Tag Archives: Washington

Study In The Minimum Wage: SeaTac

Minimum Wage.1

Minimum Wage

As I mentioned recently, the conversation coming in 2014 politics is going to be the growing, or perceived notion of said growth, of the disparity in income:

You can already sense that the battle line are being formed for the 2014 debate in the lead-up to the November elections.  For better or for worse, the republicans are going to talk about Obamacare and its roll-out while the democrats are going to shift to the middle class, wage stagnation and, perhaps, immigration.

Ignoring the political reasons for now, let’s focus on what I think will be the democrat’s main strategy to gain the upper hand: Income Inequality.

There is little doubt that Obama an the democrats wanna pivot from the absolute devastation that is Obamacare.

And part of that conversation is going to be an old Tar Heel Red favorite – the minimum wage.

What Is The Impact Of The Minimum Wage

To be sure, the folks in support of the minimum wage have the most noble intentions; they wanna be able to provide relief for vulnerable workers.  But the real impact is the opposite:

Teen-Excess-Unemployment.2013.01

That’s teen.

Here is black excess unemployment:

Black-Excess-Unemployment.2013.01

And finally under-educated:

Undereducated-Excess-Unemployment.2013.01

This is the devastating impact of the minimum wage.

SeaTac Experiment

The debate has largely been theoretical; does the minimum wage impact employment or not?

Well, we may have a real world experiment  on  our hands:

 On Jan. 1, an estimated 1,600 hotel and transportation workers in SeaTac, Wash., will see their pay jump to $15 an hour, a 60 percent increase from the state’s $9.32 minimum wage.

This is important for two reasons:

1.  The increase is substantial – 60% is nothing to scoff at.

2.  The increase is not being phased in – employers are being subject to the rise in wages without the benefit of inflation dimming the impact.

Some of the fall out?

While many workers look forward to the higher pay, employers are looking for ways to absorb the big increase in labor costs. Some plan on eliminating jobs.

“We’re going to be looking at making some serious cuts,” said Cedarbrook Lodge General Manager Scott Ostrander. “We’re going to be looking at reducing employee hours, reducing benefits and eliminating some positions.”

But not every employer is being so ambitious. One has told a trade group it is going to close one of its two restaurants, eliminating 200 jobs.

The plan has also caused Han Kim — who runs Hotel Concepts, a company that owns and manages 11 hotels in Washington state — to shelve plans to build a hotel in SeaTac. The company already has three hotels in SeaTac, and Kim and a business partner were looking to build a fourth on land they own.

Does this deter the supporters?  Not at all:

“There may be a few jobs lost here and there, but the fact is, if we don’t fight for this, then the race to the bottom will continue,” Sawant said.

Fascinating.  Glad I’m not an entry level worker in Seattle!

Minimum Wage

Got a bunch of baseball cards in the attic?  Beanie Babies maybe?  How about some old CD’s?

Now, say ya wanna sell ’em.  Everyone knows that if you start the bidding to high you won’t get any takers.  Bring the price down and you can sell almost anything.

Simple:  More expensive, fewer people buy.  Less expensive, more people buy.

Which makes this so mind boggling:

Eight states will ring in the New Year with a higher minimum wage, under state laws that require wage floors to keep apace with inflation. San Francisco, one of the few cities that sets its own minimum wage above the federal level, is also raising wages for the lowest-paid workers in the new year. It will become the first big city in the country to require companies to pay their workers more than $10 an hour.

The minimum wage increases in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington will be 28 cents to 37 cents an hour, according to the National Employment Law Project. That is an extra $582 to $770 a year for a full-time minimum wage worker, and resets these states’ minimum wages to $7.64 to $9.04 an hour.

At that higher end is Washington State, which will become the first state in the nation to set its minimum wage above $9 an hour. For reference, the federal wage floor for most workers is $7.25 an hour.

I get it, I do.  No one’s time should be worth so little.  However, by forcing businesses to pay more for labor than they otherwise should, they will buy less labor.  And lastly, should an individual be free to bargain for the value of his time?

 

Cleaning Out My Coyote

If you don’t read Coyote Blog you should.

This latest failure of Green Jobs in Seattle is just a hint of the gems you get from the coyote:

Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.

McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.

But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers. Some people wonder if the original goals are now achievable.

Yeah.  Let’s use guns to remove private property from productive people to give to the government so they can spend $20 million on 14 jobs.

Senate Race 2010: III

I have covered the open seats.  Those currently held by Democrats and those held by Republicans.  So far, I have it D-57 and R-43.

Continue reading