Empirical "studies" are OK, but only if they come from non-biased non-propaganda sources.
The point is that increasing the minimum wage may cause companies to cut back or drop products.
I am not assuming businessmen are stupid. I'm assuming they respond reasonably to market forces.
Not true. Evidence shows employment increases
Research Shows Minimum Wage Increases Do Not Cause Job Loss
http://www.businessforafairminimumw...-minimum-wage-increases-do-not-cause-job-loss
If they cut forces they are acting irrationally.
Why should we believe these Left-wing pro-labor think tanks and publications, which is what every source listed here is. There is nothing wrong with being an ideologue, but why should we accept their "facts" on faith? The only sources for the above "research" are all Left-Wing pro-labor propaganda sources.
These left-wing ideologues need to stop pretending they have all this empirical "data" that proves their talking points. They do not have any reliable "data" on this. We have good reason not to trust the "data" provided by these biased sources.
Most of them just keep quoting the Card-Krueger "research" which did not prove anything, and they misrepresent C-K's real findings (or lack of findings).
Numerous careful economic studies, including ones by David Card and Alan Krueger, have shown that increasing the minimum wage has no negative effect on employment.
The Card-Krueger studies did not show any such thing.
What C-K does is give tons and tons of data that show only one thing, which is that it is difficult to determine the impact of small increases in MW, and C-K was unable to determine the impact.
All C-K can claim is that they could not identify in their tons of data any negative effect of minimum wage on employment levels.
Not being able to find a negative effect is not the same as showing "no negative effect."
They give a huge barrage of data and pretend that because there is so much data, surely any negative impact from MW would show up in it. But they consistently omit important variables. (And most "studies" pro-and-con on MW ignore major variables.)
They ignore the impact of employers switching to
independent contractors.
They cite employment numbers which ignore employers switching more to
part-time workers, who are categorized as "employed" in the official employment numbers. (The "studies" ignore whether employers respond to MW by switching from full-time to part-time hiring.)
They ignore the government (local or state) enacting
more infrastructure programs, more pork programs, more corporate welfare, and more jobs programs. All these (whether they are a legitimate spending program or not) increase the employment numbers and are more likely to take place in those jurisdictions which also increase the minimum wage.
They ignore the impact of MW increase other than in the first few months, or the first year, after the MW increase, totally
ignoring the impact on the economy 5 or 10 or 15 years later, when the MW increase may have a greater impact.
They exclude the variable of workers
dropping out of the labor force as a result of MW increase (mostly desperate job-seekers and chronically-unemployed who figure a low-wage job is the best they can get). Such drop-out then skews the unemployment numbers because those who drop out are no longer included in the labor force, and so are not counted as "unemployed" and so the true "unemployed" number is higher than the official number.
The "studies" showing MW does no harm always come from Left-wing pro-labor think tanks who crank out this "data" for the labor unions to use as propaganda. And they always ignore variables like those listed above. All they have proved is that the negative impact from MW is generally too small to measure, because the increases are not large enough or the workers impacted are only a tiny minority of the workforce.
We have good reason not to believe these ideologues and their "findings." We should be equally skeptical of "findings" from right-wing or pro-business think tanks which claim to have "data" that MW hurts employment numbers. There is no conclusive data (except in the case of Samoa where there was a significant impact from increasing the MW.)
The sum total negative impact of MW over many years, decades, may be significant, but from one single MW increase there is no significant impact, and those claiming they've measured it and proved the impact of it empirically are just propagandizing.
The following quote from the above cited "research" illustrates why we cannot trust these sources:
Recent research has even suggested that higher wages can increase employment, because they increase employers’ ability to attract, retain, and motivate workers.
http://clinton4.nara.gov/media/pdf/minwagereport000208.pdf
This is dishonest because it insinuates that some "recent research" has uncovered something new here, which is nonsense. Everybody knows -- all businesses have known for centuries -- that higher wages can produce the above benefits to a company, and because of this, companies do increase wages when it's appropriate, without needing any law passed to force them to do it.
It's dishonest to imply that some "recent research" has discovered this. There is no integrity or objectivity or scientific reliability about sources that propagandize this way, implying that there are "studies" or "research" that prove what they are promoting.
These "sources" are just pandering to labor unions and to the sentiment of the general public who sympathize on an emotional level with wage-earners, because the vast majority of producers are wage-earners and it's so easy to scapegoat and beat up on the minority who are employers. All the sources listed here make their profit pandering to labor unions and telling them what they want to hear.
Once again, find a
MAINLINE source that gives your "studies" in their reporting, such as Paul Solman on PBS. Solman has done several reports on minimum wage and presents the pro-minimum-wage side more than the anti-minimum-wage side, presenting the argument on how MW has not kept up with inflation. But he does not confirm any of the "studies" that prove what the impact of minimum wage increases are on unemployment levels, even though there's a lot of noise about these "studies" from the propagandists and politicians and crusaders on both sides. If these "studies" were reliable, they would be presented by the mainline sources and not only the propagandists.
