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birdwatcherTabarrok -- California’s $20 fast food minimum wage raised wages in the sector by roughly 8 percent relative to the rest of the country but employment fell by 2.3 to 3.9 percent (depending on specification, median ~3.2%), translating to about 18,000 lost jobs.
One thing we have learned about the minimum wage in recent years is that the pass-through effect is large and more of the employment decline is driven by pass through than by labor-capital substitution. In other words, prices rose, quantity demanded fell, and that’s what killed the jobs—not robots replacing workers. Not today, anyway.
In terms of welfare, the bulk of employed workers get an 8% wage increase, a small minority get disemployed. The big transfer was from consumers to workers. California has roughly 39 million residents, all of whom face 3.3–3.6% higher FAFH (food away from home) prices. The transfer is likely regressive — lower-income households spend a larger budget share on fast food specifically. So the policy effectively taxes low-income consumers generally to raise wages for a subset of low-income workers, while eliminating jobs for another subset.
Итого, если разогнать академическую экономику, мы не узнаем в будущем того, что и так известно более ста лет и написано в учебниках.
One thing we have learned about the minimum wage in recent years is that the pass-through effect is large and more of the employment decline is driven by pass through than by labor-capital substitution. In other words, prices rose, quantity demanded fell, and that’s what killed the jobs—not robots replacing workers. Not today, anyway.
In terms of welfare, the bulk of employed workers get an 8% wage increase, a small minority get disemployed. The big transfer was from consumers to workers. California has roughly 39 million residents, all of whom face 3.3–3.6% higher FAFH (food away from home) prices. The transfer is likely regressive — lower-income households spend a larger budget share on fast food specifically. So the policy effectively taxes low-income consumers generally to raise wages for a subset of low-income workers, while eliminating jobs for another subset.
Итого, если разогнать академическую экономику, мы не узнаем в будущем того, что и так известно более ста лет и написано в учебниках.