| After Montana voters passed the minimum wage hike last November, a lot of right-wingers were apoplectic. Unemployment would reach heights not known since Herbert Hoover was President! We'd have Carter-era inflation! Our economy would stagnate! All the first borns would die!
Turns out none of that is the case. What is our unemployment? Lowest in the nation (and very low, even by non-relative standards). Job growth? It's high. Inflation? Doesn't seem to be a huge local problem (Oh, the right-wingers cry, my $4.00 burritos cost $.50 more now, it is oh so horrible).
In other words, raising the minimum wage worked. Ask low wage workers, they know (check the comments on that post, by the way, as the author does a pretty good job of debunking the inflation myth for small minimum wage increases).
Similar good news comes from Oregon, where the Oregon Center for Public Policy has crunched the numbers once more with their in-state minimum wage rising to just shy of $8.00. During the time that they've had the minimum wage in place, Oregon's payroll growth has been huge. In addition, Portland area restaurant prices have actually grown more slowly than around the country.
I'm also reminded of this New York Times article comparing border towns in high-wage progressive Washington State and low-wage regressive Idaho. The result? The Washington town flourishes.
The reactionaries are wrong. Minimum wages actually compensate for some standard market problems, including the fact that many business owners apparently undercompensate low-skilled labor (given the elitism of the anti-minimum wage crowd, this doesn't surprise me). |
