CBO says minimum wage bill would cost jobs, boost income
February 18, 2014, 01:41 pm
By Erik Wasson
President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost 500,000 jobs in 2016, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
The report also found raising the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 would significantly boost income for about 16.5 million workers, raising their income by $31 billion and potentially pulling nearly 1 million people out of poverty.
The White House and economic groups on the left immediately pushed back at the CBO’s conclusions on jobs, arguing its findings ran counter to other research.
“CBO’s estimates of the impact of raising the minimum wage on employment does not reflect the current consensus view of economists,” Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman wrote in a blog post. “The bulk of academic studies, have concluded that the effects on employment of minimum wage increases in the range now under consideration are likely to be small to nonexistent.
Furman also highlighted the positive findings of the CBO report, starting with the estimate that 16.5 million workers would see their incomes boosted.
He told reporters that the CBO report is an overall a positive for raising the minimum wage and would not diminish the idea’s popularity.
Read more: https://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/economy/198605-cbo-minimum-wage#ixzz2tiHUbJBC
If you read the article, you’ll see that 500,000 jobs gone is the lower end of the CBO estimate. The upper end is 1million.
How can Jason Furman, who claims to be an economist, be anything other than a government shill? The supply and demand theory that is the basis of economics says that when you raise the price of something by 40%, demand for it will surely fall. Surely, he knows better.
The ones who will be hurt the most by this are minority youth trying to enter the workforce. Look for inner city youth unemployment to rise significantly and hundreds of thousands more to land on the dole. Maybe that’s the goal here.
If you can’t pull better than a minimum wage job you’re the one whose going to lose here. Big government cannot dictate what businesses will do. So they force businesses to pay more. What happens? Employees are dismissed and those remaining are required to do more.
Most businesses that can only pay minimum wage are marginal at best. This could cause a few to close their doors. Thanks Barry!