Yes, and some people like ice cream over cheesecake. Thank goodness we live in a relatively free society where people are left to make such choices themselves.

More people have ready access to more and more things which used to be considered "luxury" items than ever before in human history. I think that this is nothing but a positive sign.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

650 "economists" that believe there should be a minimum wage increase isn't very much. Do you know how many "economists" there are in the world? How about just in my graduating class?

If 650 is all you could find... you need to seriously rethink the strength of your position.

Any economist who paid attention during college could map a regression analysis showing a strong positive correlation between unemployment and minimum wage, or price levels with minimum wage. They probably also paid attention in macro theory when they were told that the demand for labor versus the supply of labor functions almost exactly like the supply and demand of any good.

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Weiner.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't that because of technological gains. Not higher incomes. I know technology is included as part of GDP but just because good X becomes cheaper doesn't always mean everyone is better off in reality. Maybe in theory..

Holy thread resurection, batman.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Income is a meaningless number on its own. Income is useless except to BUY things with (either immediately, or to save and invest for greater income for FUTURE consumption).

More and more people, even of lower incomes, are consistently having more and more access to material goods and services that were simply out of their reach in the past. And yes, that is due to technology, but if technology brings the relative price of things down substantially, that is the same effect as having people's income increase in terms of how much they are able to consumer.

It is the primary reason that the liberal bs about "stagnate" or "falling" wages for the last 30 years is so utterly ignorant and misleading. Their is a tremendous disconnect between how we measure inflation in the short- to -medium-term and the reality of the cost of goods and services in the long run.

Take as I said, Oil, in inflation adjusted terms it is just below its all-time high, yet as a percentage of consumer disposable income it is still far below where it was 25-30 years ago.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

While one baring any industry specific information one my aptly say that business owners understand the intricacies of their business better then an economist, it is ignorant to believe that a business owner would know more then an economist about the general macroeconomic effect of an increase in the minimum wage. The business owner just doesn't have the toolset to be able to appropriately analyze the effects of the taxes. Even assuming they have the prerequisite knowledge one would expect that they would exaggerate the effects of such policies for self-interested reasons. Asking such questions is much the same as asking a sales rep if their product is the best. You just cannot expect to get the right answer unless, of course, you consider your predisposed belief to be the “right answer”.

Indeed. Did not even look at the date of the original post on this one.

Perhaps you can provide a reference for this. The rate seem a tad high given that there is global competition in many sectors.

Given that the peak you referred to did not come as part of natural market activities this statement is somewhat trivial. In real terms we are seeing the price of gas trend upward. You can blame it on refining capacity and environmental regulation but these have not been substantially changed in the past 20 years in spite of the fact that we have seen some of the lower prices in the early and mid 90's. In fact given the current relitive scarcity of oil the regulations play less of a role in the prices then they did in the past.

Some people realize that these are not mutually exclusive choices.

I think that they would fall victim to the Lucas Critique. Even if it didn't unless they are masters students or PhDs they would likely run into problems properly interpreting the results. Also labor is not like any other good in particular investment decisions are made that affect the level human capital developed. Search costs and effort also play a role. Finally a strong correlation between the minimum wage and employment would not be sufficient to conclude that increasing the minimum wage is a bad idea. Much needs to be considered about the nature of the unemployment in the context of the policy goals.

I think you should look to the Nobel Laureates who endorsed it. It says much more then the 650.

Of course, there are always the economists who have a different take. Ludwig von Mises Institute Home

And while nearly every other economic school of thought has been busted, Keynesian, marxism, for example, the Austrian school continues to shine.

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"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

First the note that the article did not say that a minimum wage would increase growth. Even though it is at least a theoretical possibility that some minimum wage would increase economic output it would be difficult to find many economists who would suggest that raising the minimum wage to such a level would increase economic growth.

The Austrian school has had at best a few Nobel Laureates and consists of only a small portion of economists who agree with it. Despite being such an inferior school of thought Keynesian and New Keynesian methods are being taught in basic macroeconomic classes while Austrian economics is virtually nonexistent even in reference at most post secondary institutions. I hardly consider that shining.