Implications

Both the arguments for and against lowering the minimum are logical and correct in their own right. One can hold the position that the minimum wage should be lowered for the utilitarian benefit of unskilled laborers as a whole and the economy just as as one can hold the position that such an action would be unethical because of the population that is negatively affected. Given the current state of the economy, lowering the minimum wage could help our standing as a country by curtailing the growing unemployment rate, and increasing consumption and overall income. These benefits seem too good to pass up. To address the ethical argument, I would propose a policy to hedge the losses of those employees who are making the minimum wage and would be negatively affected by a decrease. Essentially, government would subsidize the cut in wages for those employees negatively affected by the decrease in the minimum wage. The government would subsidize the cut in wages via either a tax break or a welfare program for those employees negatively affected. So if the current minimum of eight dollars per hour in California were to be decreased to seven dollars an hour the government would redeem the hourly-lost dollar to the negatively affected employee. Enacting such a policy where the minimum wage is decreased coupled with a policy to redeem negative changes in income, retains the utilitarian benefits in decreasing the minimum wage while avoiding the ethical issues that accompany such a decrease. This government spending to subsidize lost wages would end up being a stimulative policy because those dollars given to unskilled laborers would translate into increased consumption. Ultimately, this plan seems to be the right solution to the minimum wage debates as it addresses both the pragmatic and ethical sides of the argument, and results in an action that will stimulate the economy.

The next "hot" Job

Recent studies conducted by the Harvard Economics staff have pointed to the notion of a drastically different job market down the road. As banks and financial firms fail it is evident that the country's wealth is going have to be dispersed over several industries to be more "recssion proof" in the future. Demand for jobs in new cutting edge industries is higher than ever and a large portion of the brightest youth will be attracted to these positions. The study revealed that in recent years at Harvard about 40% of undergraduates immediately went into high salary earning jobs in finance and consulting. In the next few years that percentage could get cut in half. Why? Well, as wall street boomed in the late 90's through the early 2000's it seemed feasible for any elite college graduate to make six figures working for a financial firm. In the 90's and the early 2000's finance and consulting was without a doubt "hot" job as most of the talented youth from elite universities seeked careers in those areas. What the "hot job" is seems to be tidal in that it is always changing. After the great depression in the 1930's intelligent and talented youth funneled into civil engineering to build highways bridges and damns characterizing the decade as a decade in civil egineering. During cold war and our fierce race into orbit with russia talented youth, sure enough, funneled into the sciences to pioneer space travel and push NASA to the limit. So, with the downfall in finance and consulting looming on the horizon, what will the next "hot" job be? We have a few early indications of where the job market is going but things are not yet totally clear. There has been in a surge in the number of students applying to public policy Graduate schools as many forsee and increase in government hiring. Many are also expecting a revival in the sciences and science jobs as the Obama administration plans on doubleing spending on scinetifific research.

Topoi

I am currently in the process of brainstorming for an upcoming research paper. I am essentially going to consider the Idea of lowering minimum wage in order to lower the unemployment rate. The current minimum wage does not equilibrate the supply and demand for labor, there is more supply for labor than there is demand. Hence, we have the greatest unemployment rate we have had in 25 years, 8.1%. If the minimum wage were to be lowered, than the demand for labor would go up and the wage would better equilibrate the supply and demand for labor. As a result, firms would be able to hire more labor, and the employment rate would rise. From a pragmatic standpoint this makes total sense. However, from an ethical and moral standpoint some issues rise because for several years this would have a negative effect on most of the people currently making minimum wage. After a few years, as the minimum wage decreases so would the overall price level. Although, Changes in the price level lag and are not instantaneous with changes in minimum wage. Due to this lag for a while employees would be making a lower minimum wage, but still face the same cost of living. In the short run lowering minimum wage is not ethically fair, but in a pragmatic longterm sense the country would be in a better place in 20 years or so.

Page Flakes tour

Page flakes is a really dynamic site and it can be used in a variety of ways to do different things. I have created a pagecast of my pageflakes so that you guys can check it out and get an idea of how I use the site. Page flakes helps me keep track of several rss feeds, bookmarks, sources by putting condensed versions of them all on one page along with search tools. I know it sounds jumbled, and when you bring up my pageflakes you will definitley feel overwhelmed at first glance. Stick with it though, after a minute or two you will see how simple pageflakes really is and why it is an effective tool.

You can build your pageflakes using different layouts and themes. I have my pageflakes formated such that there are three columns to organize all my flakes(flakes are minature windows on the page, each element on the page is presented as a flake whether its and RSS feed or a web page). In the left column are all the RSS feeds I subscribe to, like the freakanomics blog, the huffington post, and the jobmonkey.com blog. In the middle column I have a flake for my bookmarks page on Delicious and another flake for my social bookmarking soulmate Steve23101's bookmarks. Below Steve23101's bookmark flake, I have a citeline flake that keeps track of all the sources I am using for an upcoming research paper. In the right column I have my search tools, a universal blog search flake, a universal news search flake, and a google search flake.

Total there are 16 flakes on my page, and by going to my pageflakes I am able to see all these rss feeds and tools at once, easily moving from flake to flake without the hassle of opening 16 seperate tabs in my browser.

A couple more sources

JSTOR: Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1995), pp. 199-206
Wascher, William .
[link]
This article is predicated on the idea that most studies on minimum wage ignore important interactions between, schooling, employment, and the minimum wage. To study these interactions and relationships Mr. Wascher creates a conditional logit model of employment and enrollment outcomes for teenagers using datat from 1977 to 1989. Overall the study found that minimum wages had a negative effect on school enrollment and a negative effect on the portion of teenagers neither in school nor employed.

JSTOR: The Canadian Journal of Economics / Revue canadienne d'Economique, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Feb., 2005), pp. 81-104
Fang, Tony, Campolieti, Michele, and Gunderson, Morley .
[link]
In this Article the master file of the survey of labour and income dynamics (slid) is used to compare the relationship between minimum wage and employment. Ths study explores the effects of minimum wage through different comparison groups who are deemed to be or not to be greatly effect by changes in minimum wage. The results of the study indidcate that as minimum wage increases about 8% of low-wage earning youths will shift from employment to unemployment. This study is bsed on 24 seperate cases of minimum wage changes that occured between 1993-1999.

and...

Macroeconomics: N. Gregory Mankiw
Mankiw, Gregory

The Politics of Minimum Wage: Jerold Waltman: Books

Waltman, Jerold

A couple of sources

JSTOR: Public Choice, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jul., 1989), pp. 15-24

McROBERTS, KENNETH, Blais, Andre, and Cousineau, Jean-Michel .
[link]
This paper examines determinants of Canadian minimum wage policies from 1975-1982. It points out fallacies and discusses alernative explanations of minimum wage policies. This is from the perspective of a political market approach, where the benefit of women, youth, small businessesm and unions is emphasized. Econometric models are used to estimated cross-section data for nine provinces in canada. The econometric results tend to support most of the hypotheses stated.

JSTOR: The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Spring, 2004), pp. 425-450
Washcer, William, Schweitzer, Mark, and Neumark, David .
[link]
This paper points out the irony in minimum wages. Minimum wages are set to help out the lower class and low-wage earning laborers, however net effect of minimum wages actually had adverse effects on low-wage workers. This paper illustrates a too frequent scenario in which a worker who earns near minimum wage experiences an increase in pay as a result of increased minimum wage. However, despite his gain in pay the worker is negativley effected by the change in minimum wage because he will experience a great decline in the hours he is employed.

Jobs Evaporate

I had a look at jobmonkey.com and came across this scary statistic from a march 6th post. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which keeps track of many statistics including wage rates, GDP, and GNP recently measured the unemployment rate to have reach 8.1%. This is a serious problem for several reasons that will only further this recession.

Heres the scenario: 8.1% is the greatest the unemployment rate has been in the last 25 years(unemployment rate is the number of unemployed people divided by the labor force which is comprised of all those who are working, and those who are eligible for work but are not). When when unemployment rate goes up, GDP goes down(GDP is the total output of our economy, in simple terms our profit via domestic products and services). And when GDP decreases we move into a deeper trade deficit because we are importing more and exporting less. Now its important to clarify that trade defecits are not necesarily bad financially, but they are bad in the sense that the demand for human capital is leaving this country. When human capital(human utility for profit, like ones education) leaves the country, jobs leave the country. When Jobs leave the country the unemployment rate goes up.

It is a nasty cycle that we have found ourselves in. Easy to describe, but hard to solve.

Social Bookmarking Soulmate

I'm enthusiastic about all tools that improve efficiency, and recently I have been using Delicious to manage my internet experience. It organizes the sites and blogs I like via bookmarks and tags. Delicious also helps me find additional sites I like on a specific topic via tags other delicious users have labeled various websites with.

Yesterday I was looking through the 29 other people that have bookmarked jobmonkey.com(check my blogroll) on delicious, and that is how I found steve23101. Steve23101 had tagged the site with "job_hunt" which I felt was appropriate and accurate, considering most people use one word tags like "jobs," or "pictures." Using the genius that is Delicious I then browsed a list of the websites steve23101 applied that same tag to and was able to find some great sites that might benefit you and your job search. In fact steve23101 had bookmarked 49 sites with this tag and I would estimate that at a minimum 10 of those sites are relevant to you, like virtualvocations.com. A site that connects its users to credible work at home jobs via a newtwork of trusted firms. Unlike the stay-at-home scams I mentioned in an earlier post, you won't get cheated by virtualvocations.com.

Steve23101 is quite the delcious user, he has logged a whopping 800 bookmarks, that fall within his 185 tags. Steve23101 does not supplement his bookmarks with descriptions or comments but I don't blame the guy for not wanting to add a description for 800 different sites. Steve23101's tags are accurate and well placed and they make it easy to navigate through his bookmarks.