It never ceases to amaze me how outraged the richest people get when you suggest paying poor people a little bit more.
Act’s new leader Jamie Whyte said it was "hard to think of a crueler policy" for people most in need of work than increasing the minimum wage.
Say what? Cruel to pay people on the lowest incomes 50c more? Surely he can think of something crueler than that, like not having a minimum wage at all.
In fact back in 1994 two economists (David Card and Alan Krueger) were awarded the so-called “junior Nobel prize” from the American Economics Association for proving employment actually increased when the minimum wage went up.
Their research showed that jobs aren’t like tomatoes, where if the price goes up, people purchase less of them. The opposite is true. They compared fast-food restaurants (leading employers of low wage earners and enforcers of the minimum wage) in New Jersey where the minimum wage had gone up, with the same restaurants in neighbouring Pennsylvania where they hadn’t. Card and Krueger showed that employment increased in New Jersey because there was less churn in the labour market; people stayed in higher paying jobs; job security increased, which was good for staff and good for the employers who saved on the costs of training new staff. (Their study is updated here.)
Here are further sources showing that changes in the minimum wage have little effect on employment.
Even when some jobs are lost, it doesn’t necessarily lead to higher unemployment. An employer may decide to invest in the business rather than pay the higher minimum salary to the person who, for example, screws on the bottle tops. The bottle-top-screwer may get replaced with a new high tech bottle-screwing machine.
But the productivity of that company increases; ultimately they take on more staff, and the person operating the new machine gets paid more to do a skilled job. (That’s still hard for the minimum wage worker who loses his or her job, so it demonstrates why the mantra for those who care about working people should ‘protect the worker, not the job.’)
If you look at the whole economy, a higher minimum wage is good for growth. It means more money in the hands of the working poor, which is more money to spend, pay off debt, and buy stuff — all of which boosts the economy and demand, even just a little. People on low incomes tend to spend their incomes on basic goods and services like food and repairs. Those with more money already buy the necessities, so greater spending power in the hands of the lowest paid is more efficient.
To all those companies complaining today that paying someone just $14.25 an hour - 50c more than they were paying - could ‘put them out of business’, if you can’t pay people the absolute minimum they need to survive, then you don’t have a profitable business. But lets not forget the supermarkets that are paying minimum wage and then - well Shane Jones has pointed out what they’ve been up to.
It is an iron principle of capitalism that employees get paid less than the value their labour produces, and this is especially true at the low-wage end of the labour market where competition for jobs is at its highest.
In the long term savings to society result from a reduced burden on the welfare state, less reason for the tax payer to subsidise low wages with tax credits, and a growing economy.
Wages have stagnated for most New Zealanders. There is little that more clearly highlights right wing hypocrisy about the economy than to hear them arguing against higher wages, as they always do.
But at least have the intellectual rigour to admit that, if you’re not in favour of a higher regulated minimum wage, then you should be in favour of increasing the workplace muscle of working people so they can negotiate their own higher wages.