Honestly: the minimum wage does need to go up

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

This post got me thinking.

I am firmly in favor of:

A) A higher minimum wage in the whole US, and my home state of NY
B) Honesty in politics

While the OP I linked to is not exactly dishonest, it's not exactly honest either.
And this is not to put flak upon the poster there, but it's an example of political rhetoric that is used to leverage one side of a conversation, ignoring nuance.

the graphic in the linked to OP:

1) Doesn't seem to take into account state laws that raise min wage over fed laws
2) Doesn't take into account the vast difference in housing throughout a state

My objection is more with 2 than 1. 1 is easy to take care of, but 2 is not easy.

New York City is WAYYYY more expensive than Rochester or Buffalo, NY; or a large number of other places within the state I could name. Yet, this graphic gives us a number, presumably an average. But that average is way skewed. But how else should they do it? Give us on graphic for NYC and another for the rest of NY State? That wouldn't work either, because then you'd need to break it down for other cities and so on. So what do we do?

We must talk about things in the big picture without getting bogged down in details, otherwise we will have to talk for eons before we can understand what needs to be done. So while I agree that the min wage needs to go up, across the US, I have a problem with the info-graphics created to support that argument. They lack nuance, and as such, are deceiving. Even if they don't mean to be, and are honestly doing the best they can to compile and sort the data, the inevitability of misleading data is going to doom us all.

That said.
Happy saint patty's day.
Was I drunk when I wrote this? You decide.

Comments

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I would attribute more to the diminished manufacturing sectors and outsourcing than 'high labor costs'. If you want to do more you hire more people, if you don't want to do more or can't then it's because demand is low, the market is over-saturated, or... a host of other reasons really. I would deign to assume people are paid too much. It's not like lowering wages creates jobs if they're already hired to capacity or at max productivity.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Oh, it does. It certainly impacts decisions about where to locate new facilities and how much is invested. A bunch of jobs moved from Michigan to the South for just this reason. The same thing happens to countries.

Don't take this as an argument against a minimum wage. Some places do very well with high minimum wages, they just have a very good education system that makes people very productive or discover oil or something similar. The minimum wage does need to be grounded in reality however. The places where a sixteen year old is required to be paid the equivelant of $18/hr don't hire as many sixteen year olds... and have very expensive hamburgers.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

A Five Guys opened up in downtown Brooklyn. They have good burgers and fries, but holy moly are they expensive. I could go across the street and get a sandwich for 1/2 that from one of those Halal food carts. It's weird how both those businesses can exist in the same environment and still be successful, despite the price disparity.