Prof. Alan Blinder is entitled to the opinion that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 is too low (“Washington Can Give America a Raise,” op-ed, Aug. 21). But he is not entitled to his own facts.
Mr. Blinder claims that, beginning with David Card and Alan Krueger’s study of the fast-food industry, economic research has “demonstrated that modest minimum-wage increases result in few or no job losses.” Two problems. First, the Card and Krueger result, which was actually that the higher minimum wage led to large employment gains, has been debunked as dependent on a flawed survey that collected misleading data. Second, most studies show that minimum wages reduce low-skilled employment—the opposite of what Ms. Blinder claims.
Prof. Blinder also falls into the trap of equating a higher minimum wage, which of course reduces wage inequality among those still working, with a policy that helps equalize incomes. Decades of research have shown that higher minimum wages do little to raise incomes for poor families. Aside from the job loss, minimum wages don’t target benefits at poor families effectively because many minimum wage workers are teenagers in higher-income families and many poor and low-income families have no workers. As a result, minimum wages don’t reduce poverty.
We expect badly motivated policies to surface during the “silly season” of a presidential election—witness the proposal to eliminate taxes on tips endorsed by both candidates. But we should expect distinguished scholars to enlighten us, rather than to mischaracterize some research, and ignore other research, in support of the opinions behind which they throw their weight.
Prof. David Neumark
University of California, IrvineIn defense of a higher minimum wage, Mr. Blinder cites a controversial 1994 study that suggested a wage mandate could create jobs. The authors, economists David Card and the late Alan Krueger, reached that conclusion after a phone survey of employers in New Jersey (where the minimum wage went up) and Pennsylvania (where it didn’t.)
But subsequent analysis debunked this finding. The faulty methodology failed to properly define full- and part-time employees, among other problems. A later analysis of comprehensive payroll data, published in the same academic journal, conclusively showed a 4.6% decrease in New Jersey’s employment (relative to Pennsylvania’s) following the wage hike.
The economic consensus on minimum-wage consequences has grown stronger in recent years, with 80% of studies in the past three decades finding an “overwhelmingly negative” impact. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that a $15 wage would still cost more than a million jobs. So much for Mr. Blinder’s “economic good.”
Michael Saltsman
Employment Policies Institute
Arlington, Va.
George Will writes a memo to Trump: “Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right. Period.” Two slices:
Rights-bearing individuals are society’s molecular units. Their natural rights precede governments, which, as the Declaration of Independence proclaims, are instituted to “secure” those rights. Individuals are endowed with a right to recognition of these rights regardless of where birth occurs. Birth on U.S. soil is entry into the community of persons subject to U.S. laws.
…..
In 2015, James C. Ho, now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, noted: In the Senate debate on the citizenship clause, some questioned its wisdom, “but no Senator disputed the meaning of the amendment with respect to alien children.”
In 2016, Trump campaigned against birthright citizenship, and as president he said he was contemplating an executive order reinterpreting the citizenship clause, but he never acted on this threat. A Trump executive order would emulate Barack Obama’s “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” theory whereby he rewrote immigration law, and Joe Biden’s attempts to spend, through unilateral student loan forgiveness — without Congress’s approval — more than $400 billion.
The Obama-Biden-Trump theory is that presidents have the power to act on matters they deem urgent if Congress does not act when and how presidents desire. Progressives ideologically hold, and Trump opportunistically holds, that presidential highhandedness in pursuit of virtue is no vice.
Timothy Taylor shares a tale of immigration’s sweet touch.
Natan Ehrenreich reports that “the 1992 Democratic Platform is more conservative than Donald Trump.”
Steve Landsburg is right: Both Harris and Trump are too delusional to hold power:
No matter how this election turns out, the next president of the United States will be a crackpot.
Donald Trump thinks you can fight Covid with bleach injections. Kamala Harris thinks you can fight inflation with price controls.
No, let me correct that. What Trump actually said was that it would be “interesting to check” on whether you could fight Covid with bleach injections. What Harris actually said was that you can fight inflation with price controls.
On that basis, I’d have to conclude that Harris is the more delusional of the two. Unfortunately, Trump has offered me plenty of additional evidence that he’s right up there in Harris’s league. But she’s made it pretty clear he’ll never actually surpass her.
“Big Grocery” must be incompetent at using its monopoly power. (HT HumanProgress.org)
Vinay Prasad describes a recent article in Scientific American about covid as “bonkers.” (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
