Seattle readers and those nearby: On Thursday Nov. 2 I’ll be the guest of Northeastern University at its South Lake Union campus for an evening conversation. Thanks to Peter Temes who organizes the series. The event is free and open to the public — you can sign up here.
Posts Tagged ‘Seattle’
Environment roundup
- Seattle will ban restaurants from giving plastic straws [Christian Britschgi]
- Big money in climate inquisition? Lawyers with contingency-fee role in AGs’ carbon campaign join Hagens Berman [Scott Flaherty, American Lawyer; earlier on climate lawyers on contingency fee here and here]
- Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 2008, includes entries on urban planning by Mark Pennington and on eminent domain and takings by Karol Boudreaux;
- California legislature’s $1.5 billion green Christmas tree includes bill “aimed at helping a union looking to organize workers who assemble Tesla electric cars in Fremont” [AP]
- Michigan AG Schuette indicts state human services chief Nick Lyon in Flint water case, and a prominent Democrat and Republican both take exception to that [Kathleen Gray, Detroit Free Press (former AG Frank Kelley); Maura Corrigan]
- “You Should Be Able to Vindicate Federal Property Rights in Federal Court” [Ilya Shapiro and Meggan DeWitt, Cato on Wayside Church v. Van Buren County]
Seattle landlords aren’t to know about would-be tenants’ criminal records
“The Seattle City Council approved an ordinance Monday that will mostly prohibit landlords from screening tenants based on their criminal records. Landlords will be barred from excluding people with records in advertisements. When taking applications, they will be barred from asking about records. And in choosing tenants, they will be barred from rejecting people due to their records.” [Daniel Beekman, Seattle Times] Now with more re-education: “Any participation in this ‘conciliation’ process also mandates landlords attend anti-bias training courses.” [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
Wage, hour, and pay roundup
- “AP Writes Over 1300 Words on the Loss Of Summer Jobs for Teens, Never Mentions Minimum Wage” [Coyote, AP] “In Denmark the minimum wage jumps up by 40% when a worker turns 18.” And once workers hit that age their employment levels drop by a third [Alex Tabarrok] More: Bryan Caplan;
- I’m quoted on how Fair Labor Standards Act’s pressure to impose 9 to 5 clock-punching regime pulls in opposite direction from modern trends in workplace organization [Karl Herchenroeder, PJ Media] Podcast on latest developments in Department of Labor overtime rules [Federalist Society with Tammy McCutchen]
- One thing Seattle was doing with its minimum wage hike: widening inequality [Coyote] A hygiene angle on Seattle [Tyler Cowen] Why should Minneapolis pay attention to Seattle, anyway? [Christian Britschgi, Reason] Or Montgomery County, Md.? [Glynis Kazanjian, Maryland Reporter]
- “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished – The Supreme Court May Decide Whether Payments for Meal Breaks Can Offset Alleged Off-The-Clock Work” [Kara Goodwin and Noah Finkel, Seyfarth Shaw on certiorari petition in Smiley v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Company]
- Philadelphia chamber files First Amendment challenge to city law barring inquiries about applicant’s past pay [Stephanie Peet and Timothy McCarthy, WLF]
- “Oregon Wants to Regulate Flexible Work Schedules Out of Existence” [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
NBER: Seattle minimum wage hike hurt low-wage workers
A working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by a University of Washington team — the same team hired by Seattle to evaluate its minimum-wage experiment — just found serious ill effects:
This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016. Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies.
A Jonathan Meer post reprinted by Alex Tabarrok spells out just how bad that news is:
– The numbers of hours worked by low-wage workers fell by *3.5 million hours per quarter*. This was reflected both in thousands of job losses and reductions in hours worked by those who retained their jobs.
– The losses were so dramatic that this increase ‘reduced income paid to low-wage employees of single-location Seattle businesses by roughly $120 million on an annual basis.’ On average, low-wage workers *lost* $125 per month….
I know that so many people just desperately want to believe that the minimum wage is a free lunch. It’s not. These job losses will only get worse as the minimum wage climbs higher, and this team is working on linking to demographic data to examine who the losers from this policy are. I fully expect that these losses are borne most heavily by low-income and minority households.
But there’s more. When Seattle’s City Hall got word the adverse study was coming from members of its own research team, it quickly commissioned a pro-labor group at Berkeley to do a counter-study looking at restaurants and concluding that everything was peachy keen [Seattle Weekly] “Does City Hall really want to know the consequences, or does it want to put blinders on and pat itself on the back?” [Seattle Times editorial]
One other takeaway from the NBER: the low-wage-earner losses weren’t in restaurant jobs, which are far less mobile. Few Seattle city residents will switch to suburban eateries for everyday dining, even in response to relative shifts in cost or quality. But many blue-collar and clerical jobs can migrate to suburbs or locations farther away than that. In short, beware of restaurant-sector-only studies of local minimum wage effects, which will typically understate damage to hours worked.
More: Ben Casselman and Kathryn Casteel, Five Thirty-Eight; Max Ehrenfreund/Washington Post; Michael Saltsman/Forbes (“New Report Marks The Beginning Of The End For ‘Fight For $15′”); Ryan Bourne, Cato.
June 7 roundup
- “Copyright Troll’s Tech ‘Experts’ Can Apparently Detect Infringement Before It Happens” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt] “Judge Alsup Threatens To Block Malibu Media From Any More Copyright Trolling In Northern California” [Mike Masnick, same]
- “The Truth About Seattle’s Proposed Soda Tax and its Ilk” [Baylen Linnekin quoting my piece on the Howard County, Maryland campaign against soft drinks; my related on Philadelphia soda tax] Update: measure passes;
- “Judge calls attorney a ‘lowlife’ in tossing defamation suit, says ‘truth is an absolute defense'” [Julia Marsh, New York Post]
- Rent control in Mumbai, as closer to home, brings strife, litigiousness, and crumbling housing stock [Alex Tabarrok] “How Germany Made Rent Control ‘Work'” [Kristian Niemietz, FEE]
- Together with Judge Alex Williams, Jr., I wrote an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun on the Maryland legislature’s misbegotten scheme to require a six-state compact before fixing its gerrymander-prone redistricting system;
- Inefficient land title recording leaves billions on table, but lawmakers show scant interest in reform [Arnold Kling]
Judge puts hold on Seattle’s we-unionize-you law
A judge has enjoined, for now, Seattle’s we’ll-pick-a-union-for-Uber-drivers ordinance [Jon Weinberg/On Labor, earlier]
Seattle: we’ll pick a union for Uber drivers
In 2015 the city of Seattle passed a unique law imposing a collective bargaining law on Uber drivers and giving the city itself the power to select a union to represent the drivers. It chose the Teamsters Union, which already represented (competing) taxi drivers. Like the federal law of collective bargaining agreements, the city law purports to take away individual drivers’ rights to reach other deals, whether or not they voted for the union. “The Teamsters are allied with Yellow Cab and pushed for the 2015 ordinance requiring union negotiations.” Litigation in both state and federal court seeks to set aside the law on multiple grounds including pre-emption, antitrust, and privacy violation. [Daniel Fisher] More: WSJ editorial today.
Seattle law strips landlords of choice of tenants
Appalling: a new law in Seattle aims to strip property owners of all choice among tenant applicants, requiring them to take the first comer who meets their preannounced guidelines. Does it violate the Constitution? The Pacific Legal Foundation intends to find out on behalf of Chong and MariLyn Yim. [Daniel Beekman, Seattle Times] When the law was under consideration, a council member objected — on the grounds that the city should instead consider requiring the owners to institute a lottery, rather than a first-come-first-served rule. Part of the rationale of the law is to combat “unconscious bias” [Ethan Blevins, PLF] More: Jeb Kinnison in August.
Environment roundup
- YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement in San Francisco, other cities says build more housing to tame housing costs [Alex Tabarrok] Zoning laws sometimes respond to tiny-house movement, and sometimes don’t [Curbed]
- Federalist Society convention panel on Justice Scalia’s property rights jurisprudence with John Echeverria, James W. Ely, Jr., Roderick Hills, Jr., Adam Laxalt, Ilya Somin, Judge Allison Eid moderating;
- Your regulated residence: “Santa Monica Moves to Make All New Homes Net-Zero Energy” [Mental Floss]
- “King County, Washington, Caught Digging Through Residents’ Trash” [Christian Britschgi/Reason; see also on Seattle composting regulations]
- “EPA to big cities: Stop killing rats with dry ice” [Aamer Madhani, USA Today]
- “Policing for profit in private environmental enforcement” [Jonathan Wood; Clean Water Act citizen suits]