What Minimum-Wage Foes Got Wrong About Seattle
An initial study said the increase to $15 would cost workers jobs and hours. That didn’t happen.
Bloomberg, October 24, 2018
The most dire warnings about minimum wage increases have proven to be wrong. So much so that in a new paper, the authors behind the primary study predicting a negative impact have recanted their prior conclusions. However, authors still seem perplexed as to why they went awry in the first place.
Fortunately, we are here to assist them better understand the errors of their ways.
Alas, if only the critics has done their homework first, instead of just issuing scare tactics. As we warned then, this was a forecast borne of ideology unencumbered by the long history of data and academic study demonstrating the contrary.
Much of the hand-wringing was based upon that deeply flawed University of Washington study. As we discussed in 2017, excluding “48 percent of Seattle’s low-paid workforce” made the entire UofW study worthless.
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I originally published this at Bloomberg, October 24, 2018. All of my Bloomberg columns can be found here and here.
