The Unit of Caring

barrydeutsch:

theunitofcaring:

There’s a thread of discussion in progressive circles that’s like ‘okay, but even if the minimum wage harms low-income workers, it’s really politically popular and the one place where the left has gotten meaningful policy victories lately!’

And it’s like, just…no.

Policy victories at doing something that harms low-income workers are not policy victories!!!!! If it has turned out that $13-$15/hour minimum wages harm low-income workers*, then the progressive policy victory is to stop those!!!

Something is not a progressive policy victory because progressives pushed for it and won, it is a progressive policy victory if it makes the world better for the people we’re supposedly working for.

This really seems like a strawman. No one in the article you linked is quoted stating that position, or anything like it.

Anecdotally, I haven’t seen any such thing said “in progressive circles” - and I’m in those circles and attentive to discussions of the minimum wage.

To be fair, the article-writer theorizes that pragmatic politics might push Democrats into supporting a $15 an hour minimum wage even if it is shown to be harmful. But that’s just speculation, and framing that as if progressives are saying “even if the minimum wage harms low-income workers, it’s really politically popular…” is extremely unfair.

Finally, you say “the available evidence supports the conclusion that [the minimum wage] does harm low-income workers.” In fact, most empirical studies have found that the minimum wage does not increase unemployment. There is no evidence-based reason to think that raising the minimum wage to (say) $10 or $11 would be harmful.Of course, our existing evidence might not apply to a $13 or $15 minimum wage. If it becomes clear that a $15 minimum wage is harmful to low-income workers, then I’d be against a $15 minimum wage. But a single study isn’t enough to draw that conclusion.If the Democrats were on the verge of passing a $15/hr national minimum wage, I’d be against that, on the grounds of being cautious. But the Democrats are completely out of power; there is no danger of them passing anything. Even if they were in power, less than half the Democrats in the Senate supported Bernie Sanders’ $15/hr minimum wage bill.

The article asks “Assuming that there’s at least a possibility the Washington study will turn out to be correct that a $15 minimum wage is too high even in a city like Seattle, what’s the right thing for progressives to do?”

and concludes “It also doesn’t make much sense to try to squelch the only successful progressive economic movement of the past several years when you are trying to rally progressives to help oust from power a Republican Party pushing policy plans that would be far, far worse for the working class than a somewhat-too-high wage floor.”

I think “‘okay, but even if the minimum wage harms low-income workers, it’s really politically popular and the one place where the left has gotten meaningful policy victories lately!” is a totally reasonable summary of those paragraphs. I’m kind of confused that you’d call it a strawman. I’m glad the community you’re in has better values and priorities.

Many cities are passing $15/hour minimum wages; Minneapolis did it just last week, days after the Seattle study came out. This is absolutely a tactical decision we have to make right now; we can’t hide behind ‘well, we’re not in power nationally’ while $15/hour ordinances are happening locally all over the country. 

• 7 July 2017
• 82