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Minimum Wage And The Real World

There is evidently a lively argument about who authored the much-quoted observation “It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So.”

The quotation has been attributed to Mark Twain and Will Rogers, among others, but whatever the source and however folksy the articulation, it counts as real wisdom.

I thought about that very human tendency to cling to verities that “we know for sure” are so when I came across some recent research into the consequences of raising the minimum wage, because for a long time, I was convinced by the (very logical, very persuasive) argument that raising wages would depress job creation.

It turns out there was a logical fallacy in the formulation of the argument that, if employer  had to pay his current employees more, he would have less money available to hire additional workers. That actually would be true–all else being equal.  Those of us who accepted the formulation–including your truly–didn’t realize how much else wasn’t equal.

In the real world, putting more money in the pockets of people who don’t have much disposable income actually increases demand and boosts economic growth.

When something they’ve believed turns out to be wrong, reasonable people change their minds. There’s a difference, however, between ideology and a mistaken belief–ideology is stubborn. It rejects contrary evidence, no matter how convincing.

With respect to minimum wage rates, a number of previous, peer-reviewed academic studies have found little to no impact on hiring as states and municipalities have raised the  wage, casting doubt on the “wage hikes will kill jobs” mantra, but the number of states that have recently raised their minimum wage allowed these recent researchers to draw broader conclusions.

Eighteen states rang in 2019 with minimum wage increases — some that will ultimately rise as high as $15 an hour — and so far, opponents’ dire predictions of job losses have not come true.

What it means: The data paint a clear picture: Higher minimum wage requirements haven’t reduced hiring in low-wage industries or overall.

State of play: Opponents have long argued that raising the minimum wage will cause workers to lose their jobs and prompt fast food chains (and other stores) to raise prices. But job losses and price hikes haven’t been pronounced in the aftermath of a recent wave of city and state wage-boost laws.

And more economists are arguing that the link between minimum wage hikes and job losses was more hype than science.

What we’re hearing: “The minimum wage increase is not showing the detrimental effects people once would’ve predicted,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at international accounting firm Grant Thornton, tells Axios.

“A lot of what we’re seeing in politics is old economic ideology, not what economics is telling us today.”

The doom-and-gloom that opponents have predicted, “are part of the political policy debate,” Jeffrey Clemens, an economics professor at UC San Diego, tells Axios.

His research for the conservative American Enterprise Institute is often quoted in arguments against minimum wage increases.

But Clemens told Axios: “People will tend to make the most extreme argument that suits their policy preferences, and it’s not surprising if that ends up being out of whack with the way things unfold on the ground.”

As part of the study, researchers used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to compare the rate of  job growth in four states with low minimum wages against the rate in eight states with high minimum wages. All 12 states saw growth in restaurant, bar and hotel jobs.
Four states had job growth higher than the U.S. median, and three of them have raised their state’s minimum wage; three of the five states having the slowest job growth kept their wage at the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.

The bottom line: Opposition to higher minimum wage laws is increasingly based in ideology and orthodoxy rather than real-world evidence, economists say.

The evidence says I used to believe something that just wasn’t so. Given that evidence, I don’t believe it any more.

That isn’t so hard, is it?

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What Is Civic Health?

There are obviously lots of ways one might define civic health. The National Conference on Citizenship–a Congressionally-chartered organization dedicated to “strengthening civic life in America”–has promulgated one of them. The Conference works through a nationwide network of partners, and one of the projects those state partners pursue is the production of a periodic, state-specific  “Civic Health Index.”

The Index measures the chosen behaviors of citizens in the relevant state, and compares the results to national figures. Indiana has just completed publication of its latest Index, available at the link, with results based upon data from 2017.

As the panel presenting the results put it, there’s good news and not-so-good news.

Indiana’s iteration of the Civic Health Index has been co-chaired by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard and former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton. In a forward to this year’s publication, Hamilton notes that–in addition to civic information–Americans need to know the values that underlie productive civic dialogue. He lists those values as mutual respect and tolerance; the humility to know that sometimes we’re wrong; the honesty to keep deliberations open and straightforward…and “of course, the civility that allows us to find common ground despite our disagreements.”

If only!

The data is interesting. Indiana does well on the indicators of involvement chosen by the Commission: posting political and social issues on social media sites, reading or watching the news, contacting public officials, and even (I was surprised) “talking and spending time with people of different racial, ethnic or cultural backgrounds.” Hoosiers volunteer, donate and do favors for neighbors in numbers that compare favorably to those in other states.

When it comes to voting, the news isn’t so good.

First, midterm elections. In 2010, Indiana ranked 43d in the percentage of eligible voters registered (65%), and 48th in voter turnout (39%). In 2014, those percentages were 64% and 35%, earning the state ranks of 30th and 47th, and in 2018, we ranked 37th in voter registration (65%) and worked our way up to (whoopee!) 43d in turnout (49%).

In the last presidential year, 2016, we ranked 40th (68.8%) in registration and 41st (58.3%)in turnout. (I can’t help thinking that Indiana’s extreme gerrymandering plays a significant role in depressing voter turnout.)

This year, for the first time, the Civic Health Index included two “action items.” The Indiana Bar Foundation, which directs production of the Index and is deeply engaged in civic education, announced plans to convene a task force to evaluate current civic education practices in the state and recommend improvements.

The second action item addressed the need to improve both registration percentages and voting turnout in the state.

With respect to that goal, Bill Moreau, a prominent local lawyer who will retire from active practice this year, announced that he and his wife are creating “The Indiana Citizen,” a nonpartisan, nonprofit foundation devoted to civic engagement–and especially voting. The site will offer the sort of information–about registration, polling places, candidates and issues–that we used to get from local newspapers, before their decline.

Maybe, if the Indiana Citizen can raise enough money to afford the sort of informational campaign they hope to mount, we can improve Indiana’s abysmal turnout–and do a bit of educating along the way.

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Allergic To Religion?

Remember that old Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”

Boy, do we ever!

I can’t help wondering what people living  40-50 years hence will think about this fraught time in America. (Actually, wondering about that is an exercise in optimism–it assumes climate change hasn’t eradicated what we call civilization…)

The multiple offenses of Donald Trump will of course receive treatment by historians, but I wonder how those future scholars will connect the various “dots” that led to his “election” and especially how they will view what may be the roots of a newly secular, evidence-based age. (Okay, I said I was an optimist…)

A month or so ago, FiveThirtyEight–Nate Silver’s blog–reported that Christian fundamentalists were driving more liberal people–especially young people– away from all religion, and as a consequence, away from the GOP.

A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee formally acknowledged what has been evident for quite some time: Nonreligious voters are a critical part of the party’s base. In a one-page resolution passed at its annual summer meeting, the DNC called on Democratic politicians to recognize and celebrate the contributions of nonreligious Americans, who make up one-third of Democrats. In response, Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor with close ties to Trump, appeared on Fox News, saying the Democrats were finally admitting they are a “godless party.”

This was hardly a new argument. Conservative Christian leaders have been repeating some version of this claim for years, and have often called on religious conservatives and Republican politicians to defend the country against a growing wave of liberal secularism. And it’s true that liberals have been leaving organized religion in high numbers over the past few decades. But blaming the Democrats, as Jeffress and others are wont to do, doesn’t capture the profound role that conservative Christian activists have played in transforming the country’s religious landscape, and the role they appear to have played in liberals’ rejection of organized religion.

A number of surveys, including those by Pew (the “gold standard” in survey research) have found the percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans increasing substantially over the past few years . The reasons for that shift are complicated, but as the article notes, politics has been an important contributor.

“Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are,” said Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.” “And some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.”

Nearly one in four Americans today is religiously unaffiliated. Nearly 40 percent of liberals are, and that’s an increase of 12 percent since 1990, according to the 2018 General Social Survey. The number of self-identified conservatives and moderates who are unaffiliated has also risen, but less dramatically.

Social scientists were initially reluctant to entertain the idea that a political backlash was somehow responsible, because it challenged long-standing assumptions about how flexible our religious identities really are. Even now, the idea that partisanship could shape something as personal and profound as our relationship with God might seem radical, or maybe even a little offensive.

But when two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, began to look at possible explanations for why so many Americans were suddenly becoming secular, those conventional reasons couldn’t explain why religious affiliation started to fall in the mid-1990s. Demographic and generational shifts also couldn’t fully account for why liberals and moderates were leaving in larger numbers than conservatives. In a paper published in 2002, they offered a new theory: Distaste for the Christian right’s involvement with politics was prompting some left-leaning Americans to walk away from religion.

Subsequent research confirmed the thesis. The newly political Christian right energized religious voters, but Christian conservatives’ social agenda prompted other people to opt out of religion entirely. “It’s like an allergic reaction to the mixture of Republican politics and religion,” said David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame.

Campbell also warned that increasing secularism is reducing churches’ ability to bring a diverse array of people together–something that, theoretically at least, helps to break down partisan barriers.

Add this social shift to the other massive social changes we are experiencing, and the ability of those future historians to make sense of it all looks pretty daunting.

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At Least We Aren’t Alone…

In the United States, we apparently are divided into two completely different species: the know-nothing cult that is today’s GOP, and the people who live and worry in what has been called “the reality-based community.”

As depressing as it is dealing with the alternate reality inhabited by Trump and his defenders, we need to recognize that we aren’t the only once-dominant nation busily crapping in our own mess kit. (Sorry, but that seemed the most apt description.)

Britain has Brexit. And Boris Johnson. (Although I’ll note that the UK also has 21 Conservative lawmakers who were willing to put the interests of their country above their party. Thus far, that’s 21 more than we have.)

A couple of weeks ago, the Guardian reported on the likely consequences of a “hard Brexit”–the path they are being taken down by Boris Johnson.

No-deal Brexit has never loomed larger than in the current moment. Boris Johnson has said that Britain will leave the European Union on 31 October. His entire political strategy is based on the credibility of his threat to follow through, regardless of whether he has come to an agreement with the remaining 27 members. As a result, the need to understand what no deal may mean in practice has become increasingly urgent.

At the UK in a Changing Europe, we have tried to address this: our report on it is out on Wednesday. We don’t have any inside information. We’re not privy to material that others do not have. But we do have a team of scholars who have spent their careers studying the relationship between the UK and the EU, and so are well placed to consider the potential implications if the UK were to leave in this manner.

What does that increasingly likely no-deal Brexit look like?

No deal means a cliff edge; the full panoply of checks and tariffs will be imposed on our exports to the EU, and cross-border trade in services will face new restrictions.

So trade with the EU will become more difficult and more costly, with those costs being potentially catastrophic for smaller companies that do not have the margins to absorb them.

After noting the probable disruption to trade and freedom of movement, the article highlighted issues that have received less attention:

One little discussed consequence of no deal is that the UK will immediately lose access to EU databases and other forms of cooperation including the European arrest warrant, the Schengen information system and Europol. This will hinder policing and security operations in a world where data is key to solving crime. Nor is it inconceivable, say, that we will witness a rise in organised criminal activity, as gangs seek to profit from this disruption.

And then, there are the problems that have been foreseen, but not solved:

But perhaps the biggest and most dangerous unknown is what happens on the island of Ireland. The UK government has said it will not apply checks and tariffs at the Irish border – a stance which is at odds with its commitments under, inter alia, WTO rules. The EU, however, has made it clear it intends to apply the rules, though whether all checks will be imposed from day one is less obvious. Both sides are likely to blame the other, with unforeseeable political and economic consequences.

Over the longer term, the economy will adjust. But there will be a significant cost. Our earlier research, which analysed the effects of trading with the EU on WTO terms, found that after 10 years this would reduce the UK’s per-capita income by between 3.5% and 8.7%; other credible analyses come to much the same conclusion.

With or without a hard Brexit, the decision to leave the EU will weaken the UK in multiple ways. With or without Impeachment or a “blue wave” in 2020, the U.S. will need a generation–at least–to recover from the systemic damage inflicted by a mentally-ill ignoramus monumentally unfit for the office he holds. If we recover.

The UK and the US are both in a world of hurt because significant percentages of citizens in both countries voted their racism. In England, a vote for Brexit was an anti-immigrant vote; in the U.S., a vote for Trump rewarded his abandonment of dog-whistles in favor of full-throated, unembarrassed bigotry.

As a result, there’s you-know-what in the mess kit.

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Lessons From Portugal

Note to those who previously ordered Living Together: I apologize for the formatting. (Never self-published before–publishers always fixed spacing, etc.). I’ve deleted and republished, and hopefully those who order from now on will receive a nicer-looking text. (Contents haven’t changed.)

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Remember when it was possible to believe that the United States was a leader among nations?

I have no intention of enumerating all the lessons we Americans have stubbornly refused to learn because, after all, what could those foreigners have to teach superior-by-definition us? (Think education, gun control, transportation, urban planning…)

But given our struggles with Opiod addiction, and our counterproductive approach to marijuana, it might be timely to take a look at  how things are going in Portugal. Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2001, taking what it called a “Health and Human-Centered Approach.”

So how’s that working out?

Since Portugal enacted drug decriminalization in 2001, the number of people voluntarily entering treatment has increased significantly, overdose deaths and HIV infections among people who use drugs have plummeted, incarceration for drug-related offenses has decreased, and rates of problematic and adolescent drug use have fallen.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is facing an overdose crisis and resistance to common-sense reforms.

In March 2018, some 17 years into Portugal’s experiment, America’s Drug Policy Alliance took 70 U.S. reformers to Portugal. The trip was billed as an opportunity for drug policy reform advocates to determine whether a dramatically different approach to drugs might be more effective than criminalization. (Spoiler alert: it is.)

Some definitions and conclusions from the group’s subsequent report:

Drug decriminalization is defined as the elimination of criminal penalties for drug use and possessionof drugs for personal use, as well as the elimination of criminal penalties for the possession of equipment used for the purpose of introducing drugs into the human body, such as syringes. ….

While several other countries have had successful experiences with decriminalization–including the Czech Republic, Spain and the Netherlands –Portugal provides the most comprehensive and well-documented example. The success of Portugal’s policy has opened the door for other countries to rethink the practice of criminalizing people who use drugs. Canada, France, Georgia, Ghana, Ireland and Norway are all currently discussing ways to end criminalization of personal drug use….

Under the policy, when police come across people who are using or possessing drugs, they confiscate their substances and refer them to a Dissuasion Commission. This Commission is comprised of one official from the legal arena and two from the health or social service arenas who determine whether and to what extent the person demonstrates dependency on drugs.

These Commissions –which operate independently from the criminal justice system –make decisions on a case-by-case basis. If the committee believes the person’s use of drugs is not a problem, they can simply dismiss the case and the application of sanctions altogether. Alternatively, they can impose administrative sanctions that range from fines to social work or group therapy. The majority of people who appear before the Commissions are deemed to be using drugs non-problematically and receive no sanction or intervention, but rather a provisional suspension of the proceedings.

If they are not found in the possession of drugs again within six months, the matter is completely dropped. For people who appear to use drugs frequently and problematically, the Commissions will make referrals to treatment, which is always voluntary and never mandated. If people with substance use disorder opt not to enter treatment, administrative sanctions –such as the revocation of a driving license or community service –can be applied, but rarely are.

Meanwhile, back in the good old U.S. of A…

In the United States, the dominant approach to drug use is criminalization and harsh enforcement, with1.4 million arrests per year for drug possession for personal use. Disproportionately, those arrested are people of color: black people are three times as likely as white people to be arrested for drug possession for personal use.

The impact of these arrests and convictions goes well beyond possible incarceration, to include a range of barriers to access to housing, education and employment. The ripple effect throughout families and communities is devastating.

Given how intensely criminalization targets black and brown people in the U.S., it amounts to a form of systemic oppression. Meanwhile, criminalization means that few resources have been devoted to providing treatment, access to health services, and support to those who need it. For low-income people of color, such services and support are often non-existent.

Portugal’s approach is based upon the understanding that drugs are a public health issue, not a criminal justice issue–and Portugal has demonstrated that its approach works.

Ours doesn’t. But Americans make policy on the basis of religion and ideology, not evidence.

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