A Fifteen Dollar an Hour Minimum Wage, Pros and Cons

A New York Times piece crossed my desk a couple of

days ago and it seems to see as much down as up-side. NYT writers Jim

Tankersley and Emily Cochrane refer to a new report by the Congressional Budget

Office, so I guess that says it all—people with no skin in the game making

judgements.

It’s bullshit, but we’ll take it a

step at a time.

What happens if there’s a $15 minimum wage? The report

projects:

• Higher pay for at least 17

million workers in the U.S., and maybe as many 27 million. Maybe? That’s a

pretty wide spread, 8% of the entire population.

• As many as 1.3 million people

lifted out of poverty. What’s goin’ on with the numbers here? 47 million

Americans live below the poverty line. You can pretty well be that all

of them are making less, way less, than $15 an hour.

• But an estimated 1.3 million

Americans could be put out of work, and that figure could be as high as 3.7

million. Out of work? Explain that to me.

I remember that not all that long

ago the experts told us that if gas hit $1.50 a ga…