I think this goes well in this section but tell me if it dosent.

American free enterprise is under attack. Plain and simple: people who beleive in business freedom and free enterprise and stopping government need to get on board. go here:
http://www.freeenterprise.com/

it's a new strategy for creating jobs. id like to ad some to what theyre saying there. we could create even more jobs and make free enterprise BOOM by

1. getting rid of minimum wage, then you can hire more people because you arent FORCED as a businessman to pay them more by the government
2. end taxes on business
3. teach free market economics and not depression type economics that say you have to spend spend spend

GET ON BOARD NOW and help us, the new American Free Enterprises. I know i'm on the way. are you?

you can also make a cool video for the site. lets counter the obama agenda with our voices
http://www.freeenterprise.com/take-action/video-contest/

most importantly, you have to be POLITICALLY ACTIVE FOR FREE ENTERPRISE. GO to town halls to promote these ideas and promote people who support a real free market, no more taxes, private business for things that the government runs (like school, roads, mail), and no regulation. AND VOTE for people who support these. this is what everyone should hope for.

2/3/2010 12:54:08 PM

Quote :

"but tell me if it dosent."

OK. It doesn't.

2/3/2010 1:02:04 PM

Quote :

"1. getting rid of minimum wage, then you can hire more people because you arent FORCED as a businessman to pay them more by the government 2. end taxes on business 3. teach free market economics and not depression type economics that say you have to spend spend spend"

I'm down.

2/3/2010 1:28:27 PM

so our economic recovery should be based on giving teens $3 an hour jobs so they can buy CDs? I mean, essentially that's who would benefit the most from min. wage abolition since you can't exactly live off min. wage as an independent adult.

2/3/2010 1:30:01 PM

People still buy CDs?

Minimum wage doesn't help anyone. It just bars people that can't provide labor at the minimum wage rate from legal employment. Just look to Samoa for an example of minimum wage gone wrong. The tuna factory workers there made 3 bucks an hour, but in Samoa, that's a pretty good wage. Unfortunately for them, the idiots in Washington wanted to make sure that no one made below 7 bucks and change/hour, and the tuna factories packed up and moved to Georgia.

2/3/2010 1:36:55 PM

oh come the fuck on. the living wage is going to be lower in poor places, yes. they shouldnt apply the same one across the board.

Quote :

"Minimum wage doesn't help anyone."

Well, maybe people living at home, but independent persons need a higher living wage.

yes, i am aware of the classical explanation against this. i'm also aware that economists who've studied beyond 18th century theory and know about how complicated economic behavior is disagree, and the last min wage increase had the backing of many.

what i want to know is what praxeology or whatever the fuck that stuff libertarians believe in has to say. or axioms. tell me about economic axioms.

[Edited on February 3, 2010 at 1:46 PM. Reason : .]

2/3/2010 1:42:52 PM

Is anyone going to pay an unskilled worker 7.25 an hour when they could move their factory to another country and get equally skilled workers for 2 dollars an hour? I understand that you want everyone to have a certain standard of living, but price controls are not the way to do it. When you force a company to pay an employee twice as much as their worth, they're going to hire fewer people, or outsource the job.

2/3/2010 1:46:51 PM

there are significant costs incurred with moving a business overseas and managing the myriad of issues relating to quality control and suppliers and distribution and so forth, much more than just a simple multiplication of labor costs and time.

but it's not productive to discuss business economics or manufacturing logistics with simpletons who try and reduce everything to a plank in their favorite political party platform.









[Edited on February 3, 2010 at 1:54 PM. Reason : ]

2/3/2010 1:52:22 PM

Quote :

"you can't exactly live off min. wage as an independent adult"

Why are people entitled to a "living wage"? That's bullshit and you know it. Why should every single job that exists pay well enough for a person to live on? That makes no fucking sense what-so-ever. You goddamn liberals and your authoritarian attempts at egalitarianism make me laugh.
You truly are fools.

2/3/2010 1:56:16 PM

This thread is brought to you by HOOPS MALONE!

2/3/2010 1:57:42 PM

^^ serious troll is serious

2/3/2010 2:02:51 PM

While we are at it we should get rid of child labor laws, the market will decide if kids should be in school or on the factory floor. OSHA can go too, because it costs money to keep workers safe. We also need to get rid of disability laws and laws protecting maternity leave because the crippled and pregnant are just slowing businesses down, efficiency is key.







Brought to you by: US Chamber of Commerce

2/3/2010 2:12:37 PM

Indentured servitude would eliminate the costs associated with turnover.

2/3/2010 2:34:17 PM

Quote :

"Why are people entitled to a "living wage"? That's bullshit and you know it. Why should every single job that exists pay well enough for a person to live on? That makes no fucking sense what-so-ever. You goddamn liberals and your authoritarian attempts at egalitarianism make me laugh. You truly are fools."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Quote :

"I understand that you want everyone to have a certain standard of living, but price controls are not the way to do it. When you force a company to pay an employee twice as much as their worth"

And their worth is less than what it takes to live.

What use is a job if it you can't even eke out a living with it, unless you are living with your parents? What do you propose someone making less than a living wage do for housing and food, live on the fucking doorstep of a church? Pray to the market god that kindly libertarians (the 2% that aren't objectivists) adopt them?

Oh, that's right, the price of things will go down when we kill evil fiat currency. Meanwhile we'll go back to the late 19th century when poor farmers (or poor entrepreneurs, whatever) had no access to credit due to the tight supply.

At least aaronburro would give an honest answer to this: that he thinks people whose labor isn't worth living wages need to die.

[Edited on February 3, 2010 at 3:33 PM. Reason : .]

2/3/2010 3:31:29 PM

That's the problem with these people. They think the "Invisible Hand of the Market" is God's ... Jeez, it's just an economic theory, not a religion.

2/3/2010 3:48:35 PM

Quote :

""1. getting rid of minimum wage, then you can hire more people because you arent FORCED as a businessman to pay them more by the government 2. end taxes on business 3. teach free market economics and not depression type economics that say you have to spend spend spend""

sounds good to me

2/3/2010 3:51:25 PM

Quote :

"This thread is brought to you by HOOPS MALONE!"

2/3/2010 4:04:05 PM

abolish lawsuits
abolish lawyers
(this is what my family believes should be done, really)

2/3/2010 4:17:14 PM

i have big plans and i should be allowed to pursue them without someone taxing the life out of them. thats the american dream. where is the law that says the goverment can take 40 percent of what i make? its not defined by the true laws in the constitution.

we need to teach about heroes like peter and his dad irvin shiff and SB Fuller

america, return to free enterprise and reject taxes!

2/3/2010 4:22:04 PM

and then the american people...we start jumping and then along with it go "ooooooooooooo" and get louder like "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH" and then switch to "PACK! PACK! PACK! PACK! OOOOOO PACK! PACK! PACK! PACK! OOOOOOOOOOOO! POWER PACK! POWER PACK! BACK THE PACK!" and then play a loud rockin rap song or somethin. i think it would get things crazy.

2/3/2010 4:25:38 PM

Quote :

"And their worth is less than what it takes to live."

The value of their labor is less than what it takes to live, according to you, and that's a problem. I agree that it's a problem. Your solution is completely off, though. Your thought process is, "Uhh, these people aren't making enough money. Therefore, we should force companies to pay them a certain amount." And then you foolishly believe that there will be no consequences for that law.

Do you really believe that an employer will hire as many workers at $7.25 an hour as $3.00 an hour? If you believe that, then how about 8 an hour? 10 an hour? 20 an hour? 1000 an hour? Then everyone would be rich, right? No, dude. Everyone would be unemployed.

Quote :

"What use is a job if it you can't even eke out a living with it, unless you are living with your parents? What do you propose someone making less than a living wage do for housing and food, live on the fucking doorstep of a church? Pray to the market god that kindly libertarians (the 2% that aren't objectivists) adopt them?"

I don't see a problem with living with your parents. Maybe if we didn't have ridiculous child labor laws, early teenagers could work and build savings, which would allow them to live out of high school, even if they were only making 50 bucks a day, and they'd be able to get experience and gradually work up to a living wage. If taxes, regulations, and inflationary policies weren't driving up the price of everything, 4 bucks an hour would be a living wage. Maybe if people had some extra money, because the government wasn't looting 40% of their wages, they'd be able to afford to give more to charity.

Quote :

"Oh, that's right, the price of things will go down when we kill evil fiat currency. Meanwhile we'll go back to the late 19th century when poor farmers (or poor entrepreneurs, whatever) had no access to credit due to the tight supply."

It's not even fiat currency that's the problem, it's the fact that our money isn't backed by anything. If we had an asset-based currency, the purchasing power of the currency would go up, there's no doubt about it.

Quote :

"That's the problem with these people. They think the "Invisible Hand of the Market" is God's ... Jeez, it's just an economic theory, not a religion."

If you bothered to read and learn about Austrian economics, you'd realize it doesn't require you to believe anything on faith. It takes a lot more faith to believe that the Keynesians are right, and that you can cure a depression caused by excessive debt by going further into debt. It has never worked before, and it's not going to work now. The problem with "you people" is that you think the government is God, that it has some special knowledge that allows it to determine prices, that every law on the books is beneficial and not harmful, and that laws never have consequences.

2/3/2010 4:32:04 PM

How about this: instead of minimum wage we have....maximum wage?

2/3/2010 4:35:34 PM

better yet, we just pay everyone the same "liveable" wage. From non workers to surgeons the same wage. haha

2/3/2010 4:39:11 PM

Quote :

"Why are people entitled to a "living wage"? That's bullshit and you know it. Why should every single job that exists pay well enough for a person to live on? That makes no fucking sense what-so-ever. You goddamn liberals and your authoritarian attempts at egalitarianism make me laugh. You truly are fools."

Because if you're employing someone for 40 hours per week but not paying them enough to exist, then you aren't paying the true cost of having a full time employee.

This is the same reason Ford is entitled to set prices above cost.

2/3/2010 4:40:08 PM

I'd like to know how this living wage is determined. Apparently, Congress knows what the cost of living is in every part of the United States, so I'd like to know what equation they used to come up with that number.

2/3/2010 4:40:48 PM

How about we just keep shit the way it is? If your business sucks it's b/c your idea sucks.

2/3/2010 4:42:00 PM

The real unemployment rate is almost 20% at this point. The states are going bankrupt because of unemployment benefits. Our current system is not sustainable, so we should probably figure out where we went wrong.

2/3/2010 4:43:20 PM

Quote :

"Because if you're employing someone for 40 hours per week but not paying them enough to exist"

Boone, isnt that subjective though. If someone is willing to work for X price, then pay them that. If they are worth more, they will either get more or find a better job. If a company is constantly paying low wages for a crappy work environment, then the quality of thier applicants will be low. Thus thier business may fail. Which is fine.

2/3/2010 4:44:59 PM

Quote :

"While we are at it we should get rid of child labor laws, the market will decide if kids should be in school or on the factory floor. OSHA can go too, because it costs money to keep workers safe. We also need to get rid of disability laws and laws protecting maternity leave because the crippled and pregnant are just slowing businesses down, efficiency is key."

Sounds good to me. Equality before the law is a public good and we will all benefit. Do check the history, the Americans with Disabilities Act dramatically reduced employment among the disabled, because now they were walking talking lawsuits waiting to happen. The law does not yet force employers to hire them, only second guesses getting rid of them. How could this and every other outcome possibly be unforseen?

You understand that when people say "the market" they really mean "the people", right? The market is an intangible concept, I have never met or had a conversation with the market. The people making the decision would be parents and their children. And if my family was poor then I would hope society would be enlightened enough to let me as a child work to support my family, or would you rather us be starving/homeless so you don't have to live with the thought of an underage worker?

Quote :

"What use is a job if it you can't even eke out a living with it, unless you are living with your parents? What do you propose someone making less than a living wage do for housing and food, live on the fucking doorstep of a church?"

Interesting. So, if you cannot earn at least $7.50 an hour then they are better off earning $2.50 an hour selling drugs on the street (Freakanomics)? And yes, as many of the nation's poor are recent immigrants, they know exactly how to survive on low wages. They pulled in $1 a day back home, $5.50 an hour should be heaven. But the point is, you cannot imagine living on less than $10 an hour, so I guess in your opinion they are going to starve anyway on $5 an hour, so might as well get it over with quickly at $0 an hour. As such, you make it illegal to employ them.

And it is true that economists have had difficulty teasing the harm out of unemployment statistics. The reasons are quite numerous as to why this would be, but the most important reason is that the truly poor do not have landline telephones and are therefore beyond the reach of government statisticians conducting unemployment surveys. As such, since we have no conclusive evidence either way of the harms/benefits of the minimum wage, as studies go both ways, we must fall back on basic incentives theory: if you charge more for something, people will use less of it than they otherwise would. There are no defensible theories as to how labor markets could be immune, uniquely different from all other supply/demand markets on planet Earth.

2/3/2010 4:45:28 PM

Quote :

"Because if you're employing someone for 40 hours per week but not paying them enough to exist"

Why should we expect that every single person be able to afford to live on their own. Sharing an apartment, living with family, etc. is fine. Being of the means to live independently is not a right. Go on believing it is, though. You fuckers are crazy.

Quote :

"then you aren't paying the true cost of having a full time employee. This is the same reason Ford is entitled to set prices above cost."

Wow. You lefties never cease to amaze me. Do you really think this way? Damn. There's really no point to arguing then, is there?

[Edited on February 3, 2010 at 4:49 PM. Reason : ]

2/3/2010 4:48:00 PM

Quote :

"Your thought process is, "Uhh, these people aren't making enough money. Therefore, we should force companies to pay them a certain amount." And then you foolishly believe that there will be no consequences for that law. Do you really believe that an employer will hire as many workers at $7.25 an hour as $3.00 an hour? If you believe that, then how about 8 an hour? 10 an hour? 20 an hour? 1000 an hour? Then everyone would be rich, right? No, dude. Everyone would be unemployed."

THANK YOU, OH GOD OF THE FREE MARKET, FOR SPEAKING UNTO ME ABOUT SOMETHING SO CUT AND DRY, YOUD THINK IT WAS SCIENCE. Again, I know the classical stance on this (and the inevitable "huh huh, why not pay a billion dollars an hour genius?" retort). You seem to think the only people who work for or would work for wages that low are teens or people who can live at home. Guess what? Alot of people working for min. wage, though not the majority, are not teens. Like 1 in 5 are the sole breadwinner in the family. So our options for this group are this:

-pay them a worthless $2 an hour, on which they can't live (unless the cost of living gets SEVERELY depressed) or, and then cover the rest with welfare
-pay them even more welfare because they can't get a job because noone can afford to hire them because of oppressive, unnatural, wage floors

well, looks like you lose either way. but hey, this is only a few thousand people, who gives a shit?

And yet your solution of letting people start work whenever they want (10 years old? 9? how about 5? hur hur hur) and save up money is the most realistic alternative you have. oops, you were a fuckup as a teen. now you have nothing. next time you'll be more rational!

Quote :

"I'd like to know how this living wage is determined. Apparently, Congress knows what the cost of living is in every part of the United States, so I'd like to know what equation they used to come up with that number."

Yes, of course we must put this with the Federal boogeyman. Not like we could, I don't know, do it locally where people are better suited?

[Edited on February 3, 2010 at 4:50 PM. Reason : .]

2/3/2010 4:48:32 PM

Quote :

"If someone is willing to work for X price"

Libertarians exist in a world without exploitation.

Quote :

"Thus thier business may fail."

If they're exploiting their workers, then they'll probably do wonderfully. See: Walmart. This is the problem.

2/3/2010 4:50:33 PM

In libertopia, when we allow wages to naturally depress based on the dictates of kindly bosses and pleasant peasant workers, the prices of everything will always depress, as if there are no other factors influencing price (like, say, wages in other countries, or speculation, or supply, or speculation).

2/3/2010 4:53:06 PM

Quote :

"If they're exploiting their workers, then they'll probably do wonderfully. See: Walmart. This is the problem."

Which begs the question. Are they exploiting their workers? Or, more accurately, are they capable of exploiting their workers? While a case can be made for worker exploitation in some mining or factory town in the middle of nowhere, the same cannot be done for Raleigh, North Carolina, which possesses many hundreds of low-skill employers, all competing for employees. Or, as it is, not competing because the minimum wage means there are more workers than jobs.

Now, the worst form of exploitation comes with the minimum wage. As the minimum wage drives up unemployment among the unskilled, lengthening the expected period of unemployment from quitting. In effect, driving up the cost of punishing employers for bad behavior, specifically allowing bad behavior among managers. As such, it is no accident that workers earning minimum wage are far more likely to be abused than their peers earning just above the minimum wage.

[Edited on February 3, 2010 at 5:53 PM. Reason : .,.]

2/3/2010 5:50:04 PM

Quote :

"Do check the history"

alright, alright. I'll give you the ADA b/c upon further inspection it may be doing more harm than good (although it was all from CATO); Id be interested if the same were true for maternity leave and women.



But I also checked the history on the other labor laws that I mentioned, you know what I found? Kids working in sweatshops for 14 hours a day, miners getting black lung and workers hurt on the job being immediately fired.

Quote :

"And if my family was poor then I would hope society would be enlightened enough to let me as a child work to support my family, or would you rather us be starving/homeless so you don't have to live with the thought of an underage worker "

Actually, I would hope an enlightened society would have a system in place that could HELP provide the NEEDS of your family. You could continue to go to school and get a decent education, hopefully breaking the cycle of poverty that you and your family are caught in.

Quote :

"Or, as it is, not competing because the minimum wage means there are more workers than jobs. "

there will always be more workers than jobs,

2/3/2010 6:20:00 PM

if we ended taxes, the minimum wage, and regulations, there would be no excuse for unemployment.

BUSNESSES NEED TO GET POLITICALLY INVOLVED!



[Edited on February 3, 2010 at 6:27 PM. Reason : needed to add the end part]

2/3/2010 6:25:49 PM

Quote :

"BUSNESSES NEED TO GET POLITICALLY INVOLVED!"

Oh, they are. They're not lobbying for less regulations, though. They like to work with Congress (in a bipartisan manner, of course) to tax and regulate their competition out of business.

2/3/2010 6:30:35 PM

but if we had no taxes it would not matter. there is no law saying we have to pay taxes. its the scare tactics of teh irs.

2/3/2010 6:33:27 PM

Quote :

"there will always be more workers than jobs,"

Yes, because workers are greedy. As the number of jobs starts to approach the number of workers, employers become desperate for workers and workers become unwilling to settle, and compensation rises. As compensation increases, as is natural when the price of something rises, society learn to do what needs to be done with fewer workers. As jobs are destroyed, unemployment rises, and the compensation growth slows.

This is black letter economics. It is why store shelves stay stocked, air tickets exceed passengers, and the number of workers exceeds the number of jobs. Not always, and not in every instance, sometimes the demand for surgeons exceeds the number, but usually the price rises and society adjusts.

2/3/2010 6:49:36 PM

Quote :

"Guess what? Alot of people working for min. wage, though not the majority, are not teens. Like 1 in 5 are the sole breadwinner in the family."

do you have any source for this made up statistic?

2/3/2010 6:51:06 PM

I still can't get over the single variable analysis applied to every economic situation that is discussed on this site.

It's like, someone is armed with their supply/demand chart just waiting for the right time to slap it in.

For example:

Quote :

"Or, as it is, not competing because the minimum wage means there are more workers than jobs. "

Sure, if the wage is really the only variable in a vacuum, you'd be correct. Fortunately for real economists who make a living doing economics, they look at more variables than this. It's probably why they are economists and you're an engineer pretending to be an economist on some podunk message board in a corner of the internet.

2/3/2010 7:25:11 PM

nice appeal to authority. you could have showed how a rise in wages might not lead to more unemployment, but you didn't. You just said "economists know better," and then starting calling people names.

2/3/2010 7:35:36 PM

So, Hoops Malone, what do you think about those pesky environmental regulations? I hear you harp about the abolition of taxes and such but not so much about this.

2/4/2010 12:32:17 AM

1. The need for survival will always put downward pressure on wages. The need for stability (in the free market) reinforces those wages.

2. On the one hand, people shouldn't be stupid enough to take crappy wages. On the other hand, the Industrial Revolution taught us that those on the bottom will pretty much always be dehumanized wage slaves. Also, if you took out minimum wage, only illegal immigrants would work. Everyone else would either revolt or watch Jerry Springer in their mobile homes (Hint: it's the one that requires less work; after all, this is America).

3. This wouldn't be a problem if we didn't have a piss-poor education system in America. What gets cut first in recessions? Training. America seems to be suffering from its own warped version of Dutch Disease, wherein we have all of these informational resources, but they're only used by the native rich or the wealthy exchange students. Teaching isn't hard (yeah, I said it; it's true, don't PM me), but those who are talented at it often go find jobs that are far more rewarding monetarily. And the monopolistic practices by textbook companies and professors are just abysmal, especially those in the social sciences, which are basically hokum.

To recap, the economy is stupid because people are stupid. To fix the economy, you need to train people, which should be cheap and cost-effective in the god-damned Information Age*. Good God, how do you people manage to get your bras and panties on in the morning, you over-entitled, nonsensical dolts?**

* - It needn't be free, merely accessible.

** - I hate you, HOOPS MALONE, for making such a shitty thread. I hate myself for posting in it.

2/4/2010 1:58:20 AM

From the 2008 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Quote :

"Among those paid by the hour, 286,000 earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage in 2008. About 1.9 million had wages below the minimum. Together, these 2.2 million workers with wages at or below the minimum made up 3.0 percent of all hourly-paid workers. Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly-paid workers, they made up half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 11 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 2 percent of workers age 25 and over. Part-time workers (persons who usually work less than 35 hours per week) were more likely than their full-time counterparts to be paid the Federal minimum wage or less. The industry with the highest proportion of workers with hourly wages at or below the Federal minimum wage was leisure and hospitality (about 14 percent). About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the Federal minimum wage were employed in this industry, primarily in the food services and drinking places component. For many of these workers, tips and commissions supplement the hourly wages received."

2/4/2010 2:33:53 AM

Nothing could create a communist revolution faster than abolishing minimum wage standards.

2/4/2010 7:58:25 AM

Quote :

"do you have any source for this made up statistic?"

11.1% of min wage or less earners are between the ages of 35 and 44, 8.7% are between 45 and 54

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2005tbls.htm#7

Go throw a flag at Chuck Amato.

So, given the choice beween working for less than a living wage (like this hypothetical $3 an hour job that keeps getting kicked around) and squatting or something long enough to save up enough to have somewhere to go, or staying home and taking welfare and living off that, or just panhandling, what would you choose? I'd choose panhandling. You don't have to deal with customers and you can pee in the street without losing friends and alienating people.

[Edited on February 4, 2010 at 8:14 AM. Reason : .]

2/4/2010 8:10:17 AM

Quote :

"its the scare tactics of teh irs."

2/4/2010 9:57:31 AM

Quote :

"Nothing could create a communist revolution faster than abolishing minimum wage standards."

There was a time before the minimum wage. No communist revolution. And how would more jobs at better pay cause a communist revolution? Look at Earthdog's statistics, we're only talking about 286,000 workers here. Compare that to the 1.9 million that are already both exempt from the minimum wage and earning below it. This was another one of the big reasons that economists have trouble teasing the negative effects of the minimum wage: many of the workers displaced from the industries where the minimum wage is enforced find work in the industries that are exempt. Now, as more workers flow into these industries than otherwise would, the wages in those industries are depressed more than they otherwise would be.

No one has yet presented any argument why these bad outcomes of the minimum wage should be ignored. So what am I to think? You just don't care about all the shit you put poor people through. Just so you can sleep better at night dreaming of yourself as their savior and that you were able to do it all at someone else's expense.

It helps to understand which industries are exempt and which are not. And if you check the public record, it is an odd coincidence that the minimum wage is lobbied for by the very industries that employ low-skilled workers and yet are exempt from it. The minimum wage is also lobbied for by those representing high paid union workers in industries that are not exempt, in effect keeping out their unskilled competitors. The minimum wage is special interest legislation and yet the American people and the people on this very board buy into it, hook, line, and sinker.

2/4/2010 12:16:12 PM

http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/90051397.pdf

Quote :

"Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Reply By DAVID CARD AND ALAN B. KRUEGER"

Quote :

"IV. Conclusion we reach the following conclusion: The increase in New Jersey’s minimum wage probably had no effect on total employment in New Jersey’s fast-food industry, and possibly had a small positive effect. . . . . . . . . . Moreover, within New Jersey the BNW data indicate that hours grew more at restaurants in the lowest wage areas of the state, where the minimum-wage increase was more likely to be a binding constraint. This finding runs counter to the view that total hours declined in response to the New Jersey minimumwage increase."

2/4/2010 8:13:49 PM