LA labor leaders push hard for $15 mim wage, but hold on a second...

[RFayette]

I don't have a huge problem with a $10.10 minimum wage, because the market price for unskilled labor is such that this price floor wouldn't result in too much job loss.  On the other hand, evidence like this shows a $15 minimum wage can be a real problem for the marginally employed.  An effective or binding price floor on labor will result in an increase in unemployment, and $15 is just going too far.

[RFayette]

I don't have a huge problem with a $10.10 minimum wage, because the market price for unskilled labor is such that this price floor wouldn't result in too much job loss.  On the other hand, evidence like this shows a $15 minimum wage can be a real problem for the marginally employed.  An effective or binding price floor on labor will result in an increase in unemployment, and $15 is just going too far.

Prices and wages tend to be higher in cities, as often are the requirements to live there. I have no problem with big expensive cities like LA experimenting with higher minimum wages than most other places.

OK, perhaps $12 or $13 would be better?  But if we're at a point where unions want to negotiate lower wages, then we've overshot. 

[RFayette]

I don't have a huge problem with a $10.10 minimum wage, because the market price for unskilled labor is such that this price floor wouldn't result in too much job loss.  On the other hand, evidence like this shows a $15 minimum wage can be a real problem for the marginally employed.  An effective or binding price floor on labor will result in an increase in unemployment, and $15 is just going too far.

True, if you're comfortable with all of the jobs that have already been tossed in the bin. BLS estimates employment for 16-19 demographic to be 33% of what it was in the 1970s. We got away with minimum wage in the 1970s because we had no international competition. Lack of competition isn't the case today. Furthermore, what good did min wage do when Democrats raised in gratuitously in 2007? It didn't stop the recession and it made the sticky wage problem more acute.

Min wage is the laziest policy available to law makers. It allows them to shift their Constitutional obligations onto the private sector.

Most teens are students and choose not to have a job......my parents discouraged me from getting one (until now) as they wanted me to focus on academics.  This is more of a cultural shift if anything.