The compensation package for a job includes a certain mix of "how hard do we make you work, how nice are the conditions, how much do we pay". Minimum wage keeps you from trading those off. Now you get paid more but you have to hustle to earn it, no perks, and less budget for the safety committee.
They keep saying that a "large" increase in minimum wage results in a 4.6% increase in case rate. But they don't [d̶e̶f̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶"̶l̶a̶r̶g̶e̶"̶ ̶(̶e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶v̶s̶.̶ ̶"̶s̶m̶a̶l̶l̶"̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶d̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶r̶a̶t̶e̶)̶,̶ ̶n̶o̶r̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶] point out a margin of error or a noise floor early enough in the paper for a non-paying reader to see.<p>They also say that they "do not find evidence that capital-labor substitution could be behind the findings", but its again not within the scope of the free article to show <i>how</i> they were looking for such evidence, and what defined "capitol-labor substitution". Were they looking purely for "it costs $5k a year to provide everyone with safety glasses, but operating costs just increased by $5<i>0</i>k on what used to net $60k of profit, so I guess we're not doing safety glasses anymore" or if the same reasoning was used on $600k of profit. The former is clearly capitol-labor substitution, the latter is being cheap out of spite.<p>Maybe these questions are being answered in a satisfactory manner, but the fact that they use a blend of wiggle words and hard numbers, with no clarifying context even in the abstract, suggests to me that this does not actually support the strawman everybody seems to be getting from it, which is "see, paying the person at McDonalds enough to actually make rent this month might get them killed! You don't want to pay them so much they might <i>die</i>, right?"
so, p-hacking, or following a meaningful wage increase, employees are more likely, or more able to report an injury, and the actual rate of injury didn't change?<p>Or am I missing another more obvious conclusion here?
I guess since dube, lester, reich the think tank crowd has given up on trying to demonstrate that it destroys jobs and are trying a different tack.<p>It's worth noting that mininum wage hikes are a very profit hostile policy. This is why they tend to receive such huge pushback.
Having started at the bottom, I think the most important thing for people in this situation is to be able to get the next higher paying job, then the next higher paying job. Minimum wage should be temporary - so this study is kind of stupid.<p>In my experience, my worst enemies were exhaustion, the crab-in-the-bucket attitude of my peers, and an inability to build a resume and to network out to the people who wanted what I could do. Ultimately I couldn't escape poverty until I could buy enough gear to work up north. That money made it possible to pay for an education.<p>To help the poor, make it easy for them to climb the economic ladder. If safety makes this harder, I would prioritize job-mobility over safety.
I'd be interested in some of the speculated causation here, do folks think that because they're getting paid more then they are expected to work 4.6% harder therefore get injured at that higher rate?
> minimum wage increases adversely impact workplace safety<p>Ironic, since the intent of minimum wage was make human capital expensive enough to promote automation and prevent human slaughter in the factories of the early 1900s
> Prior studies document that financial constraints reduce safety investment and thus increase injuries...<p>I mean, maybe, but that goes both ways.<p>Someone with a bit more financial security might be more able to seek treatment, too. $500 in savings makes it easier to miss a shift to go to urgent care.
Yet another reason why the minimum/living wage treadmill isn't the right solution, and labor activist should push more seriously for UBI. The fact of the matter is that many people's labor isn't worth a living wage, and especially not for ethical working conditions.<p>The goal of every job paying enough to be comfortable is missing the forest for the trees, because it will always fail to account for the cost of the stress of working, and always be at odds with safety. The actual goal should be that people should be able to survive comfortably no matter their ability to get a "good" job, because as we automate more, it's just a simple fact that "good" jobs will continue to get harder to come by.