough on its own - which is why your comment about the guy from Burger King just changing jobs misses the point entirely.

Most Americans living in poverty are too young, too old or physically incapable of working due to illness or disability. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all Americans living in poverty have to depend on someone else in the household to bring in money to live.

Here are the words of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, hardly a bastion of liberal bias:

Nine out of ten Americans believe the federal government has a responsibility to alleviate poverty. A strong majority believes that government should do more, not less, to help people move from welfare to work by providing skills needed to be self-sufficient.

Regards, C

I was not claiming that the disparity between employers and workers is unique at the minimum wage level. Just that, at that level, the effect can be that the worker is compelled to accept a position that is unsustainable (in terms of their basic health and the sustenance of their family) and from which there may be no escape. We've been down this road before, and their is a good reason why we, as a society, deemed it appropriate to maintain a floor under the wage structure.

I've seen Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" episode wherein he lives on minimum wage for a month. Yes, of course it sucks.

I'm not arguing that an unskilled laborer earning minimum wage is comparable to that of an educated professional in terms of lifestyle, merely that both are subject to market forces. Having been unemployed more than once as a college graduate, I can attest that it's often several months in the wilderness looking to get another position. Conversely, a minimum wage guy can just go down to the local McDonald's and replace his job.

I've obviously got more options than that guy, as I can go compete for a $15 an hour job more easily than he can. Doing so, however, would mean giving up everything I've worked for.

There's a tyranny of success that is much different than the tyranny of failure. In many obvious ways, it's a much better existence. On the other hand, the guy working at Burger King can tell his boss to screw off, quit, and find a comparable job right away. There is a certain freedom in that.

In some ways, more so

Yep, in all the less meaningful ways. Not securing tenure is unlikely to mean the difference between a roof or not, between food for your kids or not, between heat and power or not. That's what is at issue, not a "fall in lifestyle". speak from experience. I've lived on both a minimum wage and that of a well-off insurance broker/underwriter. I will never confuse the problems of the latter with the day-to-day subliminal terror of the former.

I dare you to live on a mimimum wage budget for a month. It would make an interesting set of blog posts.

Regards, Cernig

There is always an economic disparity between an unemployed worker and the prospective employer. That's true of PhDs fighting for scarce tenure track professorships just as it is for minimum wage laborers. In some ways, more so as one climbs the ladder because of the greater scarcity of those jobs and the greater fall in lifestyle status that obtains if not finding work.

Union picket lines tend to devolve quickly into brutish tactics by one side or the other, although usually that of the picketers, especially when people desperate for work try to cross the lines.

I actually hadn't seen anything about the Houston janitors thing until you mentioned it this morning, having just skimmed over Hilzoy's post which mentioned it much later (I tend to read blogs via RSS rather than directly). I found the bodybuilder thing via an aggregator and just found it novel.

Of course you don't find it persuasive. You're not poor. You may never have known what it is to be poor. This classic post by John Scalzi may give you a hint.

Still, I apologise for the intemperate nature of the last part of my first comment. I should have asked why, since as a pol-sci major you obviously covered it, you didn't mention the concept of positive freedom at all. You attempted to answer what I should have asked and I thank you for that.

I brought up the Houston Janitors because, to me, it seems a clearcut case of constitutional rights to peacefully assemble and protest being violently abridged by "using the government" to "limit activity between consenting adults" - i.e. legally protesting exploitative labor practises by their employer so as to change that employer's incalcitrance towards negotiations. I wondered why you didn't blog about that rather than some grunting bodybuilder.

Do you think such protests, or the closely-akin civil rights protests of the MLK sixties, are always a bad thing?

Regards, Cernig