Tag: Minimum wage

The New Covid-19 Support Bill

The New Covid-19 assistance bill could add an additional 1.9 trillion dollars to support the fight against Covid-19.  In discussing the 2 trillion dollar CARES Act last April I wrote that: “The idea is that as the government has requested/mandated non-essential workers to stay home, and non-essential companies (restaurants, theaters, bars, hotels, etc.) have chosen to close temporarily or have been forced to by risk averse customers or government mandates, the government has an obligation to compensate them for their lost income. Above and beyond the requirements of fairness, such financial assistance should help prevent permanent damage to the economy from something that is meant to be a temporary interruption in its operation.”  “Econ 202-CARES Act-who pays for it?”  While I referred to the shutdowns as the result of “risk averse customers or government mandates”, it seems that the “blame” lies with sensibly risk-averse customers who stayed home and/or out of public gathering places by their own choice before the government required it. “Lockdowns-job losses”  A key point was that this was not a stimulus bill as output/income fell because its supply fell, not for lack of demand to buy it by consumers.

As total and partial shutdowns will continue for a few more months (or permanently for some unlucky firms) such support (properly targeted) should be continued for a while longer. But at what level and for how long? As I stressed in my April blog, the CARES Act payments to unemployed workers did not create income but rather transferred it out of a diminished pie from those who still had incomes (and could buy the government bonds that raised the money being transferred).  As I noted then and as is increasingly important now, the increased fiscal and monetary support that accompanied these government expenditures will need to be unwound carefully as the economy recovers. Equally important, the further increases in debt and money created by the currently proposed support should not exceed what is “truly” needed. U.S. national debt is already almost 28 trillion dollars, over 130% of GDP.

While CARES Act type support was needed and helpful, it was not always appropriately targeted. It is not the kind of emergency spending that is easy to get fully right.  As time goes on more and more evidence will be collected of abusive uses of these funds. Rather than choosing specific firms and classes of individuals to receive support, implementation of a Guaranteed Basic Income for everyone irrespective of income and situation would provide a better safety net for all situations. “Our social safety net”

In December President Trump signed a $900 billion Covid relief bill providing “a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefit and a $600 direct stimulus payment to most Americans, along with a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters and money for schools, health care providers and renters facing eviction.”

President Biden has proposed a new additional $1.9 trillion dollar package. Added to the $900 billion approved in December, this would be 13% of GDP, a VERY large amount.  Ten Republicans have proposed a narrower package of $618 trillion. They would exclude measure not directly relevant to the impact of the pandemic such as raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour (a measure that would be damaging to inexperienced, new job entrance). The Congressional Budget Office has just “estimated that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost 1.4 million jobs by 2025 and increase the deficit by $54 billion over ten years.” “Minimum wage hike to $15 an hour by 2025 would result 14 million unemployed”

The Democrats’ package would provide $1,400 per person direct cash payments across the board in addition to the $600 provided by the December bill. The Republican proposal would lower the thresholds for receiving assistance to individuals making $50,000 or $100,000 for couples and would provide checks of $1,000 per person.  They were expecting to negotiate a compromise package, which now, unfortunately, seems unlikely, though as this is written discussions continue. There are many individual provisions in the proposed bill. I have not reviewed them. My focus here is on the overall financial size of the proposal.

In an interesting oped in the Washington Post, Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton administration, gently warned that the democrats’ package was excessive and risked rekindling inflation.  He wrote that:

“A comparison of the 2009 stimulus and what is now being proposed is instructive. In 2009, the gap between actual and estimated potential output was about $80 billion a month and increasing. The 2009 stimulus measures provided an incremental $30 billion to $40 billion a month during 2009 — an amount equal to about half the output shortfall.

“In contrast, recent Congressional Budget Office estimates suggest that with the already enacted $900 billion package — but without any new stimulus — the gap between actual and potential output will decline from about $50 billion a month at the beginning of the year to $20 billion a month at its end. The proposed stimulus will total in the neighborhood of $150 billion a month, even before consideration of any follow-on measures. That is at least three times the size of the output shortfall.

“In other words, whereas the Obama stimulus was about half as large as the output shortfall, the proposed Biden stimulus is three times as large as the projected shortfall. Relative to the size of the gap being addressed, it is six times as large….  [Given] the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply.” “Larry Summers-Biden-covid stimulus”

The U.S. national debt was $22.7 trillion at the end of 2019 and skyrocketed to $26.9 trillion at the end of 2020. On February 7 it stood at $27.88 trillion or $84,198 per person and $222,191 per taxpayer. This is 130.8% of GDP. This is a very big number. Much of this debt has been purchased by the Federal Reserve resulting in an explosion of its balance sheet and the public’s holdings of money. At the end of 2019 the Federal Reserve assets (the counterpart of which is largely base money–currency held by the public and bank deposits with the Federal Reserve) $4.17 trillion and grew to $7.36 trillion by the end of 2020. In other words, the Federal Reserve bought $3.19 trillion of the $4.2 trillion increase in the national debt. This is a bit of an overstatement because the Fed also bought a modest amount of other debt.  Much of the rest was purchased by foreigners as “the U.S. trade deficit rose 17.7% to $678.7 billion and hit the highest level since 2008.” “The US trade deficit rose in 2020 to a 12 year high”

Because the Federal Reserve now pays banks interest to keep large amounts of their deposits with the Fed in excess of required amounts (excess reserves), the money supply measured as currency in circulation and demand deposits with banks (M1) grew somewhat less than the Fed’s purchases of US debt. In 2020 M1 grew $2.5 trillion, a year in which GDP ended a bit lower than it started.` In part, the public is not spending this money at the rates they normally would because the theaters and restaurants, etc. are closed. A seriously inflated stock market and cryptocurrency values seem to be temporary beneficiaries.

According to Wells Fargo: “We estimate consumers are sitting on $1.5 trillion in excess savings compared to the saving rate’s pre-COVID trend….  After a year of limiting trips, eating at home and putting off doctor appointments, we expect consumers will be eager to engage in many of the in-person services forgone during the pandemic, and spend on gas to get there and clothes to look good doing it. The ample means and eagerness to spend could potentially set off a bout of demand-driven inflation that has not been experienced in decades.”  “Wells Fargo–Poking the Inflation Bear”

As I noted last April, unwinding these monetary and fiscal injections, as is necessary to avoid a significant increase in inflation, will be challenging. And now we are even deeper into debt. As inflation increases nominal interest rates will increase as well and the cost of our huge debt financing with it. While managing the short run impact of the pandemic, the government’s eyes should be on the longer run picture as well.

Heath Care Reform Fatigue

On average, Americans spend about twice as much on medical care as do Europeans and with poorer results. About half of that cost is paid for by government. If we could get the cost of medical care down to European levels either the government (i.e., tax payers) could stop paying for any of it with no change in the cost to patients, or patients could stop paying anything with no change in the cost to government. Of course it wouldn’t work like that and is much more complicated but it does focus the mind about the issues concerned.

Both the Affordable Care Act of Obama and the current drafts of its replacement by the Republicans are limited to what can be considered budget authorizations so that they can be passed with simple majorities. In June 2015, when the Supreme Court rejected challenges to the constitutionality of parts of the ACA (the insurance mandate), Chief Justice Roberts complained that: “Congress wrote key parts of the Act behind closed doors. . . . Congress passed much of the Act using a complicated budgetary procedure known as ‘reconciliation,’ which limited opportunities for debate and amendment, and bypassed the Senate’s normal 60-vote filibuster requirement. . . . As a result, the Act does not reflect the type of care and deliberation that one might expect of such significant legislation.” Now the Republicans are doing the same thing. Once again George Will is right on target: Why-repeal-and-replace-will-become-tweak-and-move-on/2017/06/27/

This means that the most important elements of health care reform in America—reducing supply side costs—must await other legislation. However, limited market forces are already eating away slowly at the American Medical Association’s (the doctors’ union) self protective strangle hold on the delivery of medical services. The information technology now exists to dramatically improve the quality of service while lowering its cost. Nurse practitioners have already taken over some routine functions previously preserved for MDs. With a growing shortage of doctors, more restrictive practices are likely to be relaxed such as phone consultations, etc.

The focus of the ACA and the current Republic efforts to “repeal and replace” it, has been how best to finance these costs for those financially unable to pay them. The two overriding challenges for this effort should be to adequately target those who need such assistance and in the process to avoid undermining to the extent possible the incentives for both doctors and their patients to provide and to seek the most cost effective care.

There are many small and large details in ACA and proposed Republican replacements that could be changed to improve targeting of financial assistance and the incentives for seeking and delivery cost effective care. See my earlier discussion: A-mistitled-tax-proposal. The largest issues are how best to remove the unfair tax treatment of employer provided health insurance vs. the “private” market and how to insure that the risk pools in the private insurance market include both healthy and sick premium payers.

The point of insurance is to pool the cost of the risk of bad things happening, like breaking a leg or getting sick. Thus the lucky (healthy) share the costs of the unlucky (sick or injured). The group as a whole must pay the total medical costs of all members of the group. It follows that health insurance should be mandatory for every one in a properly defined group. The risk pool of employer provided health insurance consists of the company’s employees, and premiums are set on the basis of the average medical costs of that group. There is no such predefined risk pool for those who buy insurance in the “private” market. The logic of insurance suggests that everyone within each age group should be required to buy insurance at a cost to each that reflects the total medical costs of the full group. The-individual-health-insurance-mandate.

The simplest, cleanest, and most comprehensive way to insure that those unable to pay for whatever medical care they need can do so is to require that all people in their group buy insurance so that those who later don’t need it finance those who do. I have earlier advocated that this approach be integrated as part of a guaranteed minimum income (GMI). A GMI would provide the basis for eliminating most government welfare programs from Social Security and food stamps, to disability and unemployment insurance. But first a brief word about minimum wage laws.

Charles Lane has proposed a sensible approach to balancing the political attraction for legal minimum wages with the economic case against them. He proposes that the issue be removed from the political arena by legislating an automatically adjusting formula for a legal minimum wage that closely matches actual historical wage experience so as to minimize the harm to low skilled and inexperienced (teenagers) workers that would be hurt by higher minimum wages. Forget the $15 minimum wage–here’s what a sensible compromise would look like/2017/06/28

A legal minimum wage does not help the unemployed. A Guaranteed Minimum Income would. It should be paid to every man, woman, and child but the amount might vary with age (but not with income). It could be administered by the Social Security Administration, which it would replace. Saving-social-security. Fixed shares of the GMI would be placed in an individual health insurance account, a pension account, and an education account (school tuition or college fund). The amount deposited to the health savings account would be required to be used to purchase general health insurance and would be sufficient to do so.

The GMI would be paid for from general tax revenue. Clearly our existing, hole riddled income tax laws (both personal and business) are a mess and need to be cleaned up. As I have argued earlier the fairest, least distorting and easiest to administer tax is a consumption tax. I should replace all income taxes, wage taxes and existing sales taxes with one uniform Value Added Tax (VAT). My-political-platform-for-the-nation-2017.

Let’s try for better health care that costs less for both patients and tax payers.

Minimum Wages

Saving people money so they can live better

Walmart helps people around the world save money and live better — anytime and anywhere — in retail stores, online and through their mobile devices. Each week, more than 245 million customers and members visit our nearly 11,000 stores under 71 banners in 27 countries and e-commerce websites in 10 countries. With fiscal year 2014 sales of approximately $473 billion, Walmart employs 2.2 million associates worldwide.

The above words are taken from the first page of Walmart’s website. Some have claimed that Walmart achieves this great feat by exploiting its workers. What might that mean?

A number of the gulf countries have workforces that are predominantly foreign. Qatar is the world’s wealthiest country on a per capital basis. In a recent article The Guardian reported that: “the Guardian visited a group of more than 60 workers from south Asian countries in a workers’ camp in the desert 25km west of Doha. They have had their passports taken from them, in breach of Qatar’s labour laws, which prevents them from leaving the country, and many of them have not been paid for several months. Most paid hundreds of pounds to agents in their home countries simply for the right to get a job in Qatar. Among them lives Ujjwal Thapa, 25, who left Nepal last autumn…. He has not been paid for several months despite working for 11 hours a day, six days a week, on building sites for an Indian contractor.

“Another worker was conned over the wage he would earn. His immigration document, stamped by the Nepalese government before his departure from Kathmandu, shows he had agreed to work as a foreman on a basic salary of £410 a month. But the contract signed with the employer on arrival was for £150 [US$ 240] a month to work as a carpenter “ “Qatar promises change-unpaid migrant workers”

Labor practices in Qatar are truly exploitive even though workers came voluntarily. Walmart has been accused of paying poverty level wages: “Walmart’s average sale Associate makes $8.81 per hour, according to IBISWorld, an independent market research group. This translates to annual pay of $15,576, based upon Walmart’s full-time status of 34 hours per week.” Should they pay more?

If the number of workers they now employ, about 2 million, were not willing to work for the wages offered, Walmart would have to pay more, but would almost certainly choose to get by with fewer workers. The demand curve for labor (wages on the vertical axis and number of workers on the horizontal axis) is downward slopping—lower wages brings larger demand. If a minimum wage law required them to increase their minimum wage to say $10.10 dollars an hour as proposed by President Obama, Walmart would hire fewer people. Some people working at the current minimum of $7.25 would enjoy an increase and some would become unemployed. Not only would the quality of Walmart service drop a bit with fewer employees helping customers but the customers would have to pay a bit more as higher wages were passed through to higher prices paid by customers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would eliminate 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs. On the other hand, if customer demand for Walmart services increased and Walmart found it profitable increase its staff, it would have to pay more to attract them even without a minimum wage law.

It is obvious that if some one offers their services cheaply enough you will use more them than otherwise. If you could hire the neighbor kid for a dollar an hour to weed the garden and clean up the garage you might do so when you wouldn’t for $10.00 per hour. If he or she doesn’t want to do the work for a dollar an hour or has a better offer somewhere else, you might do it yourself. The supply curve for labor is upward sloping—fewer people are willing to work at lower wages. The intersection of the supply and demand for labor is the wage at which everyone wanting to work has a job.

But of course not every worker is the same as every other worker. You are happy (or at least willing) to pay the plumber $30 per hour because of his greater skills. In fact very few people earn the minimum wage or less and thus most workers will be unaffected by its prospective increase. Some jobs are exempt from the minimum wage to prevent closing off some services altogether (home companions for the elderly, newspaper delivery people, babysitters, disabled workers, etc.). Failing to win the economically obvious case for eliminating minimum wage laws all together, some have argued for sparing teenagers at least from its damaging effects. Young people just entering the job market from high school must learn skills on the job. They begin with very low productivity and employers are not willing to hire them at the same wage paid to more experienced (older) workers.In 2013, 16-19 year olds had an unemployment rate of more than 20 percent in the U.S. when total unemployment averaged 7.4%. “Minimum wage hike means more sub-minimum workers”

So why does President Obama (and George W Bush before him) want to raise the minimum wage? It seems to exploit the public’s ignorance of economics, with the feel good prospect that the government can make us richer by legislating it. The public is not really that dumb. It is frankly difficult for me to understand. Marc Linder argued for minimum wages, not because he believed that people could be made wealthier with magic wands, but because he believed that some (very low wage) jobs should not exist at all because they were beneath man’s dignity. He assumed (or advocated) that those unable to work as a result would be cared for by the state. At least I think that is what he is saying (he is a lawyer, not an economist). The abstract to his book: The Minimum Wage as Industrial Policy: A Forgotten Role, says: “In the welter of arguments being debated in connection with amending minimum wage legislation, the protagonists have lost sight of the original intent of such state intervention. That purpose was to help — exclusively — those workers whose wage formation process was subject to “market failure” by forcing their employers to internalize the minimum social costs of maintaining a worker, which they had succeeded in shifting onto the worker or society.

“Although the minimum wage was obviously also designed to create micro-welfare effects, its primary function lay in removing labor costs from competition, increasing productivity macro-economically by driving “parasitic” firms out of business and concentrating production in the most competent firms, and steering capital-labor relations.” “Marc Linder” I have no idea what that means, but the evidence is overwhelming that minimum wage laws harm the least advantaged if they set minimum wages high enough to make any difference.