Tag Archives: jobs

Value

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Wretchard (@wretchardthecat) asked an interesting question on Twitter Wednesday, and the implications from the question are being carefully ignored by the Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates who want to forgive all—or most—student debt.

Forgiving student debt sends the signal that educational investment is worthless because it cannot return the rate of the money borrowed to finance it. That may actually be true but then what is the value of the credential?

Read the whole thread, it’s pithy and concise, as are the comments ensuing.

A related question has implications that Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates who want to make college/university education “free:” if nothing is paid for the education—if it has no cost (to the user)—what is the value of that education or of the credential that proclaims it? Value not in the eye of the holder, but in the eye of any employer?

Another Venue for Private Education

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In a piece about Amazon.com’s decision to drop $700 million on retraining/educating its work force, The Wall Street Journal‘s editors closed with this forlorn hope:

And dare to dream, maybe colleges will cut their prices to compete with Amazon U.

Sad to say, it is a dream: colleges have no need to compete, and so have no interest in cutting prices, as long as the Federal and State governments keep throwing money at them.

Watch, instead, the hue and cry from the Left to develop in opposition to Amazon’s (and others—dare I hope?) schooling, just as they actively oppose existing competition in K-12, the charter and voucher schools that put to shame the public schools.

Progressive-Democrats’ Minimum Wage Push

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Progressive-Democrats want to raise the national minimum wage to $15/hr.  Here are some back of the envelope numbers that could result.

The CBO says that the new minimum would cost 1.3 million Americans their jobs (in the optimistic scenario; their more pessimistic scenario had 3.7 million Americans put out of work): their current wage would go from $10.10/hr (CBO’s 2014 minimum wage which formed the core of their that-year outcome analysis) to $0.00/hr. The CBO also says that the $15/hr minimum wage would lift 1.3 million American workers out of poverty.

So, 1.3 million, or many more, Americans would lose their jobs so 1.3 million, at best, could get above poverty.

There’s more to it than that, though.

Based on that same $10.10/hr prior minimum that the Progressive-Democrats tried for just five years ago, the currently proposed job losses would result in a bit over $26.25 billion dollars lost to our economy per year through lost wages.  That’s based on only 1.3 million American workers being fired, mind you.  Balancing that would be that $4.9/hr raise (because, by CBO assumption, $15/hr is a non-poverty wage) for the lucky 1.3 million, or a skosh under $12.75 billion inserted into our economy each year.  That’s a net loss to our economy of some $13.5 billion per year.

If we adjust all of that for the actually extant minimum wage of $7.25/hr, the numbers shift to $19.5 billion per year lost to our economy in lost wages from those 1.3 million being fired, and a gain for the lucky ones of $20.2 billion per year.

That makes the Progressive-Democrats’ latest proposal a wash on wages in our economy.  Tell that wash business to the fired workers, though, and hear what they think of break-even.  Oh, and what was that, again, about “livable wages?”

The Progressive-Democratic Party

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…in microcosm.  Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for a Denver, CO, city council seat says openly that she wants to replace our capitalist economy and “usher in” “community ownership” of all property by any means necessary.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is silent on her goal, and by that silence demonstrates quite clearly that Party favors this push.

Keep this in mind in November 2020.