Daily Clips: May 6th, 2016
Raise wages, kill jobs? Seven decades of historical data find no correlation between minimum wage increases and employment levels: Wow. The National Employment Law Project released a groundbreaking study yesterday which examined “the historical data relating to the 22 increases in the federal minimum wage between 1938 and 2009 to determine whether or not these claims —that if you raise wages, you will lose jobs—can be substantiated.”
The short answer: no. They found “no correlation between federal minimum-wage increases and lower employment levels, even in the industries that are most impacted by higher minimum wages.”
US adds 160,000 jobs: The unemployment rate stayed put at 5%. It’s not the best report, though, as the data “provided an unexpectedly downcast signal about the nation’s labor market: A surge of Americans dropped out of the workforce and hiring in several key industries, including construction and manufacturing, all but stalled.”
Hillary Clinton doesn’t need to choose between a reassuring campaign and progressive policies:
Clinton doesn’t have a realistic chance of securing large Democratic majorities. The House districts are sufficiently tilted that even securing a narrow one would be a very steep uphill fight, and any Democratic majority would depend heavily on relatively moderate members holding Republican-leaning districts. But it’s still the case that even a small Democratic majority reliant on moderate legislators would pass more progressive legislation — hiking the minimum wage, raising taxes, expanding Medicaid funding, etc. — than a Republican one.
Tweet of May:
The best taco bowls are made by immigrants who resent a rich prick calling them rapists. Love inauthentic Mexican! pic.twitter.com/9tEORJxoZp
— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) May 5, 2016
