Category: reason

In his autobiography, “Up From the Projects,” the late economist Walter Williams explained his move away from the belief that minimum wages help the poor. His change of heart on the topic began when one of his UCLA professors asked him whether he cared more about the intentions behind the minimum wage or its effects.

Williams devoted much of his professional career to studying minimum wages and documenting their negative effects, particularly on young Black people. While Williams had the good sense to learn that good intentions alone are insufficient to produce good public policy, many others have failed to learn this lesson.

The latest illustration is an attempt to jack up the minimum wage to $15 per hour as part of another COVID-19 relief bill. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., recently declared on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that small businesses wouldn’t struggle under a federal mandate to pay employees $15 an hour, even during a recession. To support his claim, he pointed out that Target and Amazon, two of the greatest beneficiaries of the lockdown, raised their lowest hourly wage to $15 voluntarily. He later asserted that he doesn’t want small businesses that are underpaying workers and that $15 is very reasonable. How he knows this is a mystery, but this arrogance demonstrates an ignorance of basic economics.

Walter Williams summarized the general position of economists on this issue in an article titled “Minimum Wage, Maximum Follies.” He wrote, “While there is a debate over the magnitude of the effects, the weight of research by academic scholars points to the conclusion that unemployment for some population groups is directly related to legal minimum wages. The unemployment effects of the minimum-wage law are felt disproportionately by nonwhites.”

Minimum wages reduce the employment of low-skilled workers—a group disproportionately represented by immigrants, inner-city minorities, and young people. Some workers lose jobs altogether, while others see their hours reduced. This doesn’t mean that there are no beneficiaries of higher minimum wages. Economic theory predicts that some workers who are currently employed will retain their jobs with no reduction in hours, even after the minimum wage is increased. For those workers, the increase means higher take-home pay, although the jobs themselves might become more demanding or less secure.

So, what do we know about raising the federal minimum wage to $15, even gradually? In theory, we know a lot, but the empirical evidence is limited since so few states and localities have tried it. There are, however, some noteworthy attempts to get a good grasp of what might happen.

First, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that a $15 minimum wage by 2025 would eliminate 1.4 million jobs over that period. The CBO also forecasts that this increase could decrease business income, increase consumer prices and tap the brakes on the economy.

Second, economists at the University of Washington studied the employment effects of Seattle’s move to gradually increase its minimum wage to $15. Seattle, already a high-wage city, first raised its minimum wage to $13 in 2016 and hiked it to $15 in 2021.

Summing up the findings in Seattle, Michael Strain writes in Bloomberg: “The economists found that this led to a 9% reduction in low-wage jobs. The pay increase it generated didn’t make up for the reduction in employment, and earnings fell for low-wage workers overall. The economists’ subsequent research found that the gains from the higher minimum wage accrued to more experienced workers.” As I noted, there are some winners (those who are already relatively better) and some losers (those already worse off).

In a recent Twitter thread, one of the authors of the study, Jake Vigdor, noted that the following pattern emerges for employers dealing with higher labor costs: “1) Don’t lay people off 2) Cut back hours 3) Cut back hiring 4) As workers quit, restore hours for those who remain.” He also warns that the negative employment effects are somewhat understated in the study because it ignores “a subset of the workforce: those who didn’t have jobs at baseline, before the wage increase.”

Workers who didn’t have a job at the time of the increase and won’t get one after may pay the steepest (and unseen or overlooked) cost of the minimum wage. As Williams explained in his autobiography, “Early work experiences not only provide the pride and self-confidence that comes from financial semi-independence but also teach youngsters attitudes and habits that will make them more valuable and successful workers in the future.”

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Earlier today, President Joe Biden repealed Trump’s coronavirus immigration bans, which barred nearly all new immigrants entering for the purpose of seeking permanent residency, and also severely restricted entry based on many types of temporary work visas. In combination with Trump’s previous large-scale efforts to cut immigration of virtually all types, the 2020 executive actions had closed the US to immigration to a greater extent than at any previous time in its history, even during crises such as the world wars and the Great Depression.

I criticized the public health and economic rationales for the Trump policy in this June 2020 Atlantic article. Far from improving the economy and public health, these types of policies actually make both worse. The harm would have been much greater had the bans continued indefinitely, as Trump administration officials  said they intended to do. In the long run, immigration restrictions stifle economic and scientific innovation of the very type that is essential to boosting economic growth and generating improvements in health care, such as the Covid vaccines that are our best hope for ending the pandemic.

It is possible that Biden’s repeal of the Trump policy will be challenged in court by immigration restrictionists. But any such challenge is highly unlikely to succeed. If, as the Trump administration contended, these immigration bans were purely a matter of presidential discretion, then Biden has the power to repeal them as Trump had to institute them in the first place. If, on the other hand, the Trump policy was illegal, as I and other critics contended, then Biden had even more justification for repealing it. Indeed, in that scenario, he had a legal duty to do so.

In October 2020, a federal district court ruled against the Trump ban on work visas on several grounds, including that it violates constitutional nondelegation principles. I outlined the nondelegation case against Trump’s Covid immigration restrictions and earlier travel bans here, here, and here.

Biden’s repeal of Trump’s policy will moot out the litigation against the latter, and probably prevent it from setting any lasting precedent (district court decisions are not binding precedent for future cases). But, hopefully, future court decisions will establish the principle that it is unconstitutional for Congress to give the president virtually unconstrained authority to bar any immigrants he wants, for virtually any reason—as is true under the Trump administration’s interpretation of Section 1182(f) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. The Trump position was largely endorsed by the Court in Trump v. Hawaii (2018)  But that ruling did not address the nondelegation issue.

Alternatively, the nondelegation problem can be solved by congressional action. The No Ban Act, introduced by congressional Democrats last year, and incorporated into the Biden administration’s new US Citizenship Act, would largely fix the problem by imposing tight constraints on presidential authority in this field.

Biden’s willingness to repeal the Covid immigration restrictions is a further sign that the new administration is serious about pursuing a pro-immigration agenda. Some observers doubted whether Biden would be willing to repeal these policies, lest he be accused of exacerbating the risks of the Covid emergency (even though the Trump bans did not actually help curb the spread of the virus); I admit I was among the doubters, myself. But I’m more than happy to be proven wrong on this point. I reviewed the administration’s other  immigration initiatives—many of which go well beyond simply repealing harsh Trump policies—here.

This is not to say that Biden’s approach is ideal. Even if fully realized, it would not come close to eliminating all of the many injustices in our immigration system. I myself have pointed out how the pro-immigration policies are at odds with the the new administration’s push for a $15 minimum wage (which would lock many new immigrants out of the labor market). Fortunately, it looks like the latter idea won’t get through Congress, in large part because of opposition by key moderate Democratic senators.

David Bier of the Cato Institute has a more pessimistic appraisal of the new administration’s policies(though written before today’s action). But, by any reasonable measure, Biden’s policies are at least a vast improvement over his predecessor—admittedly a very low standard of comparison.

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A bit about the podcast from Gina Tron (Oxygen):

A new podcast explores the sordid criminal career of Woody Harrelson’s father, a convicted murderer who worked as a hitman-for-hire…. While Woody Harrelson … isn’t involved in the podcast, his brothers Brett and Jordan do participate…. [Charles Harrelson] was convicted of the 1979 assassination of federal judge John H. Wood Jr…. Wood was the first federal judge to have been killed during the 20th century.

From the Complaint in Parker v. Spotify USA, Inc., filed today on behalf of Dr. Chrysanthe Parker, who was a prosecution witness in the Wood murder trial:

When the podcast was finally released, the host labeled Dr. Parker as “a very unusual witness,” and used that phrase as the title to Episode 6, which featured her interview. He cast her as the “star witness” and focused almost singularly on the fact that the FBI had attempted to use hypnosis to conduct some interviews with her, calling it a “display of questionable judgment.” He used only selected portions of her interview to lead the audience to the conclusion that Charles Harrelson’s conviction relied on information obtained through her hypnosis, and that Dr. Parker was complicit in a scheme to convict Charles Harrelson with fabricated evidence that should have been inadmissible. This is false. The podcast purposely concealed the fact that none of the interviews Dr. Parker gave under hypnosis were relied on by the prosecution, and that it was Charles Harrelson’s defense counsel that elicited the testimony they were discussing in the podcast at that point.

The episode similarly implies Dr. Parker’s complicity in a scheme to fabricate evidence by stating that the FBI only “found” her after an extensive search for any witnesses, implying that the FBI had become desperate for evidence. This is also false. Jason Cavanagh knew from interviewing Dr. Parker that she had contacted the FBI herself as soon as she learned about the murder of her neighbor, Judge Wood, to report the suspicious man who had purposely bumped into her, and that she gave her first interview to the FBI later that same day. The episode and the podcast as a whole purposely leads the audience to the false conclusion that Dr. Parker, as a young attorney and officer of the Court, was either complicit or actively participated in manufacturing evidence to perpetuate an unfair trial on Charles Harrelson.

Jason Cavanagh spoke with one or more former FBI agents who worked on the investigation of Judge Wood’s murder. Jason Cavanagh knew from these conversations that his allegations that Dr. Parker was a “found” witness, that she was the “star” witness, and that her statements to the FBI were obtained by hypnosis were all false and baseless. The falsity of these allegations is also confirmed by a review of the trial transcript, a basic task of investigatory research which Jason Cavanagh presumably took as a competent, ethical journalist. The verifiable reality that these allegations are false does not fit with the narrative of Jason Cavanagh’s and Brett Harrelson’s podcast, and that information was excluded.

Dr. Parker, in addition to being an attorney, is a multiply certified healthcare professional with over twenty years of experience as a treating practitioner, clinical researcher, and academic medical educator in the field of post-Traumatic stress disorder. She testifies as an expert witness, helping judges and jurors understand the causes of trauma and its effects on its victims. To be effective in this necessary work, her reputation for honesty and professionalism must remain—literally—unimpeachable. Dr. Parker has already been forced to answer questions in her practice concerning the podcast’s fabricated portrayal of her actions, character, and judgment. She has been warned that the podcast’s release may lead to her not being hired to testify in some or all cases, costing her employment and depriving the Courts of her expert perspective on trauma. The actions of the Defendants have irrevocably damaged her reputation, and the Defendants have profited and continue to profit off the sensationalist and defamatory presentation of Dr. Parker’s interview contained in “Son of a Hitman.”

I’m not sure that these factual allegations, even if accurate, amount to a viable defamation claim, but it will be interesting to watch this.

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First Amendment Class #10: Obscenity II

• Miller v. California (1461-1467) / (733-739)
• Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (1467-1474) / (739-746)

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All of Tennessee’s Republican state senators have signed a letter to the state’s university presidents and chancellors asking them to prevent student-athletes from kneeling during the national anthem.

“To address this issue, we encourage each of you to adopt policies within your respective athletic departments to prohibit any such actions moving forward,” wrote the lawmakers.

The inspiration for this letter was an incident at the University of Tennessee at Chatanooga last week, when the visiting men’s basketball team from East Tennessee State University decided to kneel during the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The players claimed they were trying to call attention to racial inequality.

If university administrators followed through on the senators’ request, they would be violating student-athletes’ First Amendment rights. Students at public universities enjoy broad free speech protections, and officials cannot punish them for engaging in political expression.

This is not really an open question: The Supreme Court ruled in the 1943 decision West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that schools may not require students to salute the American flag. Yes, the Court has agreed with limiting K-12 students’ rights in some very specific cases—most dubiously, if students’ speech appeared to be advocating illegal drug use—but such an exception wouldn’t apply to college athletes engaged in a non-disruptive political protest. If the university could force student-athletes to stand for the national anthem, then it could force any student to do so—and this would obviously be unconstitutional.

Moreover, it’s a particularly galling example of Republicans seeking to use the power of the state to squelch speech that they don’t like. With their recent anti-cancel-culture crusade, conservatives occasionally sound as if they would like to be the party of free speech; this kind of behavior exposes them as hypocrites.

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Thomas Sowell is one of the most influential economists, syndicated columnists, and social critics of the past half-century, having authored provocative, best-selling books on everything from race relations to childhood development to, most recently, Charter Schools and Their Enemies. His masterworks include Knowledge and Decisions, which uses Friedrich Hayek’s insights about distributed information to explain both how markets work and why intellectuals disdain markets; A Conflict of Visions, which explores the ideological origins of political struggles; and Basic Economics, a best-selling primer now in its fifth edition.

Sowell’s inspiring life—he was born black and poor in North Carolina in 1930 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago at the age of 38—and expansive work are now the subjects of a new documentary, Common Sense in a Senseless World (watch here) and a forthcoming biography titled Maverick.

Nick Gillespie speaks with Jason L. Riley, the author of the film and the biography, about why even at age 90, Sowell is more relevant today than ever. A fellow at The Manhattan Institute and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Riley tells me that Sowell’s empirically driven research and his fearless engagement with even the most controversial topics are exactly what our world needs more of.

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