Maximum wage legislation
In testimony before the Rhode Island state legislature, Econ4’s Doug Smith lays out the rationale for capping the maximum annual compensation a firm pays its CEO – based on what it pays its lowest-paid workers:
This dangerous rise in top-to-bottom pay ratios fuels a cancerous spread of business strategies obsessed with cost reductions and short-term financial performance. The result: outsourcing, offshoring, tax avoidance, downsizing, and the substitution of good-paying permanent jobs with temporary, precarious employment.
Read his New York Times op-ed piece on maximum wages for government officials and top-paid government contractors here.
Maximum wage?
Econ4’s Doug Smith writes in the New York Times:
The national discourse continues to sleepwalk past this out-of-the-box question: How about setting a maximum wage for government officials and top-paid government contractors?
Read his op-ed piece here.
McWage
A humorous look at a not-so-funny subject:
For more videos, see here and here. And Stephen Colbert’s take on the minimum wage debate here.
The minimum wage debate
Jeannette Wicks-Lim does the math:
Each time a minimum wage hike is put on the table, the political debate spins on the question of whether such a move would cause business costs to increase so much that jobs are lost. To progress past this perennial debate, one key fact has to be pounded into the American psyche: Average minimum wage hikes impose small cost increases on businesses—so small that businesses can typically adjust by means other than closing their doors or laying off workers. Recent proposals to raise the $7.25 federal minimum present a welcome opportunity to take another whack at this.
Read her piece here.
The economics of the minimum wage
Arin Dube reviews recent research to answer some basic questions:
While we can set a wage floor using policy, should we? Or should we leave it to the market and deal with any adverse consequences, like poverty and inequality, using other policies, like tax credits and transfers? These longstanding questions take on a particular urgency as wage inequality continues to grow, and as we consider specific proposals to raise the federal minimum wage — currently near a record low — and to index future increases to the cost of living.
Read his piece in the New York Times here.
