The video of my debate on the $15 minimum wage, with Professor Alan Manning of the London School of Economics, is out.
You’ll find that it starts abruptly. I had asked them to record it and then, after the introductions, reminded them. They had forgotten to record. That’s why it starts where it starts.
1:30 to about 12:30: Professor Manning makes his case for the $15 minimum wage.
12:40 to 23:40: I make my case against.
24:00: Professor Amanda Starc leads with a number of questions and Alan and I go back and forth.
(About the 27:00 point is where I make the point I made in an earlier post about competition among employers.)
46:00: Student Q&As.
56:20: Poll.
Update: I forgot to mention that Jonathan Meer, an economics professor at Texas A&M University, provided me with the data on black men and on the median wage of workers in rural New York state. Thanks, Jonathan.
READER COMMENTS
Tyler Wells
May 28 2021 at 10:09am
That was fun. It strains credulity to believe that simply paying someone more would make them more productive. It seems more likely that we are getting a substitution effect, or that more productive workers are now taking those jobs.
I also thought that the evidence from Puerto Rico and American Samoa was very damning for people who expect that a high minimum wage won’t keep people out of work. Also, Puerto Rica has more violent crime than Mexico, which I believe that many people believe is highly correlated, if not caused, by male joblessness. Profession Manning had only UK examples that, it appears, Professor Henderson is unfamiliar with. The examples of Puerto Rico and American Samoa would be American counter-examples, if I understand correctly.
David Henderson
May 28 2021 at 5:42pm
Your point about Puerto Rico is well taken. When I found out more about it the day before the debate, I had already used a lot of energy in putting my notes together and didn’t have time to do an adequate job of reading the Puerto Rico literature.
Floccina
May 28 2021 at 11:23am
Wow can it be true that only 1/3rd of black males 18-30yo and not in school and not in prison work full time!
1. I’ve been listening to Jennifer Doleac on crime and employment seems to reduce crime but income seems not to.
2. I do not trust the statics on US blacks prior to the 1970’s
So what was the black employment rate and 1968 and the black crime rate in 1968? Did the black crime rate rise and was it due to the employment rate.
BTW I think a higher minimum wage would help me, in that service will improve as the worst workers are dropped and I can easily afford higher prices.
One argument on the other side that I’ve read is that if you pay the low wage workers at all arenas, endorsed clothing etc. LeBron James becomes less productive and so gets paid less.
Andrew_FL
May 28 2021 at 2:59pm
Why wouldn’t you trust the pre 1970s statistics?
Floccina
May 28 2021 at 3:50pm
There was still a lot of residual racism black then and there was a lot of separation and they tended to ignore blacks back then.
Lawrence
May 28 2021 at 12:37pm
That was an excellent exchange of ideas!
David Henderson
May 28 2021 at 5:44pm
Thank you, Lawrence.
Yes, I always appreciate civility. I wanted to jump in a few more times to challenge Alan on some of his statements, but I decided in advance that I wouldn’t do too much of that because it could be inconsistent with the strategy that Amanda wanted to carry out. And she, after all, was put in the position of running the thing. Which I thought she did well.
Jim
May 30 2021 at 11:02pm
I don’t think the productivity argument (e.g. workers are 3x more productive so the minimum wage should be increased 3x) works. When technological advances cause a worker to be more productive, it isn’t accurate to say, as Manning does, that the worker is more productive. Rather, it’s that the overall process, of which the worker is a part, is more productive. Consider this hypothetical example:
1960 – a worker makes 10 widgets an hour by manually combining parts
2021 – a worker makes 100 widgets an hour by pushing buttons on a machine, which combines the parts
The fact that the process is 10x more productive doesn’t mean the worker is worth 10x the money. If it is just as easy to find someone who can operate the machine as it would be to find someone to do it manually, then the compensation should remain the same.
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