For low-skilled workers, life is hard. Minimum-wage hikes make it harder

ON CARPE DIEM, his lively economics blog, University of Michigan professor Mark J. Perry likes to use Venn diagrams to needle those who “do not have a strong need for intellectual consistency.” On topics ranging from drug prices to campus diversity to imports from China, he shows how common it is for people to simultaneously hold contradictory positions, oblivious to the fact that they are logically irreconcilable.

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Perry’s latest diagram is a riff on two ballot initiatives facing voters in Washington state this Election Day. Initiative 732 would impose a statewide tax of $15 per ton on carbon dioxide in order to reduce greenhouse emissions. Initiative 1433 would increase the state’s minimum wage to $13.50 an hour in order to guarantee a “living wage” to all low-skilled workers.

As Perry writes, hundreds of thousands of progressive Washington voters will doubtless support both ballot questions, oblivious to the contradiction in doing so. After all, if you recognize that artificially hiking the cost of using fossil fuels will give emitters an incentive to shrink their carbon footprint, then you should recognize that artificially hiking the cost of hiring low-skilled workers will give employers an incentive to shrink their workforce. Conversely, if you don’t believe a higher minimum wage will reduce employment opportunities for unskilled laborers, then you shouldn’t expect higher taxes on carbon to reduce energy use that generates CO2. He who says “A” must say “B” — unless he has no need for intellectual consistency.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/10/29/for-low-skilled-workers-life-hard-minimum-wage-hikes-make-harder/a5kOAZIfI8Pzncfki2Pu9J/story.html

For low-skilled workers, life is hard. Minimum-wage hikes make it harder

For low-skilled workers, life is hard. Minimum-wage hikes make it harder

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