Notice that the places with state minimum wages actually have the lowest real minimum wage. In a sense it's no wonder that you hear so many pleas for living wages and high minimum wages from these places and especially in certain localities: a dollar doesn't go as far there. In that sense we should probably be a little more circumspect before criticizing those super-high living wage campaigns. On the other hand, I think this shows that the federal minimum wage is perhaps too high and that maybe state variation is the way to go.
You imply that the causality goes from the low real minimum wage (i.e. cost of living) to the institutionalization of nominal minimal wages, but it just might be the other way around: the imposition of state minimal wage may drive down the cost of the living. Dunno how it really is.
ReplyDeleteThere is also interaction with bad building regulations. In Silicon Valley, where I'm at right now, many cities don't allow building over a certain height and discourage the construction of apartment buildings (thank you NIMBYs). These sorts of regulations help property owners who bought before the regulation was implemented, and worse, are priced into the properties.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about state variation in costs could go even further into intra-state variation in costs as many of these states are themselves very diverse. Is the NY state number really driven by high housing costs in NYC? It clearly is. Is NY minimum wage too high for Binghamton, Rochester or Utica? Probably, and, therefore, causing unemployment there.
ReplyDeleteThose returns to urbanization? This is one of them and encourages it.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe we should incentivizing migration out of high cost states.
ReplyDelete+10
DeleteI would think that's what high costs do, right? Seems kind of weird to make it a policy to get people out of a state they're living in.
DeleteWhat does "afford a two bedroom apartment" mean?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that if it costs more than 90 hours' wages per month, not per week, you can't afford it.
I followed the links. I do not like this kind of meaningless statistics.
Usually they take some kind of standard like a third of your income. If you re-scaled it some other way (two bed room apartment rent divided by the minimum wage) you ought to get exactly the same map.
DeleteI think the phrasing is more at fault here than the statistics.
You can't separate the two. Without the language, the stats are just numbers.
ReplyDeleteWhat we have are somebody's value judgements with numbers.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.