To quote again from a paper Marty G quotes from:

“We review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages in the United States and in other countries that was spurred by the new minimum wage research beginning in the early 1990s. Our review indicates that there is a wide range of existing estimates and, accordingly, a lack of consensus about the overall effects on low-wage employment of an increase in the minimum wage. However, the oft-stated assertion that recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect. A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few if any studies that provide convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.’

The bits in bold being the point.

No, in both cases a reasonable response would be that the term is meaningless. I’m guessing that when snoozer uses the term rightwing he just means “things I don’t like”. Other than that I don’t see what meaning it, or leftwing, really has.

But the study review you have been so diligently quoting noted that in many cases the effect was insignificant, if it existed at all. “the rest of the world” is not uniform.

But in any case, the argument is not strong. The effects are small, localised, and can be mitigated.

That’s not to say that there aren’t other, better arguments of course, but just that this one, that gets used most often, in sloppy ways that overstate it’s strength; is not particularly convincing to me given the evidence you have presented.

That’s special. Seeing you criticised snoozer for using the term ‘right wing’ and suggested that he meant by it just ‘things that you don’t like’, there is a certain irony there.

From what you wrote however, the only implication I can see is that is that you thought, that moving from less regulation to more regulation is to move from the right to the left. On this natural understanding of the words you wrote, which I am certainly not criticising you for, Snoozer was using the terminology in exactly the way that you did.

It seems that no matter which way you cut it, your alleged befuddlement is more about your rhetorical needs than anything substantive.

But like I said, it’s all very silly and transparent, and it’s a too beautiful day to waste it dismembering right wing sophistry.

From what I remember all that I meant was being more like Soros. Whether or not Soros thinks he is leftwing I don’t know and he could well argue that the term doesn’t apply to him. And given the meaninglessness of the term he would have a point.

Whether or not he means to make the distinction doesn’t mean he isn’t right. He may well be right by accident.

“What’s more you have previously told me that we don’t have the data in NZ to be sure about this effect in our conditons. Perhaps we would be one of those groups where the effect is insignificant. So I don’t think the data supports ‘he is right’. At best, he is possibly right, if you squint, and read him in the most charitable way possible.”

It isn’t clear why New Zealand would be any different from the rest of the world with regard to labour markets.

“And from our previous discussions, doesn’t the research show that there will be a loss of ‘employment opportunities’ in the affected groups? That seems to me to be a different thing from a loss of existing jobs. If they meant to say that there would be increased unemployment, why change the terminology?”‘

As I said be fore you will get both. People may well lose jobs and employers will be less willing to offer new jobs at the higher minimum wage.

But he doesn’t make that distinction Paul. It is not at all clear that he intends to. Which leaves the impression that the unemployment rate will be affected. What’s more you have previously told me that we don’t have the data in NZ to be sure about this effect in our conditons. Perhaps we would be one of those groups where the effect is insignificant. So I don’t think the data supports ‘he is right’. At best, he is possibly right, if you squint, and read him in the most charitable way possible.

And from our previous discussions, doesn’t the research show that there will be a loss of ‘employment opportunities’ in the affected groups? That seems to me to be a different thing from a loss of existing jobs. If they meant to say that there would be increased unemployment, why change the terminology?

But let’s leave that for the moment, and perhaps you could explain what you meant by Soros maybe wanting “economists to be even more left wing.”

But, you’re not quite right if you are implying that Mill was somehow a major influence on the ending of slavery. Formally, the slave trade was halted by the 1809 Act. Wilberforce’s first bill was defeated in 1778 prompting a flood of petitions to parliament from working class organisations and a 300,000 petition organised by women’s associations. By 1833 most slaves had been freed over those areas Britain ruled. Mill was born in 1806. He was indeed precocious but mostly in learning Aristotle rather than stopping the slave trade. And, he wrote his response to Carlyle’s 1849 defence of slavery (on economic grounds) sometime after, rather than before, slavery was a political issue in Britain. It was, of course, still an issue in the US, but it is hardly ‘sticking your neck out’ to criticise what’s happening in another country (particularly if it shines a positive light on your own country’s ‘enlightenment’).

In an interesting aside that bears on my point about liberals, Wilberforce wasn’t pleased that slavery abolition became associated with radical groups such as the levellers and he was also keen that slave owners’ property rights should be protected (hence massive ‘compensation’ was need in the end – ‘bailouts’ are not a recent phenomenon). He also supported the 1795 Combinations Act that outlawed trade union and other radical activities.

Still, you’re right. Mill’s heart was often in the right place.

And he is right, raising the minimum wage wage will cause unemployment in that area of the wage distribution that is affect by such an increase. What it will not do is have much affect on the overall unemployment rate.

Just making the point that classical liberals went for negative liberty whereas modern liberals think more in terms of positive liberty.

Actually no. As an example heck the history of the term “dismal science”. It has to do with slavery and includes JS Mill.

So now I must study botany before holding forth on a knowledgeable conversation on gardening or horticulture. More than that, I must be a fully accredited academic before contemplating entry into the grocery trade. And I better put away those gardening tools ’cause using words and assuming informal common meanings rather than specialised meanings when I use those words advertises the fact that I don’t know my arse from my elbow when it comes to growing veggies or fruit or whatever.

Now if only I’d learned Latin I could content myself with flower arranging instead. (sigh)

Maybe a spot of fishing will do the trick, but then since I haven’t studied marine biology or/and oceanography I wouldn’t know what to do there either. But never mind. I can console myself by buying fish and chips…. ah, but unless somebody posts the scientific name for Blue Cod I will obviously be regarded as an unintelligible moron and refused service by the eminently qualified local chippy owner.

Bill, the only reason I raise the objection is that this is supposed to be a discussion by people who know what they’re talking about; folk who I thought could be expected to use terminology properly and knowledgeably. If I were a fruiterer in a conversation with grocers and market gardeners, I’d expect that. Apparently not here, though.

Deep deep,

Reading some newspapers and listening to some talkback does not make you a political player. You don’t work in political communication.

If that was what I was talking about, you’d have a point. But that’s not what I do, and I wouldn’t consider that to qualify, either.

Real players don’t do exaggerating their CVs to impress strangers on blogs.

Fair cop. I’m not answerable to The Standard’s commentariat, and I could be making shit up anyhow, so yeah.

Anyway, as Bookie says, it’s silly. I’m off to the beach. Enjoy your weekend, folks.

L

Not sure where this comment will be placed but I wanted to reply to Paul Walker’s comment at 10:33am today.

From your comment, Paul, I’m not sure if you align yourself with Isaiah Berlin’s pluralism or simply with the classical liberal notion of ‘negative liberty’ (i.e., freedom not to have others obstruct your plans for yourself) but, for what it’s worth…

Berlin, if I remember correctly (it’s been a while), was really making the argument that people value lots of things – justice, equality, compassion, freedom, etc.. It’s pretty hard, according to him, to rank these in any particular hierarchy so it’s best not to make a fetish out of any one (or number) of them. Why? Because there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll end up finding yourself supporting or defending something that offends some other of your values or is just plane inhumane. It’s the ‘ends justify the means’ point. Interestingly, in his list of values people might be tempted to sacrifice others to, he included ‘even liberty’. (On this point, the last politician and political movement to employ an ‘ends justifies the means’ utopian rhetoric on a grand scale was Roger Douglas and supporters of ‘Rogernomics’ – the Promised Land always lay somewhere out there beyond the pain!).

That, I think, is the danger inherent in liberal philosophy. That is, one person’s ‘liberty’ (area of unobstructed plans) is fetishistically defended in the political sphere even though it may result in injustice, inequality and simple inhumanity (That’s why I mentioned Locke’s support of colonialism and Mill’s unthinking paternalism and racism). It’s also interesting that Berlin approvingly cited Tawney saying something to the effect that the freedom of the physically or economically powerful must be constrained (Because of deeply held human values other than freedom).

I have a lot of sympathy for Berlin’s analysis. He may have called himself a liberal but, on the strength of that essay, I’d call him a pluralist – which is actually something different, though related. In political terms, it means sometimes supporting legislation that is propelled by some other value than ‘negative freedom’ – though always with awareness that such freedom is, indeed, being sacrificed (as Berlin would say, we can’t have everything simultaneously). There are no guarantees that you’ll be supporting the ‘right’ thing at any one time, of course, but if you only ever support one thing (e.g., ‘negative freedom’) there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be ‘wrong’ quite a bit of the time given the diversity of deeply ‘imprinted’ human values.

Life is actually just a series of ungrounded ethical acts (which, admittedly, is not a comforting idea). Let’s not pretend, then, that ‘reason’, ‘science’, ‘philosophy’, ‘religion’ or anything else ever justifies what we do to others in some absolute way and provides us a place to hide from the effects of our (free?) choices.

Perhaps you’re actually a pluralist?