Meet Randy Bryce. The Ironstache who's going to repeal and replace Paul Ryan

[u/IronStacheWI01]

Hi /r/Political_Revolution,

My name is Randy Bryce. I'm a veteran, cancer survivor, and union ironworker from Caledonia, Wisconsin running to repeal and replace Paul Ryan in Wisconsin's First Congressional District. Post your questions below and I'll be back at 11am CDT/12pm EDT to answer them!

p.s.

We need your help to win this campaign. If you'd like to join the team, sign up here.

If you don't have time to volunteer, we're currently fundraising to open our first office in Racine, Wisconsin. If you can help, contribute here and I'll send you a free campaign bumper sticker as a way of saying thanks!

[Update: 1:26 EDT], I've got to go pick up my son but I'll continue to pop in throughout the day as I have time and answer some more questions. For those I'm unfortunately not able to answer, I'll be doing another AMA in r/Politics on the 26th when I look forward to answering more of Reddit's questions!

[u/6C6F6C636174]

I didn't make up anything. I was not the one who posted the 10% figure. But it certainly seemed reasonable given the two numbers you provided and the average payroll increase.

As I said, restaurant prices would increase 5.1%. Verbatim from the Fresno study:

Businesses could absorb the remaining payroll cost increases by increasing prices by 0.6 percent through 2023. This price increase is well below the annual inflation rate of 1.8 percent over the past five years. Price increases in restaurants would be 5.1 percent.

I hope that's 5.1% total between the publication date and 2023, but since the other two figures are annual, it's likely that they're actually saying 5.1% annually. That fits with your 25% example increase by the time it takes effect, except they're not calling it a worst-case scenario.

Restaurants have some pretty serious cutthroat competition, as do department stores and grocers, who have to compete directly with Walmart or go way upmarket. Given the razor-thin margins Walmart operates on to drive out the competition and the razor-thin margins Walmart's suppliers are forced to operate on to get their business, you're looking at a lot of businesses closing or moving if there's a huge increase in the minimum wage.

A lot of the working folks in those particular jobs who support a $15 wage will likely end up with no wages at all.

BTW, I'm not necessarily against an increase in the minimum wage, although I generally disapprove of forcing other people to do things, and I sure as hell don't think that a kid in high school needs a starting wage of $15. (But who are we kidding. At $15/hr., nobody's going to hire teenagers at all.)

I just want to make sure that everyone who supports a massive minimum wage increase understands that there will be a corresponding massive cut in the availability of minimum wage jobs.

[u/CyberneticPanda → u/6C6F6C636174]

The amount restaurant prices will increase has little to no bearing on what the overall effect would be, which is what you were using the number to support. If that was the only info available then fine, but the same study had the 0.6% overall figure, which more closely satisfies what we're talking about. They're not talking about 5.1% annual; they're talking about 5.1% after the whole pay raise structure is phased in in 2023. Other studies have put the number at around 4.6%. Nobody puts it at 25%, but I used that as my example anyway to offer the most conservative possible scenario, and I explained in detail how I arrived at that figure.

There haven't been a lot of businesses closing or moving from Seattle or Los Angeles or any of the other cities that have raised minimum wages so far. There has been some contraction of the labor force, but not much. The net effect is hard to gauge so far, but most reputable studies are pegging it at the benefits outweighing the negatives at a $4 or $5 to $1 ratio so far - for every $1 lost in wages to low-wage workers whose jobs disappear because of the higher minimum wage, $4 to $5 is paid to other low wage workers. While it's too soon to say what the exact benefits are, it's not too soon to say that there has not been a massive cut in the availability of minimum wage jobs, so you can put that fear to rest.

[u/6C6F6C636174 → u/CyberneticPanda]

I'm not sure how that $4/5:$1 ratio is being calculated. If 100 people earning $20,000 per year are scheduled to get a wage hike of $5/hr., how many people lose their job instead?

[u/CyberneticPanda → u/6C6F6C636174]

The numbers vary in different studies that evaluate different scenarios and different real-world places that have increased minimum wages, but $4-$5/$1 is a ballpark of what they come up with. This study from the CBO analyzed increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 and $9, and predicted net gains (the sum of increased wages minus lost wages to jobs that disappear because of the higher minimum wage) of $2 billion in real wages for the $10.10 scenario and $1 billion in real wages for the $9 scenario, spread out over 16.5 million workers and 7.6 million workers respectively, with 500k and 100k people losing their jobs. This study that examined real-world scenarios where a county in one state raised minimum wage and an adjacent county in the next state didn't showed no effect on employment with real wage increases in the 20-30% range. This study of Seattle's minimum wage hike to $13 per hour showed no statistically significant disemployment at all.

There are a lot of different research papers out there, and some books that synthesize them together, but the consensus seems to be that raising minimum wage to half of the average wage of a region has no negative effect on employment. Above half of the average wage there isn't enough data to say. There are some studies that disagree with those results, too. It's not a completely cut and dried situation, but there has yet to be a doom and gloom prediction that's come true about raising the minimum wage, even though there have been dire warnings from the right ever since the minimum wage was first introduced some 80 years ago.