Fairbanks Brief

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LINCOLN- DOUGLAS DEBATE January- February 2015 Dr. John F. Schunk, Editor “Resolved: Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.”

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Brief for LD Debate

Transcript of Fairbanks Brief

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATEJanuary-February 2015

Dr. John F. Schunk, Editor

Resolved: Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.

Sound Policy

1. LIVING WAGE ENABLES ONE TO PAY FOR BASIC NEEDSSK/A01.01) Karen MacKintosh, CANADIAN DIMENSION, January-February 2014, p. 7, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A living wage is based on the principle that full-time work should provide families with a basic level of economic security that reflects basic needs in a particular community, including food, clothing, rent, transportation, childcare and a basic extended health care plan.

SK/A01.02) Michael Lerner, TIKKUN, Spring 2014, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. According to the Living Wage Action Coalition, a living wage is a "decent wage": It affords the earner and her or his family the most basic costs of living without need for government support or poverty programs. With a living wage an individual can take pride in her work and enjoy the decency of a life beyond poverty, beyond an endless cycle of working and sleeping, beyond the ditch of poverty wages. The seven factors that the coalition uses to calculate the basic cost of a safe and decent standard of living are housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, taxes, and other basic necessities (which in some cases include elder care or care for immigrant families' overseas parents or children).

SK/A01.03) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 1, 2014, p. A26, LexisNexis Academic. An executive order signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio [Mayor of New York City] on Tuesday will greatly expand the number of people covered by the city's living-wage law, and raise that wage to $13.13 an hour from $11.90. This promises to put much-needed cash into many deserving pockets and to bolster the principle that someone who works hard in a full-time job should at least be able to cover food and rent.

2. LIVING WAGE ENABLES PARTICIPATION IN CIVIC LIFE

SK/A01.04) David Wait, KAI TIAKI: NURSING NEW ZEALAND, May 2013, p. 33, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A living wage is defined as the income necessary to provide workers and their families with the basic necessities of life, to enable workers to live with dignity and to participate as active citizens in society. This is more than just surviving--it's about participation and opportunities, being able to send your children on a school trip, have a computer in the home, or take your children swimming, things many of us would take for granted.

SK/A01.05) Joseph Valentine [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics], MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW, June 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Borrowing from Lawrence Glickman, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, Pollin [author of A MEASURE OF FAIRNESS: THE ECONOMICS OF LIVING WAGES AND MINIMUM WAGES IN THE UNITED STATES] essentially defines a living wage as "that which offers workers the ability to support families to maintain self-respect and to have both the means and leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation."

3. LIVING WAGE WAS THE ORIGINAL MINIMUM WAGE CONCEPT

SK/A01.06) Lydia DePillis, WASHINGTON POST BLOGS, October 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. "Coming out of this long progressive history in Wisconsin is this idea that the minimum wage ought to be linked to a living wage," says Joseph McCartin, an historian of labor law at Georgetown University. "Back when the concept of a minimum wage was being developed, people often spoke interchangeably of them. As a country, over time, we've diverged from the notion that the minimum wage ought to keep the people who earn it above the poverty level."

4. WAGES CAN BE ADJUSTED TO DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHICAL AREAS

SK/A01.07) Michael Lerner, TIKKUN, Spring 2014, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Dr. Amy Glasmeier, the Department Head of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, has developed a living wage calculator that estimates a living wage for different cities based on the current cost of living there. Glasmeier cautions that her calculator, which you can access at livingwage.mit.edu, is designed to provide a bare minimum estimate of the cost of living for low-wage families--not an estimate for a middleclass standard of living.

SK/A01.08) Emily Jane Fox, CNN WIRE, January 22, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Amy Glasmeier, a professor of economic geography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has created a living wage calculator based on government data, which bears out this argument. She breaks down the total cost of living, including food, housing, transportation, child and health care, based on the county in which people live. Glasmeier said the cost of living rises with the size of the city. For instance, in places with fewer than 250,000 people, Glasmeier found that the living wage would be between $12 and $15 per hour. In cities with 250,000 to 1 million residents, its $17, and in cities with more than one million residents, it's $20 per hour.K/2 Human Dignity

1. WORKING FULL-TIME IN POVERTY IS HUMILIATING

SK/A02.01) Charles M. Blow, THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 17, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. No one should ever endure the kind of economic humiliation that comes with working a full-time job and making a less-than-living wage. There is dignity in all work, but that dignity grows dim when the checks are cashed and the coins are counted and still the bills rise higher than the wages.

SK/A02.02) Charles M. Blow, THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 17, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Most people want to work. It is a basic human desire: to make a way, to provide for one's self and one's loved ones, to advance. It is that great hope of tomorrow, better and brighter, in which we can be happy and secure, able to sleep without hunger and wake without worry. But it is easy to see how people can have that hope thrashed out of them, by having to wrestle with the most wrenching of questions: how to make do when you work for less than you can live on?

2. LIVING WAGE RESTORES HUMAN DIGNITY

SK/A02.03) STATES NEWS SERVICE, October 2, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. [Congressman Charles B. Rangel:] "I'm proud that our Mayor [New York City] is leading the nation in taking bold actions to give a pay raise to workers who deserve and need it to survive. In America, the land of opportunity, no one who works full time should be struggling to raise a family. Ensuring a living wage is not just about providing fair compensation, but also preserving justice and dignity for working families. Mayor de Blasio's executive order to ensure a livable wage for every worker is necessary to combat the income inequality in our Great City and help increase economic development within our Manhattan and Bronx Congressional Districts."

SK/A02.04) David Wait, KAI TIAKI: NURSING NEW ZEALAND, May 2013, p. 33, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A living wage is one which provides genuine security, dignity and the ability to participate in society. It's worth working for.

3. IT IS UNJUST FOR FULL-TIME WORKERS TO LIVE IN POVERTY

SK/A02.05) Rick Bell [managing editor], WORKFORCE, October 2014, p. 54, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. For the hundreds of thousands of workers seeking a living wage, it's all about the paycheck. Collaborative work environments and best practices in employee engagement procedures are all well and good, but you want to talk bottom line? A few more bucks in the pay envelope helps pay for clean diapers for the baby's bottom. I hope they get what they are asking. Because it's unconscionable that anyone who's able and willing to work full time can still live in poverty.

SK/A02.06) Dan Fournier, UWIRE TEXT, January 31, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Of course, raising the minimum wage to $15 and indexing it to inflation is not the end goal; the end goal is the construction of an economic system wherein those who contribute as much as they can are able to survive. Those who work a full work-week should be able to earn a living wage - a wage conducive for them to pay their rent, put healthy food on the table for their children, cover their energy and transportation bills, and allow for enough recreational time and discretionary buying-power.

4. CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS LONG CHAMPIONED THE LIVING WAGE

SK/A02.07) Brian Roewe, NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, August 30, 2013, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The U.S. Catholic church has championed a living wage in its past. In 1906, noted labor priest Msgr. John A. Ryan published A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects. In it, he argued that "wages should be sufficiently high to enable the laborer to live in a mariner consistent with the dignity of a human being," a belief he viewed as an "industrial, religious and moral fact."

SK/A02.08) AMERICA, March 11, 2013, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Because Congress must authorize every increase, the minimum wage has gradually fallen behind the cost of living. "The remuneration of work is not something that can be left to the laws of the marketplace; nor should it be a decision left to the will of the more powerful," wrote Pope John XXIII.

MINIMUM WAGE IS INADEQUATE

1. MINIMUM WAGE IS NOT ENOUGH TO PAY FOR BASIC NEEDS

SK/A03.01) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. "This is not a partisan issue for working folks, but a practical one," said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), which supported the wage hikes. "People understand that $7.25 is not nearly enough to make ends meet."

SK/A03.02) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 12, 2014, p. SR10, LexisNexis Academic. As for New York City, $13.13 an hour is well below the self-sufficiency standards that budget experts use to gauge how much families need to meet basic daily expenses. These standards show that a family in the Bronx in 2010 with two adults and two young children needed each adult to make at least $15.69 an hour; higher hourly minimums were needed in most of Manhattan and the other boroughs.

SK/A03.03) Mark Bittman, THE NEW YIORK TIMES, July 26, 2013, p. A23, LexisNexis Academic. The movement found an unwitting ally when McDonald's offered its workers a sample personal budget that included such laughable features as the need for a second job and budget lines for ''Heating'' (zero) and ''Health Insurance'' ($20). Per month. (The company, which is worth $100 billion, give or take a few bucks, now says that heat costs $50 a month. But only if you speak English; the Spanish language site budgets heat at $30.)

2. MINIMUM WAGE IS WELL BELOW THE POVERTY LINE

SK/A03.04) STATES NEWS SERVICE, March 26, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Americans agree that no one who works full time should ever have to raise a family in poverty," Rangel [U.S. Congressman] pointed out. "And yet today a single mother with two children, working full-time, year-round, and earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, makes only $14,500 a year, $5,000 below the poverty line."

SK/A03.05) Michael Lerner, TIKKUN, Spring 2014, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. At the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a full-time worker makes only $15,080 in a year--well below the poverty line for a family of three.

SK/A03.06) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. For the record, someone who earns the federal minimum of $7.25 for 40 hours a week would have enough income to be above the federal poverty line of $11,670 for an individual, but not enough to be above the $15,730 poverty line for supporting a two-person household.

3. MINIMUM WAGE IS NOT A LIVING WAGE

SK/A03.07) Emily Jane Fox, CNN WIRE, January 22, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As the debate over the federal wage floor heats up in Washington, experts are making the point that the minimum wage does not equal a living wage.

SK/A03.08) Michael Lerner, TIKKUN, Spring 2014, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In truth, we need more than just a raise in the minimum wage: we need a living wage and a guaranteed annual income for anyone who is unable to work, for whatever reason.

SK/A03.09) James McGovern [Massachusetts Representative]. STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 9, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. We shouldn't be talking about a minimum wage, M. Speaker, we should be talking about a living wage. Just look at my hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts. The minimum wage is $8 an hour. But a living wage for two childless adults is just under $15 an hour and it rises to $18.30 for two adults with one child. While I support an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, that's not going to cut it for a family of three.

U.S. WAGES ARE WAY TOO LOW

1. WAGES HAVE FALLEN DRAMATICALLY SINCE 1973

SK/A04.01) Michael Lerner, TIKKUN, Spring 2014, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In an op-ed titled "Better Pay Now," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made an impassioned plea for a raise in the minimum wage. Even amid its Great Recession, America is a much richer country now than it was forty years ago, Krugman argued, but that wealth hasn't reached the hands of workers: "The inflation--adjusted wages of non-supervisory workers in retail trade--who weren't particularly well paid to begin with--have fallen almost 30 percent since 1973."

2. WAGES HAVE NOT KEPT PACE WITH PRODUCTIVITY

SK/A04.02) STATES NEWS SERVICE, March 26, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "A majority of lower-wage jobs are held by women. These Americans are working full-time, often supporting families, and if the minimum wage had kept pace with our economy's productivity, they'd already be earning well over $10 an hour today. Instead, it's stuck at $7.25. Every time Congress refuses to raise it, it loses value because the cost of living goes higher, minimum wage stays the same." - President Obama, Remarks at Central Connecticut State University, March 5, 2014

SK/A04.03) David Cooper [Economic Policy Institute], NATIONAL JOURNAL, August 28, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Those findings make it clear. One simple way that we could significantly improve the lives of millions, help to spur wage growth, and reduce the gender pay gap, would be to raise the federal minimum wage. The minimum wage today is worth 25 percent less than its value in the late 1960s. Had the minimum wage grown at just one-fourth the speed of productivity growth since then, it would now sit above $12 per hour.

SK/A04.04) Dan Fournier, UWIRE TEXT, January 31, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If wages had always increased at the rate of inflation, and taken aggregate national economic growth and productivity into account as the value of the dollar rises, the minimum wage would be hovering between $21-22 per hour. What does this mean? It means that although the total value of your labor is equivalent to that, the difference is being re-distributed upwards to the ruling class through a backwards tax and wage system that does not give the everyday worker the full value and product of his work.

LOW-WAGE WORKERS ARE BREADWINNERS

1. LOW-WAGE WORKERS ARE NO LONGER LARGELY TEENAGERS

SK/A05.01) STATES NEWS SERVICE, March 26, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Most people who would get a raise if we raise the minimum wage are not teenagers on their first job -- their average age is 35. - President Obama, Remarks at Central Connecticut State University, March 5, 2014

SK/A05.02) Mark Bittman, THE NEW YIORK TIMES, July 26, 2013, p. A23, LexisNexis Academic. In the old days you could say: ''So what? Those workers are all teenagers. They live at home.'' But the median age of today's fast-food worker is over 29, and many are trying to support families. One estimate claims that a family of four needs nearly $90,000 a year to get by in the nation's capital. That's six minimum-wage jobs.

2. LOW-WAGE WORKERS ARE NOW ADULT HEADS OF HOUSEHOLD

SK/A05.03) James Surowiecki, THE NEW YORKER, August 12, 2013, p. 35, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Historically, low-wage work tended to be done either by the young or by women looking for part-time jobs to supplement family income. As the historian Bethany Moreton has shown, Walmart in its early days sought explicitly to hire underemployed married women. Fast-food workforces, meanwhile, were dominated by teen-agers. Now, though, plenty of family breadwinners are stuck in these jobs. That's because, over the past three decades, the U.S. economy has done a poor job of creating good middle-class jobs; five of the six fastest-growing job categories today pay less than the median wage. That's why, as a recent study by the economists John Schmitt and Janelle Jones has shown, low-wage workers are older and better educated than ever. More important, more of them are relying on their paychecks not for pin money or to pay for Friday-night dates but, rather, to support families.

SK/A05.04) James Surowiecki, THE NEW YORKER, August 12, 2013, p. 35, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Forty years ago, there was no expectation that fast-food or discount-retail jobs would provide a living wage, because these were not jobs that, in the main, adult heads of household did. Today, low-wage workers provide forty-six per cent of their family's income. It is that change which is driving the demand for higher pay.

LOW-WAGE WORKERS ARE SUBSIDIZED BY TAXPAYERS

1. HALF OF LOW-WAGE WORKERS ARE ON PUBLIC ASSISTANCE

SK/A06.01) Liz Alderman & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 28, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. By contrast, fast-food wages in the United States are so low that half of the nation's fast-food workers rely on some form of public assistance, a study from the University of California, Berkeley found. American fast-food workers earn an average of $8.90 an hour.

SK/A06.02) Schuyler Velasco, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 24, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The video's release comes a week after economists at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Illinois released a study finding that fast food workers in the US draw nearly $7 billion annually in taxpayer-funded federal aid, in the form of food stamps ($1 billion), Medicaid ($3.9 billion), and earned income tax credits ($1.9 billion). More than half of the 1.8 million "core" fast food workers who work at least 11 hours per week and 28 percent of those who work full time rely on some form of public assistance, according to the study.

SK/A06.03) Jessica Heppler, UWIRE TEXT, September 11, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. McDonald's has a hotline to help employees sign up for food stamps and welfare and the hotline specifically encourages full-time employees to sign up for public assistance. A minimum wage--which ought to be a living wage--would not put increasingly productive full-time workers below the poverty line and on public assistance.

2. TAXPAYERS FOOT THE BILL FOR PUBLIC ASSISTANCE

SK/A06.04) Dan Fournier, UWIRE TEXT, January 31, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. There are numerous studies that have come out over the past several years - from economists on the left and right - showing that for every 100 employees Walmart hires, it costs the city [Seattle] just over $2 million in taxpayer funds to provide public services for the employees because they do not have a high enough income to obtain them in the private market. These things include food stamps, subsidized and public housing, low-income health insurance via Medicaid, and municipal services.

SK/A06.05) Schuyler Velasco, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 24, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The charge is that McDonald's and other fast food giants who pay their workers less than what many consider a "living wage" are letting taxpayers pick up the slack in the form of public assistance. A video released Wednesday by the labor advocacy group Low Pay is Not Ok drives the point home. In it, Nancy Salgado, a 10-year McDonald's employee in Chicago and a mother of two, calls a worker helpline called McResources, purportedly set up to help employees with financial issues. During the call, which the group recorded and edited, the operator suggests that Ms. Salgado apply for food stamps and Medicaid, giving her numbers in the Chicago area to call.

SK/A06.06) Tony Castagnoli, UWIRE TEXT, September 24, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Want to know how much the taxpayers are subsidizing the wages of low-income workers? Between welfare, food stamps, and government-backed health care, nearly $7 billion (according to a 2013 report released by the University of Illinois and University of California-Berkeley Labor Center).

3. TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES FOR FULL-TIME WORKERS ARE UNJUST

SK/A06.07) Tony Castagnoli, UWIRE TEXT, September 24, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Americans don't like to see too many people living on government assistance, and it's a shared value among conservatives and liberals that "hard work pays off." If this is so agreed upon, then what is the deal with full-time minimum wage workers not being adequately paid? Does it make any sense that they need government assistance to supplement their lack of a living income? No, it really doesn't.

4. WAGE INCREASES WILL REDUCE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE

SK/A06.08) James McGovern [Massachusetts Representative]. STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 9, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. We know that hunger is a subset of poverty. If people earned enough money, they wouldn't need help making ends meet - they wouldn't need Medicaid, SNAP, or housing assistance. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 and hasn't been raised in five years. The real value of today's minimum wage is less than two-thirds of what it was in 1968. The result of such a low minimum wage is that many full-time workers live in poverty and have to rely on public assistance programs in order to make ends meet.

SK/A06.09) James McGovern [Massachusetts Representative]. STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 9, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. I'm a cosponsor of the bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Doing so wouldn't just result in increased wages for American workers - although that's the most important result. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would cut SNAP spending by $4.6 billion per year.

SK/A06.10) James McGovern [Massachusetts Representative]. STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 9, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A recent study commissioned by the Center for American Progress documents this. They show that SNAP benefits decline 30 cents for every $1 increase in family earnings. This report goes on to show that a ten percent increase in the minimum wage reduces SNAP enrollment by between 2.4 percent and 3.2 percent and reduces SNAP spending by 1.9 percent. That means that 3.5 million Americans would be cut from SNAP not because of some arbitrary and hurtful policy but because they earn enough so they don't need SNAP any longer.

Reduces Child Labor

1. CHILD LABOR IS AN INTERNATIONAL DISGRACE

SK/A07.01) AMERICA, September 29, 2014, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Toxic working conditions, no living wage, 12-hour workdays--a sweatshop circa 1900? In fact, it is the economic reality of 2014, not just for adults, but for children, and not just in the developing world, but right here in the United States. A recent report about a 13-year-old girl working in North Carolina tobacco fields--under conditions even an adult should not endure--is shocking. More shocking is that it is perfectly legal for her to do so. Today young immigrants and children of migrants often perform jobs no one else will do in order to help their families survive in difficult economic times.

SK/A07.02) AMERICA, September 29, 2014, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The United States is not the only country where child labor is an issue. One in 10 Syrian refugee children in Turkey have to work to support their families. And while a U.N. convention sets 14 as the minimum age for work, in July Bolivia became the first nation to pass a law permitting 10-year-olds to work.

2. LIVING WAGE WILL REDUCE CHILD LABOR

SK/A07.03) AMERICA, September 29, 2014, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The global economy is becoming increasingly complex, but one thing is clear: parents should make a living wage, so their children will not have to work for a minimum one. Children should not be exploited as economic tools for someone else's profit.AT: Hurts Econ

1. STAGNANT WAGES HARM ECONOMIC GROWTH

SK/A08.01) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 12, 2014, p. SR10, LexisNexis Academic. Stagnating wages and widening inequality are the central economic challenges of our day. Without wage growth, the gains from economic expansion -- as measured by income and wealth -- become increasingly concentrated at the top of the economic ladder in a self-reinforcing process that makes broad prosperity impossible.

2. TAX BREAKS AND LOANS SHOULDNT SUBSIDIZE LOW WAGES

SK/A08.02) Brian Roewe, NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, August 30, 2013, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A 2011 study from Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center, looked at the use of public funds for economic development. In examining 238 subsidy programs from all 50 states and Washington that cost taxpayers more than $11 billion, it found that fewer than half imposed wage requirements for subsidized workers, and even less tied wages to local market rates. Those programs averaged an hourly rate of $14.76, while the study found programs without wage requirements paid at a level that often forced workers to use safety net programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid. "If you're going to give a company a tax break or a cheap loan in a competitive market ... you should require it to pay the wages that are the market-based wage rate in that market and industry so you're not paying that company to pull those wages down," said Greg LeRoy. Good Jobs First executive director.

3. LIVING WAGES DONT HARM LOCAL ECONOMIES

SK/A08.03) Brian Roewe, NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, August 30, 2013, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As for the effectiveness of living wage ordinances, few studies have examined that question, but others have found the parameters have not cost cities contracts or harmed their economies, as critics have often suggested. While challenges still exist, such as extending living wages to more workers, Conti said there's no denying that people have received more pay under living wage laws than without them. "Have they been the complete solution to the problem of low-wage work and income inequality? No. But have they worked? Absolutely," she said.

4. MOST ECONOMISTS FAVOR A LIVING WAGE

SK/A08.04) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Many economists embrace the idea, too. One survey by the University of Chicago last year asked economists about the idea of a more modest hike to $9 an hour. Even though the survey participants were split on whether the move would mean fewer jobs for low-skilled workers, 47 percent said it would be a "desirable policy," because of the pay benefits. Eleven percent thought it would be a bad idea, while 35 percent were uncertain or voiced no opinion.AT: Hurts Businesses

1. MOST LOW-WAGE WORKERS DONT WORK FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

SK/A09.01) Charles M. Blow, THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 17, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Some say that raising the minimum wage could hurt small businesses, though a Gallup poll in November showed that small businesses were split on increasing the minimum wage, with roughly half for and half against it. Furthermore, according to a report by the National Employment Law Project, ''the majority (66 percent) of low-wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations with over 100 employees.''

SK/A09.02) Jay Goltz, THE NEW YORK TIMES BLOGS, January 23, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. While these corporations try to hide behind small businesses, the reality is that most of the people making minimum wage work for large companies. That was the finding of a study by the National Employment Law Project, an organization that supports raising the minimum wage, and that's also been my personal observation.

2. MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE WOULDNT RAISE PRICES MUCH

SK/A09.03) Jessica Heppler, UWIRE TEXT, September 11, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Likewise, a group of professional economists supported a Florida proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.50, estimating that fast food business costs would rise by approximately 2.7 percent. To put this in perspective, McDonald's could cover more than half of these extra costs by raising the price of a Big Mac from $4.00 to a reasonable $4.05.

3. MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE DOESNT REDUCE PROFITS

SK/A09.04) Jessica Heppler, UWIRE TEXT, September 11, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Corporations can take steps to ensure that their employees--especially those working full-time--receive a living wage, many of which can learn something from Starbucks. When the company raised prices by 1 percent last year, they still saw a 25 percent increase in profit.

4. LOW WAGES ACTUALLY HURT BUSINESS SALES

SK/A09.05) Hiroko Tabuchi & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. Labor activists have long denounced retailers like Walmart for employing an army of low-wage, part-time workers to staff their stores. As retail sales flounder in an uncertain economy, those activists -- and even a growing number of retailers -- are linking those sluggish sales to the retailers' own low wages. On Thursday, organizers of a group called Our Walmart took to the streets in New York, Washington and Phoenix to draw attention to their campaign to change labor practices in retailing and other low-wage industries like fast-food restaurants. By not paying their workers a living wage, the activists say, such businesses squeeze the very people they hope to sell to.

SK/A09.06) Hiroko Tabuchi & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. Over all, a growing number of retailers cited stagnating incomes and weak spending as a threat to profits, the Center for American Progress said in a report last week. ''It's simple. When Americans don't have disposable income, retailers don't have customers,'' Brendan V. Duke, a policy analyst at the center, said last week. ''It's time for retailers and the rest of corporate America to connect the dots and realize the only way our economy can sustain consumer demand is by giving their workers a raise.''

5. LIVING WAGE RAISES EMPLOYEE MORALE & REDUCES TURNOVER

SK/A09.07) Rick Bell [managing editor], WORKFORCE, October 2014, p. 54, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The reasoning for a living, wage is not buried deep in the secret sauce. It draws a higher-skilled workforce, provides better customer service and deals with less turnover, which as we all know costs employers way more than it's worth. Other traditional low-wage workplaces like The Container Store and grocery chains Wegmans and Trader Joe's share a similar philosophy. The prevailing argument for boosting minimum wage is: It's the right thing to do. That's nice, but for a lot of organizations, it makes good business sense, too.

SK/A09.08) THE ECONOMIST, November 8, 2014, p. 30(US), GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Hermes is an investment manager with rather more clout than Mr Stead. It manages [pounds sterling]27.4 billion of assets and lobbies for companies to adopt the living wage. Saker Nusseibeh, its chief executive, says businesses need to have a purpose on top of simply making money. And, he says, treating the workers well can be good for the company. "Paternalistic companies like the Quaker groups of Cadbury and Fry survived and prospered in the 19th century by treating their workers well." This is a key part of the campaigners' argument. They say workers who are paid the living wage have better morale, making them more loyal and more productive. Barclays, a bank, found that its catering-staff retention increased from 54% to 77% following the introduction of the living wage, and its retention rate for cleaning staff rose from 35% to 92%.

SK/A09.09) Guy Opperman [Conservative Member of Parliament, Great Britain], NEW STATESMAN, August 9, 2013, p. 17, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Businesses and organisations that have committed to paying the living wage include everyone from the big corporate beasts such as Deloitte and Barclays to Aquila Way, a housing association in Gateshead, north-east England. I have met with some of these accredited firms and they all talk of improved morale and productivity. One firm increased staff retention in one department by 65 per cent.

SK/A09.10) Rick Bell [managing editor], WORKFORCE, October 2014, p. 54, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Here's some simple math for those with a soulless calculator: A living wage + a good workplace = a thriving, profitable business.

AT: Unemployment

1. WAGE INCREASES HAVE LITTLE EFFECT ON EMPLOYMENT

SK/A10.01) David Cooper [Economic Policy Institute], NATIONAL JOURNAL, August 28, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Of course, opponents of raising the minimum wage claim that raising the wage floor will do more harm than good, forcing businesses to reduce staff or cut hours. But rigorous peer-reviewed research synthesized by think tanks such as the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Economic Policy Institute has shown again (http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf) and again (http://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-statement/) that modest increases in the minimum wage, such as the proposed increase to $10.10, have little to no effect on employment. Even the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the policy would be beneficial for 98 percent of affected workers.

SK/A10.02) Michael Lerner, TIKKUN, Spring 2014, p. 5, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. He [Paul Krugman, NEW YORK TIMES columnist] added that raising the minimum wage has been shown to have "little or no adverse effect on employment, while simultaneously increasing workers' earnings."

SK/A10.03) David Wait, KAI TIAKI: NURSING NEW ZEALAND, May 2013, p. 33, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A challenge frequently raised against paying a living wage is that it will cost jobs. Again, the evidence doesn't support this. Studies looking at the impact on employment of the living wage in Los Angeles and San Francisco found the impact to be minimal--less than one per cent in the case of Los Angeles and in San Francisco it promoted employment.

SK/A10.04) CALIFORNIA BOOKWATCH, June 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Beginning in the late 1990s through 2008, San Francisco enacted nearly a dozen laws to raise pay, improve benefits, and help low-wage city residents and workers who were being hammed by the high cost of living in the City. As a result, over one in five San Francisco workers now receive good benefits. These new labor standards have improved living conditions across the city for low-wage workers and have not hurt employment at all: this account [WHEN MANDAES WORK, edited by Michael Reich et al.] follows the 15-year experiment San Francisco fostered, and considers its lasting impact and the myths and worries that didn't come true.

SK/A10.05) Arturo Bris [Professor of Finance, International Management & Development Institute, Switzerland]. STATES NEWS SERVICE, May 1, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But in general there is no conclusive evidence of a negative relationship between employment and minimum wages. Among the hundreds of articles that have empirically analyzed the link, some find a positive impact and some a negative relationship. In some settings, when the minimum wage is way below the equilibrium wage of the economy, the impact of minimum wage legislation can be negligible.

2. WAGE INCREASES HAVE NEVER INCREASED UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

SK/A10.06) Tony Castagnoli, UWIRE TEXT, September 24, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Anyway, the argument that raising the minimum wage would hurt the economy is outdated and misguided. There is no proof that this will happen; unemployment rates have never increased when the minimum wage was increased in the past. This is because instituting a greater cash flow for low-income workers results in higher rates of consumer spending in local economies, thus allowing more opportunities for businesses to hire because of an increase in customers.

3. HIGHER JOB CREATION ACCOMPANIES MINIMUM WAGE INCREASES

SK/A10.07) Jessica Heppler, UWIRE TEXT, September 11, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Critics should note that a recent study by the Center for Economic Policy and Research found that job creation was faster in states that raised the minimum wage in January 2014.Denmark Proves

1. DENMARKS LIVING WAGE MAKES LIFE AFFORDABLESK/A11.01) Liz Alderman & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 28, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. In interviews, Danish employees of McDonald's, Burger King and Starbucks said that even though Denmark had one of the world's highest costs of living -- about 30 percent higher than in the United States -- their $20 wage made life affordable.

2. LIVING WAGE DOES NOT HURT BUSINESSESSK/A11.02) Liz Alderman & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 28, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. If Danish chains can pay $20 an hour, why can't those in the United States pay the $15 an hour that many fast-food workers have been clamoring for? ''We see from Denmark that it's possible to run a profitable fast-food business while paying workers these kinds of wages,'' said John Schmitt, an economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington.

SK/A11.03) Liz Alderman & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 28, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. But as Denmark illustrates, companies have managed to adapt in countries that demand a living wage, and economists like Mr. Schmitt see it as a possible model. Denmark has no minimum-wage law. But Mr. Elofsson's $20 an hour is the lowest the fast-food industry can pay under an agreement between Denmark's 3F union, the nation's largest, and the Danish employers group Horesta, which includes Burger King, McDonald's, Starbucks and other restaurant and hotel companies.

SK/A11.04) Liz Alderman & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 28, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. Danish law does not require fast-food companies or their franchisees to adhere to the wages required by the agreement with the 3F union. But they do, because employees and unions pledge in exchange not to engage in strikes, demonstrations or boycotts. ''What employers get is peace,'' said Peter Lykke Nielsen, the 3F union's chief negotiator with McDonald's.Most Americans Support

1. OVERWHELMING MAJORITY FAVORS RAISING MINIMUM WAGESK/A12.01) Charles M. Blow, THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 17, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. According to a Gallup poll last year, 71 percent of adults (91 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents and 50 percent of Republicans) said they would vote for a law that would raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour on Election Day if they could.

SK/A12.02) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. In polls, most Americans say they support President Obama's call for a higher federal minimum wage of $10.10 an hour. A September CBS News/New York Times poll found 70 percent of US adults were in favor of that idea, and 28 percent opposed.

SK/A12.03) Jim Hightower, THE PROGRESSIVE, April 2013, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Seventy percent of Americans--including a majority of Republican women (but not men)--favor raising the minimum wage above $10 an hour, according to a poll last June.

2. VOTERS HAVE SOUNDLY ENDORSED WAGE RAISES

SK/A12.04) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Even in a year when voters went heavily Republican in their selection of elected officials, voters in four generally conservative states opted to support one of President Obama's top economic priorities: higher pay levels for workers at the bottom rung of the wage ladder. The minimum wage votes mean higher pay for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Wage-hike advocates say the votes - which affect Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota - signal strong public backing nationwide for boosting minimum pay in an economy where inflation has been outpacing pay for many workers.

SK/A12.05) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The argument that the minimum wage should also be a "living wage" resonated in cities as well as states. Voters in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., voted to raise their local minimums Tuesday, even though the idea failed in another California city, Eureka.

SK/A12.06) Harry Bruinius, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, September 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. "I applaud Mayor de Blasio for raising wages for thousands of New Yorkers who are working hard every day to make ends meet," said US Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, in a statement. "Since President Obama first called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage, 13 states, Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Diego, and other cities have acted to boost wages for those at the bottom of the income ladder." Seattle became the first major American city to raise its minimum wage to $15 this past June. Cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago also have proposed raising their minimum wages.

3. LIVING WAGE ORDINANCES HAVE BEEN WIDELY ADOPTED

SK/A12.07) Joseph Valentine [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics], MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW, June 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. According to Pollin [author of A MEASURE OF FAIRNESS: THE ECONOMICS OF LIVING WAGES AND MINIMUM WAGES IN THE UNITED STATES], no fewer than 140 different municipalities enacted living-wage ordinances between 1994 (when the movement began in Baltimore) and 2007.

****LIVING WAGE IS AN UNSOUND POLICY

1. LIVING WAGE CANNOT BE ADEQUATELY DEFINED

SK/N01.01) Joseph Valentine [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics], MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW, June 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Many people will read A Measure of Fairness and recall the fast-food worker strikes that took place in the summer of 2013. In several major cities, workers walked out of fast-food restaurants to begin striking for an hourly compensation rate of $15--what they believed to be a living wage. But $15 in Detroit is not the same as $15 in New York City or Los Angeles; likewise, cities in different regions are subject to unique price and wage pressures that can subtly or drastically shift the living-wage discussion. To some, this basic fact may call into question the very notion of a "living wage" in the absence of a concrete definition; for others, it is less of an issue.

2. MOST LIVING WAGE BENEFICIARIES ARE NOT IN POVERTY

SK/N01.02) STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 14, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In reviewing the effect of living wages on poverty, the report notes a study of seven major U.S. cities that found 72 per cent of workers benefitting from living wage laws were not actually poor. Of the 28 per cent who were considered poor, only one-third moved above the poverty line. "Living wage laws often don't help the most poverty-ridden families, in part, because the overwhelming proportion of those benefitting from living wage laws tends not to be poor," Lammam [Fraser Institute, Canada] said.

3. LIVING WAGE CONCEPT IS FATALLY FLAWED

SK/N01.03) Travis Toth, UWIRE TEXT, June 11, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Really, the whole concept of a minimum wage puts far too much emphasis on guaranteeing a basic standard of living through gainful employment. To me, that's something we should be providing for everyone regardless of their employment standing. I'm a firm believer in the basic income program. Essentially, the government would pay citizens a monthly stipend, perhaps equivalent to our current minimum wage, purely for being citizens. Then, everyone would be free to explore their field of interest without having to worry about keeping a roof over their head and food on the table.

LIVING WAGE VIOLATES FREEDOM OF CONTRACT

1. FREEDOM OF CONTRACT DEMANDS WAGE NEGOTIATIONS

SK/N02.01) Ben Lodge [Adam Smith Institute], STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 14, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Firstly, exploitation is subjective. For those who are 21 years old or over, the national minimum wage [in Britain] is currently u6.08 - do we really believe that the moment they earn u6.07 they are being exploited? Why should it be left to government bureaucrats to arbitrarily decide what constitutes exploitation? Payment should be between the employer and employee. If the employee doesn't like the offer being made they are free to refuse it and if they are willing to accept it, then it's not for anybody else to label it exploitation.

SK/N02.02) Donald J. Boudreaux [Professor of Economics, George Mason U.], PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE REVIEW, February 12, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The market is a vast and complex pattern of voluntary choices and exchanges - including the taking of financial risks - that emerge when each individual is free to produce, to sell and to buy according to his or her own individual lights. The only constraints upon such exchanges are the rules of private property and of freedom of contract. If I want your pet frog or your productive factory, I can get it only if I agree to give you something that you voluntarily accept in exchange.

2. LOW-SKILL WORKERS ARE NOT WORTH LIVING WAGE RATES

SK/N02.03) Steven Gillard, UWIRE TEXT, September 10, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Minimum wage jobs are minimum wage because they require minimal skill. It would be ludicrous for me to walk up to my boss and demand $15 an hour for scooping popcorn, yet fast food workers are demanding the exact same thing and this belief is somehow recognized as legitimate. Demanding $15 an hour for pushing buttons on a computer terminal and flipping burgers is laughable. And no, "working hard" is not defined as long, unforgiving hours at a thankless job. Working hard is acquiring skills to put yourself in a position of success; working hard is going above and beyond and setting yourself apart from the rest.

SK/N02.04) UWIRE TEXT, September 6, 2013, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Before labeling the current minimum wage rate as "unfair," consider the reasoning, or lack thereof, behind this number. Rather than reflecting the value of the work done by low-level workers, the current rate simply represents an arbitrary amount deemed fitting by the government.

SK/N02.05) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 675-676. Similarly, if a minimum wage rate exceeds the contribution of some employees to the firm's revenue, the firm can either terminate some employees or subsidize their employment, and if they are subsidized, then the firm likely will forego hiring some persons it otherwise would have hired, and aggregate employment, thus, will be reduced.

MINIMUM WAGE IS NOT TOO LOW

1. FEW WORKERS EARN THE MINIMUM WAGE

SK/N03.01) Hiroko Tabuchi & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. The federation [National Retail Federation] argued that retail workers earn above-average pay if temporary workers, including those hired for holiday sales, are excluded. Retail workers ages 25 to 54 who work full time for at least three consecutive months make an average of $38,376 a year, slightly more than full-time workers in nonretail jobs, the group said.

SK/N03.02) Hiroko Tabuchi & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. And speaking to reporters after a conference call Wednesday, Douglas McMillon, Walmart's chief executive, stressed that less than 6,000 workers of its American work force of 1.3 million currently made the minimum wage, and that the retailer intended to eventually move them off that wage level.

2. MINIMUM-WAGE WORKERS ARE QUICKLY PROMOTED

SK/N03.03) Hiroko Tabuchi & Steven Greenhouse, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. Walmart also stressed that many of its workers were quickly promoted to better-paying jobs. ''At Walmart, it doesn't take too long to advance beyond the minimum wage level,'' said Kory Lundberg, a spokesman for Walmart. He said that Walmart had promoted 170,000 people last year to jobs with higher pay. ''It's obviously a very important debate, but starting wage isn't the main issue,'' he said. ''The main issue is the opportunity you have to grow and advance and take home higher pay.''

3. MOST MINIMUM-WAGE WORKERS ARE NOT BREADWINNERS

SK/N03.04) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 673-674. Commentators question how the minimum wage can be effective in promoting economic independence since the majority of minimum wage earners are no longer the primary wage earners in a household.

4. MINIMUM WAGE HAS RISEN SUBSTANTIALLY

SK/N03.05) UWIRE TEXT, September 6, 2013, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The discrepancy between minimum wage and the mean hourly rate paid to employees nationwide has shrunken dramatically. When McDonald's was founded in 1948, the minimum wage rate was only four percent of what the average American employee received. Today, that percentage is over 30 percent.

5. MINIMUM WAGE AMOUNTS TO A LIVING WAGE

SK/N03.06) Lydia DePillis, WASHINGTON POST BLOGS, October 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The group [Jobs Now] started by filing complaints with the [Wisconsin] Department of Workforce Development from 100 low-wage workers, charging that the minimum wage was nowhere near enough to support a decent standard of living. Walker's administration rejected them, ruling that there was "no reasonable cause to believe that the wages paid to the complainants are not a living wage" - and based its decision on a study from the restaurant industry charging that a higher minimum would economically damage the state. A spokeswoman also told the Wisconsin State Journal that the governor was trying to "help employers create jobs that pay far more than the minimum wage or any other proposed minimum."

6. MINIMUM WAGE PROTESTS HAVE FIZZLED OUT

SK/N03.07) Katie Lobosco, CNN WIRE, November 28, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But Walmart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said as of Friday afternoon, no employees at any location had come into work and then walked off the job. The company had received a handful of notices from workers who said they were planning to strike today, she said, but an official tally of employees who didn't show up for work was not yet available. Only one Walmart worker, Barbara Gertz, spoke at the rally outside the New Jersey store, and she actually works in Colorado. The union-backed groups often cover travel costs for workers who come to protest. Most of the protesters in New Jersey were not workers, but members of unions including the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the American Postal Workers Union.

LIVING WAGE WILL NOT HELP THE POOR

1. LIVING WAGE MERELY REDISTRIBUTES INCOME AMONG THE POOR

SK/N04.01) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 674-675. One study suggests that the minimum wage does not help in the war against poverty but merely serves to redistribute income among low-income families rather than to them.

SK/N04.02) David Neumark [Professor of Economics, U. of California, Irvine] et al., ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, November 2013, SAGE JOURNALS, p.278. Overall, the results show that although the number of workers receiving wage increases is considerably higher than the number of workers experiencing job losses, the aggregate effect on the distribution of income is negligible. In other words, the simulations suggest that the living wage mandate would mainly redistribute income from some low-skilled workers who lose jobs to other low-skilled workers who earn higher wages.

SK/N04.03) STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 14, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As more Canadian municipalities consider adopting so-called living wage laws, a new report published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank, concludes these laws can actually hurt low-paid workers. The report, The Economic Effects of Living Wage Laws, reviews scholarly research on living wage laws in the United States, where more than 140 municipalities have the legislation, and spotlights the effects on employment, wages and poverty.

SK/N04.04) STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 14, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "The best available evidence from the U.S. serves as a cautionary tale for us in Canada about adopting living wage laws. When governments try to legislate wages, there's typically a trade-off-while some workers may benefit from a higher wage, their gain comes at the expense of others who lose as a result of fewer employment opportunities," said Charles Lammam, study author and resident scholar in economic policy at the Fraser Institute.

2. WAGE GAINS ARE OFFSET BY DECLINES IN ASSISTANCE

SK/N04.05) David Neumark [Professor of Economics, U. of California, Irvine] et al., ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, November 2013, SAGE JOURNALS, p. 279. Finally, Table 3 also reports the changes in aggregate earnings and benefit amounts that are implied by simulating the impact of the living wage. Based on the simulated effects, family earnings would increase by approximately $11.6 million. Referring back to Table 2, these increases come from the approximately 34,000 workers who experience a wage increase, whereas approximately 6,000 workers experience reduced earnings due to disemployment. SNAP [food stamp] benefits decline only slightly, whereas EITC [Earned Income Tax Credit\] benefits would decline by approximately $4.6 million, offsetting over one third of the income gains.

3. LIVING WAGE WILL DECIMATE CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS

SK/N04.06) Suzanne Perry, CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY, May 22, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The National Human Services Assembly, a nonprofit coalition, has not taken a position on the minimum wage, says Irv Katz, its chief executive. But, he says, "I'm going to guess a lot of my colleagues in human-services organizations are really divided on this. We recognize that unskilled workers haven't had a raise in years, and they deserve one. But going from seven-something an hour to 10-something an hour is a huge leap and would almost necessarily result in reduced levels of service."

SK/N04.07) Suzanne Perry, CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY, May 22, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Nonprofits that rely on state reimbursements to provide services say it would be difficult for them to absorb a minimum-wage increase.

4. LIVING WAGE FAILS TO REDUCE WELFARE CASELOADS

SK/N04.08) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, p. 675. Another study documents that an increase in welfare caseloads accompanied a minimum wage hike, suggesting that minimum wage policies are not effective in securing financial independence for low-income workers.

LIVING WAGE CAUSES INFLATIONARY SPIRAL

1. LIVING WAGE WILL CAUSE BIG JUMP IN PRICES

SK/N05.01) UWIRE TEXT, September 6, 2013, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Regardless of how well-intentioned those striking fast-food workers are, the fact still remains that a rise in minimum wage will only burden the consumer with increasingly expensive menu items. Customers are fickle creatures and an increase in prices will do little, if anything, to lure them toward the Golden Arches. Nor will increased operating costs encourage restaurants to hire more workers.

SK/N05.02) UWIRE TEXT, September 6, 2013, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Some of the hardest hit would be the 50 million Americans who order from a fast-food restaurant on a daily basis. The sustainability of more than just the McDonald's Dollar Menu would come into question. Fast-food companies would undoubtedly scale back the number of persons employed if faced with a doubling or near-doubling of all low-level workers' salaries.

2. HIGHER PRICES HURT THE POOR

SK/N05.03) Paul Davidson, USA TODAY, August 29, 2013, p. 1A, LexisNexis Academic. Corporations, however, say forcing them to raise wages will mean fewer jobs and higher prices, hurting those with lower incomes in particular.

SK/N05.04) Aaron C. Davis, THE WASHINGTON POST, September 15, 2013, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. Mayor [of Washington, DC] Vincent C. Gray's decision this week to veto a law requiring Wal-Mart to offer higher pay pitted support for a "living wage" against a desire to spur investment and job growth in the city. But for Pegues and thousands like him who cross the city line every day on their way to the Landover Wal-Mart, the battle was about something more basic: low prices. Gray's decision brought focus to the flip side of the living-wage debate: Wal-Mart's customers are often as economically disadvantaged as those who scrape by on its hourly wages.

3. A VICIOUS INFLATIONARY WAGE-PRICE SPIRAL WILL RESULT

SK/N05.05) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, p. 676. Finally, the increase in labor costs can spur inflation and undercut the real minimum wage, precipitating an endless spiral.

SK/N05.06) Travis Toth, UWIRE TEXT, June 11, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The city of Seattle is planning on increasing its minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of the "Fight for 15" campaign, according to The American Prospect. Raising an arbitrary standard will lead to prices increasing to balance the economy. This change then necessitates an even higher minimum wage. It's a vicious cycle, really.

LIVING WAGE WILL HARM BUSINESSES

1. LIVING WAGE WILL WIPE OUT BUSINESS PROFITS

SK/N06.01) Steven Gillard, UWIRE TEXT, September 10, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The Heritage Foundation calculated that raising the minimum wage in the fast food industry to $15 an hour would lead to a 77 percent decrease in profits, as well as a 38 percent increase in prices. Essentially, paying employees $15 an hour would wipe out the profit margin of fast food companies and make it more difficult for those who rely on cheap fast food for meals to afford them.

SK/N06.02) James Surowiecki, THE NEW YORKER, August 12, 2013, p. 35, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Today, the country's biggest employers are retailers and fast-food chains, almost all of which have built their businesses on low pay--they've striven to keep wages down and unions out--and low prices. This complicates things, in part because of the nature of these businesses. They make plenty of money, but most have slim profit margins: Walmart and Target earn between three and four cents on the dollar; a typical McDonald's franchise restaurant earns around six cents on the dollar before taxes, according to an analysis from Janney Capital Markets. In fact, the combined profits of all the major retailers, restaurant chains, and supermarkets in the Fortune 500 are smaller than the profits of Apple alone. Yet Apple employs just seventy-six thousand people, while the retailers, supermarkets, and restaurant chains employ 5.6 million. The grim truth of those numbers is that low wages are a big part of why these companies are able to stay profitable while offering low prices.

SK/N06.03) Jay Goltz, THE NEW YORK TIMES BLOGS, January 23, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. That said, there is a limit to how much businesses, of any size, can afford to pay in minimum wages. While the current minimum is certainly too low, I get nervous when I hear people talking about increasing it to $15 an hour. Some people may consider that a "livable wage" - but I believe that a $15-an-hour minimum wage would create huge problems for businesses.

SK/N06.04) Joseph Valentine [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics], MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW, June 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Interestingly, although estimates vary between fast-food and more leisurely dining establishments, research shows that demand for food prepared away from home is highly elastic. This high elasticity of demand suggests that cost increases are unlikely to be passed on to consumers via higher prices. So, can restaurants (a notoriously shaky industry to begin with) raise prices without a corresponding decline in demand and therefore revenue?

SK/N06.05) Suzanne Heller Clain, ATLANTIC ECONOMIC JOURNAL, September 2012, p. 315, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The political obstacles to the passage of living wage legislation can be gleaned from the news coverage of ongoing or failed living wage campaigns and from some of the evaluations of the prospective impacts of the legislation, written by hired economic consultants. It is clear from news reports that businesses that could be subject to the legislation are concerned about the associated rise in labor costs and the ultimate impact on profitability. As a redistributive tool, the legislation does have the potential to impact businesses negatively.

2. COST OF LIVING WAGE WILL BE BORNE BY SMALL BUSINESS

SK/N06.06) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 672-673. Nevertheless, concerns persist about the effectiveness, as well as the unintended consequences of the FLSA's minimum wage provision. For example, it is argued that the economic brunt of the legislation is borne, not by society as a whole as a means of insuring a living wage for workers, but instead by small business owners who employ unskilled labor.

LIVING WAGE WILL HARM THE ECONOMY

1. LIVING WAGE WILL OVERBURDEN TAXPAYERS

SK/N07.01) STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 14, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Finally, the report cautions that the cost of living wage laws may be passed on to taxpayers. "With higher labour costs for city contractors, there is the potential for living wage laws to result in larger city budgets and higher municipal taxes," Lammam [Fraser Institute, Canada] said.

2. LIVING WAGE WILL STIFLE LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

SK/N07.02) David Neumark [Professor of Economics, U. of California, Irvine] et al., ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, November 2013, SAGE JOURNALS, pp. 280-281. Moreover the larger report (Charles River Associates, 2011), of which our labor market research was one component, also studied how the real estate market in New York City was likely to be affected by the proposed living wage law. The real estate analysis suggested potentially quite adverse effects on real estate development in New York City owing to the coverage of the living wage law, to whom liability would have been extended, and the penalties for noncompliance, which include repayment of the financial assistance received. Because labor markets and real estate markets are closely related, were these adverse effects on real estate development to occur, the labor market impacts could be worse than the relatively modest impacts suggested by our labor market analysis.

SK/N07.03) Kris Hart, THE WASHINGTON POST, September 7, 2013, p. A14, LexisNexis Academic. The District [of Columbia] has made so much progress in business development and local neighborhood revitalization. This conversation about a "living wage" is ridiculous and will only further slow our economy. Are all workers in the city to be paid a "living wage"? I own several small businesses in Washington. The Large Retailer Accountability Act reveals a lack of understanding among city leaders about fundamental economics. Jobs create jobs. Development creates better neighborhoods.

SK/N07.04) Nancy Ploeger [President, Manhattan Chamber of Commerce], THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 3, 2012, p. A24, LexisNexis Academic. ''A Living Wage, Long Overdue'' (editorial, Dec. 26) did not mention New York City's own failed experience with a so-called living-wage law: the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. Rather than a bustling retail center creating thousands of jobs, the armory sits embarrassingly empty after politicians demanded wage requirements more than two years ago. Today, no serious plan is in sight for Kingsbridge, and the community is deprived of good jobs.

SK/N07.05) Editorial, DAILY NEWS (New York), January 15, 2012, p. 34, LexisNexis Academic. What Quinn [New York City Council] came to understand, first, was the insanity and unfairness of subsidizing, say, the developer of a mall and then trying to require tenants, who got no benefit, to boost their wages. That's what living-wage supporters tried to force on the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. Related Cos., the developer, planned to spend $300 million to turn the hulking white elephant into a retail shopping mall, creating 1,000 construction jobs and 1,200 permanent positions. The builder tried to explain that national retailers would never agree to change countrywide pay scales in order to do business in the city. The living-wage diehards, led by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, refused to listen. They gave Related an ultimatum. Related killed the project as economically impossible. Infamously, Diaz declared he'd rather have no jobs than the jobs the mall would have generated. And that's exactly what he got in the borough with the city's highest unemployment: no jobs.

LIVING WAGE WILL HURT LOW-INCOME AREAS

1. LIVING WAGE WILL HURT DEVELOPMENT IN LOW-INCOME AREAS

SK/N08.01) Aaron C. Davis, THE WASHINGTON POST, September 15, 2013, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. On Thursday, Gray [Mayor of Washington, DC] vetoed the so-called Large Retailer Accountability Act, which would have required retailers with corporate sales of $1 billion or more and operating District stores of at least 75,000 square feet to pay their employees a "living wage" - no less than $12.50 an hour in combined wages and benefits. The mayor said the measure would have harmed District residents, depriving them of access to Wal-Mart's inexpensive groceries and other sale items. He said it would have blocked hundreds of jobs planned for Wal-Mart's new stores - and turned off other retail chains that might have decided the cost of doing business in the District was too high.

SK/N08.02) Aaron C. Davis, THE WASHINGTON POST, September 15, 2013, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. Rebekah Peeples Massengill, author of "Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century," said she was not surprised the living-wage effort appeared headed for failure [in Washington, DC]. "For people in underserved areas, Wal-Mart can bring goods that would not otherwise be available, and the trade-offs for what that means for workers at those stores is a very complex moral discussion," she said.

SK/N08.03) Mike DeBonis, THE WASHINGTON POST, July 13, 2013, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. The District's top economic development official warned Friday that a "living wage" bill passed by the D.C. Council could reverberate well beyond Wal-Mart, threatening developments in which the retail giant is not taking part. Victor L. Hoskins, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, would not say whether he would recommend that Mayor Vincent C. Gray veto the legislation, which would require some large retailers to provide minimum wages and benefits of $12.50 an hour. But he said its passage into law would have a "chilling impact" on retail growth in the city, driving away not only Wal-Mart - which has said it will abandon three of six planned stores should the bill become law - but also other national retailers considered more desirable by residents and elected officials.

SK/N08.04) Mike DeBonis, THE WASHINGTON POST, July 13, 2013, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. "What they're doing is, they're killing the golden goose," Hoskins [deputy mayor, Washington, DC] said of city lawmakers, citing figures of 3,000 permanent jobs, 1,000 construction jobs and untold tax revenue lost over the next 18 months should the bill pass and Wal-Mart follow through on its ultimatum. Although lawmakers may think they are targeting Wal-Mart, he added, other retailers are "concerned it may one day turn on them."

2. LIVING WAGE WILL PRODUCE URBAN FOOD DESERTS

SK/N08.05) Aaron C. Davis, THE WASHINGTON POST, September 15, 2013, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. But in an interview following the veto, Gray [Mayor of Washington, DC] said the city's lack of available and affordable groceries and retail - including at the boarded-up Skyland shopping center, where after pressure from Gray, Wal-Mart would put a store near the mayor's longtime family home - outweighed any urge he had in setting a national precedent. "One city," said Gray, using his slogan for city unity, "is being able to have reasonable access for people wherever they are, wherever they live, and nobody can make that argument, frankly, about access to some of these amenities. You look of areas of Ward 7 and 8, they are really food deserts, retail deserts."

3. LIVING WAGE WILL IMPAIR AFFORDABLE HOUSING

SK/N08.06) David Seifman, THE NEW YORK POST, November 22, 2011, p. 21, LexisNexis Academic. Legislation requiring companies receiving city subsidies to pay the "living wage" would endanger the city's affordable-housing plan for half a million New Yorkers, the Bloomberg administration warned last night. "[The legislation] would be put in jeopardy because the ground-floor retail that many developers use to subsidize affordable housing would no longer produce the necessary financial benefits," Deputy Mayor Robert Steel said in a letter addressed to "interested parties."

LIVING WAGE WILL INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT

1. STUDIES SHOW LIVING WAGE DECREASES EMPLOYMENT

SK/N09.01) STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 14, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Although activists claim living wage laws can increase wages with minimal costs, the reality is quite different. According to the best available research, a 100 per cent increase in the living wage (for example, going from an hourly minimum wage of $10 to $20) reduces employment among low-wage workers by between 12 and 17 per cent.

SK/N09.02) David Neumark [Professor of Economics, U. of California, Irvine] et al., ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, November 2013, SAGE JOURNALS, p. 275. Applying this elasticity to the increase in the wage floor from the New York state minimum wage of $6.75 to the $10 living wage that the law would entail, a 48.1% increase implies an employment decline of 2.65% (0.055 0.481 100) among those earning less than $10 per hour.

SK/N09.03) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, August 20, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. But when two other economists, David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board, surveyed studies that have been done over the past two decades, they found the evidence weighted toward the view that boosting the minimum wage has at least modest negative effects on job creation.

SK/N09.04) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 662-663. The paper then reports the results of a study completed by the authors which analyzed the unemployment rates in contiguous counties with different minimum wage rates in the Pacific Northwest. It compared unemployment rates in geographically contiguous counties of the two states that had the largest difference in minimum wage rates, both in absolute terms ($ 2.48) and as a percentage of the federal minimum wage (48%). The study examined this gap in the context of a consistent increase in one state's minimum wage rate over several years, while the other state's wage rate remained unchanged. The analysis of the data reveals that, from an economic perspective, there is a strong correlation between a higher legislated minimum wage rate and a higher unemployment rate.

SK/N09.05) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 683-684. While the effect of minimum wage legislation on unfair competition remains largely anecdotal, its effect on employment has been the subject of both criticism and empirical analysis. The study reported in this paper validates that criticism, at least with respect to situations where increases in the minimum wage rate are large enough to be binding. The results of this study suggest that, while the marginal effects of typical minimum wage rate increases tend to be small, unusually large and consistent increases do produce a disemployment effect, and as a result, may frustrate the economic and social goals advanced as their justification.

SK/N09.06) Editorial, THE NEW YORK POST, May 13, 2011, p. 28, LexisNexis Academic. Take the living wage: In a preliminary study released by the city [New York City] this week, economists pegged job losses at as much as 100,000, should the living-wage bill become law. That's because the costs of the higher wage would wipe out the benefits of city aid, which is meant as an incentive for developers and businesses to expand. Thus, there'd be fewer projects, fewer businesses . . . fewer jobs.

2. ITS THE BASIC ECONOMIC LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND

SK/N09.07) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, p. 675. Aside from concerns about its effectiveness in advancing the economic status of wage-earners, is the concern that the minimum wage rates, along with increases in its legislated amount, adversely affect employment. Critics contend that the data provide that "an artificial increase in the price of [labor necessarily] causes less of it to be bought," a predictable outcome in the law of supply and demand.

SK/N09.08) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, August 20, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. A big question, though, is whether pushing up the minimum wage would dim the employment prospects of many who need jobs the most: young or unskilled workers. In economics, the general rule is that if something becomes more expensive, people will buy less of it. In this case, critics warn that minimum-wage hikes will cause employers to scale back on hiring - using alternatives such as automation or foreign outsourcing wherever they can.

SK/N09.09) Dr. Eammon Butler [Adam Smith Institute], STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 18, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. When you fix prices, you get shortages. By fixing the price of labour too high, the minimum wage causes a shortage of jobs. It is hardly a difficult thing to understand. It may sound harsh, but we should scrap the minimum wage.

SK/N09.10) Paul Davidson, USA TODAY, August 29, 2013, p. 1A, LexisNexis Academic. Angelo Amador, vice president of labor and workforce policy for the National Restaurant Association, says "a lot of jobs could disappear" if wages rose to $15 an hour. Some franchisees, he adds, likely would choose not to expand in regions where labor costs increase.

SK/N09.11) Suzanne Perry, CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY, May 22, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But debates over the impact of wage increases have been playing out at state and local levels. Hard-line opponents-generally conservative and employers groups-say the requirement would hurt workers by forcing businesses to cut their payrolls or set up shop in other parts of the country.

SK/N09.12) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, p. 676. Further, economists note that evidence of negative employment effects is sufficiently strong, and caution that raising the minimum wage rate is likely to harm the availability and characteristics of jobs for those workers whose wages are likely to be most impacted.

3. CRITICISMS OF THESE STUDIES ARE BOGUS

SK/N09.13) David Neumark [Professor of Economics, U. of California, Irvine] et al., INDUSTRIAL & LABOR RELATIONS REVIEW, Spring 2014, LexisNexis Academic, p. 644. In particular, echoing long-standing concerns in the minimum wage literature, Dube et al. (2010) and Allegretto et al. (2011) attempted to construct better counterfactuals for estimating how minimum wages affect employment. When they narrowed the source of identifying variation--looking either at deviations around state-specific linear trends or at within-region or within-county-pair variation--they found no effects of minimum wages on employment, rather than negative effects. Based on this evidence, they argued that the negative employment effects for low-skilled workers found in the literature are spurious and generated by other differences across geographic areas that were not adequately controlled for by researchers. The analysis we present here, however, provides compelling evidence that their methods are flawed and lead to incorrect conclusions. In particular, the methods they advocate do not isolate more reliable identifying information (i.e., a better counterfactual).

SK/N09.14) David Neumark [Professor of Economics, U. of California, Irvine] et al., INDUSTRIAL & LABOR RELATIONS REVIEW, Spring 2014, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 644-645. Moreover, when we let the data determine the appropriate control states to use for estimating the effects of state minimum wage increases in the CPS data, we find strong evidence of disemployment effects, with teen employment elasticities near -0.15. The findings from similar analyses of restaurant employment in the QCEW data are a bit more mixed, but the weighted estimates again point to negative employment effects (with smaller elasticities of around -0.05). Thus, our analysis substantially undermines the strong conclusions that ADR and DLR draw--that there are "no detectable employment losses from the kind of minimum wage increases we have seen in the United States" (DLR 2010, p. 962), and that "Interpretations of the quality and nature of the evidence in the existing minimum wage literature . . . , must be revised substantially" (ADR 2011: 238).

SK/N09.15) Sally Goldenberg, THE NEW YORK POST, May 12, 2011, p. 2, LexisNexis Academic. An economist lauded by anti-Walmart activists for his study of the retailer's impact on the city economy has now come under fire from the same groups. David Neumark, in a study commissioned for Mayor Bloomberg, is critical of the "living wage" bill being debated in the City Council. Anti-Walmart and pro-living-wage groups share many of the same members - including elected officials, unions and other operatives - making their two positions on Neumark's work curious, a Bloomberg spokesman said. "It's disappointing and obviously hypocritical when advocates hail an academic when his research fits their theory and then trash his reputation when his research conflicts with their agenda," said spokesman Andrew Brent.

LIVING WAGE WILL DECIMATE LOW-SKILL WORKERS

1. EMPLOYERS WONT HIRE LOW-SKILL WORKERS

SK/N10.01) STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 14, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The report notes that employers also respond to living wage laws by hiring more qualified workers and passing over those with fewer skills thereby reducing the opportunity for less-skilled workers to participate in the labour market. "Less-skilled workers are presumably among the very people living wage laws are supposed to help, but the evidence suggests these laws particularly hurt less-skilled, lower paid workers," Lammam [Fraser Institute, Canada] said.

SK/N10.02) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, August 30, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Supporters advocate a 'living wage' for fast-food jobs. Opponents say it would distort a free market and could easily backfire by wiping out many jobs now held by workers with few skills.

SK/N10.03) Dr. Eammon Butler [Adam Smith Institute], STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 18, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Indeed, minimum wages make it harder for jobless people to find a job. Particularly young people without experience, other people without skills, not to mention women and ethnic minorities against whom employers commonly discriminate. It has a particularly bad effect for young people, without job experience or who lack skills or the habits of work. Quite simply, they are not worth so much to an employer; and if employers figure they are not worth the minimum wage - plus national insurance, pension benefits and everything else that has to be added in to the employment bill - then they simply won't get hired.

SK/N10.04) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Higher pay for low-income workers won't, by itself, solve America's economic challenges. The move can make entry-level jobs harder to come by, some academic research finds. And wage gains at the bottom don't necessarily do much for stagnant pay in middle-tier jobs.

SK/N10.05) MENA REPORT, April 2, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The National Retail Federation today called Senate legislation aimed at increasing the federal minimum wage by 40 percent an anti-job tax that would lead to higher labor costs for employers and fewer opportunities for young and entry-level workers.

SK/N10.06) MENA REPORT, April 2, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Raising the standard of living for low-skill, low-wage workers is a valid goal, NRF [National Retail Federation] Senior Vice President for Government Relations David French said in a letter to the entire Senate. But there is clear evidence that mandated wage hikes undermine the job prospects for less skilled and part-time workers.

SK/N10.07) David Neumark [Professor of Economics, U. of California, Irvine] et al., INDUSTRIAL & LABOR RELATIONS REVIEW, Spring 2014, LexisNexis Academic, p. 610. The ILRR symposium launched a new body of contemporary research on the minimum wage, much of which was summarized in the Neumark and Wascher book Minimum Wages (2008). In that book, our evaluation and summary of the evidence concluded that "[M]inimum wages reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers, especially those who are most directly affected by the minimum wage" (Neumark and Wascher 2008: 6).

2. LOW WAGES PROVIDE OPPORUNITY TO LEARN VALUABLE SKILLS

SK/N10.08) UWIRE TEXT, September 6, 2013, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Basic economic theory states that when a price floor is set on a certain good, the supply of that good usually outstrips the demand for it. The government imposes difficulties on employers and those actively searching for work by imposing a price floor on the cost of labor. Without such a barrier, companies such as McDonald's would be able to hire more people and thus provide a larger segment of the population with the skills necessary to progress in a competitive labor market. Skill-building should be the primary goal among fast-food workers, not increased salaries.

SK/N10.09) Ben Lodge [Adam Smith Institute], STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 14, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. An important factor in this debate that is often overlooked is that those earning less than the minimum wage would be gaining valuable experience and learning new skills. The importance of this is not to be underestimated - thousands of young people in this country are willing to take on unpaid internships in order to gain these benefits.

SK/N10.10) Dr. Eammon Butler [Adam Smith Institute], STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 18, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Many young people are prepared to work for less than the minimum wage simply in order to get some experience and to have a positive reference on their CV. We see that all the time with Parliamentary interns, whom MPs are very willing to take on as unpaid dogsbodies. And for hundreds of years, apprentices have been paid little or nothing, but have struggled along anyway because they knew that they were learning a trade. When we raise the minimum wage, we prevent these people being taken on at all. So they don't learn a trade. They learn how to live off benefits, which is exactly the wrong lesson.

SK/N10.11) Star Parker [Center for Urban Renewal and Education], STATES NEWS SERVICE, March 25, 2013, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Let's get going with ideas like urban enterprise zones -- championed by the late Congressman Jack Kemp and now by economist Arthur Laffer -- and give preferential tax treatment to employers and employees in blighted urban areas. Abolish the minimum wage in these areas and give kids a chance at entry-level jobs and learning critical job skills. The possibilities are only limited by our courage and imagination. But only one theme will save our large, urban cities and their poor minority citizens.

3. LIVING WAGE WILL RESULT IN LESS JOB TRAINING

SK/N10.12) STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 14, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Employers respond to living wage laws by cutting back on jobs, hours and on-the-job training. As a result, some workers lose employment income and the ability to gain valuable skills and experience," Lammam [Fraser Institute, Canada] said.

SK/N10.13) Debra Burke [Professor of Law, Western Carolina U.] et al., GONZAGA LAW REVIEW, 2010-2011, LexisNexis Academic, p. 673. Predominately, the literature since the early 1990s on the employment effects of minimum wages 1) points "to a reduction in employment opportunities for low-skilled and directly affected workers," 2) reports "virtually no evidence that minimum wages reduce the proportion of families with incomes near or below the poverty line [and may] adversely affect low-income families," and 3) suggests that "minimum wages appear to inhibit skill acquisition by reducing educational attainment and perhaps training, resulting in lower adult wages and earnings."

OTHER COUNTRIES PROVE FAILURE OF LIVING WAGE

1. MINIMUM WAGE LAWS HAVE FAILED IN MANY COUNTRIES

SK/N11.01) Dr. Eammon Butler [Adam Smith Institute], STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 18, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. International studies show that minimum wages have a negative effect on employment, and are associated with worse terms and working conditions - since tightening terms and conditions, or spending less on the work environment, is one way that employers can offset the extra cost imposed by the hourly minimum. And that it is young people and minorities who are worst affected.

SK/N11.02) Arturo Bris [Professor of Finance, International Management & Development Institute, Switzerland]. STATES NEWS SERVICE, May 1, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. - For countries or regions with a minimum wage already in p