Room for Debate Can the Minimum Wage Be Too High Essays - Economy

Room for Debate: Can the Minimum Wage Be Too High? Published on June 4, 2014, on The New York Times website in the "Room for Debate" series. Note that many of the articles have been updated and contain different dates. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/04/can-the-minimum-wage-be-too-high "Introduction" On Monday, Seattle's City Council voted to raise the local minimum wage gradually to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal minimum wage and one of the highest anywhere in the nation. Can the economy support such a raise? Will elevating the pay floor lead to job losses or will it be a boon for the city and an example for national reform? Article 1: "Higher Minimum Wage Hurts Low-Skill Workers in the Long Run" (UPDATED MAY 11, 2015) By Diana Furchtgott -Roth, former chief economist of the Department of Labor, is director of Economics21 and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Seattle's economy can support a raise to $15 an hour, but what about Seattle's young and low-skilled workers, who might want summer jobs? They will be left twiddling their thumbs on their couches or those of their parents. And families who want to go out to eat might think twice and then stay home. Seattle has one of the highest hourly median wages in the nation, according to the Department of Labor. Both the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area (ranked 13th, with $22.43) and the overlapping Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area (ranked 18th, with $21.72) beat the national hourly median wage, $16.87. As a result, the negative effects of a $15 minimum wage will not as bad as they would be in Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas, which has a median hourly wage of $10.81. But low-skill jobs remaining in the city will see increased competition, with medium-skilled, experienced workers winning out over low-skilled, mainly young workers trying to reach the first rung of the career ladder. With a $15 minimum wage floor, Seattle will say goodbye to many of its low-skilled workers, most of whom serve the retail and leisure and hospitality sector. They are likely to be gradually replaced by self-order kiosks that use touchscreens instead of cashiers in restaurants, and self-scanning checkout booths in drugstores and supermarkets. In April, the Restaurant Opportunities Center, a union-funded worker center, organized High Road Restaurant Week in New York City. The average price of a burger and fries at participating restaurants was $20.50. A family of four would pay $82 for burgers, instead of $10 to $15 at McDonald's . Last month USA Today reported that Panera is incorporating multiple technologies, such as store kiosks and mobile ordering, to reduce cash registers in stores. Panera will do fine in Seattle. But what about the kids who want summer jobs? Perhaps they will go to Texas for the summer. Article 2: " A $15 Minimum Wage Can Help Overcome the New Low-Wage Economy " (Updated June 26, 2015) By Robert Reich, the secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, is Chancellor's professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the co-creator of the film "Inequality for All." By raising its minimum wage to $15, Seattle is leading a long-overdue movement toward a living wage. Most minimum wage workers aren't teenagers these days. They're major breadwinners who need a higher minimum wage in order to keep their families out of poverty. Across America, the ranks of the working poor are growing. While low-paying industries such as retail and food preparation accounted for 22 percent of the jobs lost in the Great Recession, they've generated 44 percent of the jobs added since then, according to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project. Last February, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that raising the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 would lift 900,000 people out of poverty. Seattle estimates almost a fourth of its workers now earn below $15 an hour. That translates into about $31,000 a year for a full-time worker. In a high-cost city like Seattle, that's barely enough to support a family. The gains from a higher minimum wage extend beyond those who receive it. More money in the pockets of low-wage workers means more sales, especially in the locales they live in - which in turn creates faster