Apparently, on March 18, the City Council will be asked to approve placing a ballot measure on the November ballot that would increase the minimum wage in Richmond.
There are three potential levels proposed:
· $11.00/hour
· $12.30/hour
· $15.00/hour
Businesses with fewer than 10 employees would be exempt.
San Francisco already has a $10.74 minimum wage that will increase to $11.00/hour at the end of 2014. San Jose is at $10.15/hour. Oakland is going to ballot a $12.25/hour minimum wage this year.
I would appreciate your views.
· Should we just put it on the ballot and let the people decide? If so, at what level?
· Should we shortcut the ballot process and just pass it with a City Council vote?
· Is it such a bad idea that we and not even place it on the ballot, and if so, why?
· Do you have any personal knowledge of how it might affect actual businesses in Richmond?
For some pertinent articles, see:
· http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf
· Here is a compilation of the SF minimum wage experience: http://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/when-mandates-work/
http://prospect.org/article/cooked-order which is how the Neumark and Wascher, authors of the work cited by Rogers used Restaurant Association Cooperation and data and were later proven wrong.
· A 2012 paper published in the Journal of Public Economics, “Optimal Minimum Wage Policy in Competitive Labor Markets,” furnishes a theoretical model that lends some support to the empirical insights of Krueger/Card. The paper, from David Lee at Princeton and Emmanuel Saez at UC-Berkeley, concludes: “The minimum wage is a useful tool if the government values redistribution toward low wage workers, and this remains true in the presence of optimal nonlinear taxes/transfers.” However, under certain labor market conditions, it may be better for the government to subsidize low-wage workers and keep the minimum wage relatively low.
· Very technical: Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies, Sylvia Allegretto, Arindrajit Dube, Michael Reich and Ben Zipperer September 23, 2013, http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/148-13.pdf
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