Is The LA Times Shifting Stance On Minimum Wage?

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RBN Energy: more on pipelines from the Marcellus/Utica to the southeast.

The Wall Street Journal

Insurers push to rein in spending on cancer care.

Cost to rein in Detroit blight will cost almost $1 billion.

Military spending buoys durable orders.

Some Democrats have begun to take a more assertive stance on ObamaCare, highlighting the most popular benefits of the law and attacking Republicans for trying to repeal them.

SecDef orders review of military health care: he has ordered a sweeping revew of the miltary healht-care system to determine if it is hobbled by any of the problems recently exposed in the medical services provided to the nation's veterans.

Supreme Court rules against George W. Bush protestorers.

GM-defect death tally likely to rise.

Power-price rise energizes utility shares: this was posted yesterday from a different source. A huge "thank you" to Steve for alerting me to the article. This is a big one -- it should be a WSJ front page story. 

S&P 500 closes at record; gold extends losses to 15-week low.

The Los Angeles Times

Obama delays deportation review to give immigration bill a chance.

Study: diet soda drinkers lost more weight than water drinkers.

Michelle decries plan to lower school lunch nutrition standards.

Tectonic shift? LA Times shifting stance on minimum wage after the Connecticut experience?

ashington politicos want to know which way popular winds are blowing so they can set their sails accordingly. Rarely, though, are they as explicit as President Obama in citing public opinion as a justification for policy. When pressed to defend his call for a $10.10 minimum wage, Obama routinely points to the November 2013 Gallup poll wherein 76% of respondents said they favored a higher minimum wage. A higher minimum wage is "what America wants," asserts the president.
 
There are evident problems with poll-driven policy development. To begin with, pandering to polls isn't real leadership; poll-driven decisions are instead the epitome of "leading from behind." Further, poll responses vary significantly over time and circumstances. Five years ago, 58% of Americans opposed gay marriage (as did, coincidentally, Obama). Today, 59% approve of same-sex marriage (USA Today/Gallup, 2014).

In assessing those losses, several facts are relevant. First, nearly everyone starts out in a minimum wage job. Second, few people stay at minimum-wage jobs very long; they move up the wage scale quickly with experience and employer references. Third, a majority of both teen and adult minimum-wage workers live in households with other, higher-wage workers. Single moms who hold minimum-wage jobs (the favorite focus of the popular media) stay neither single moms nor at minimum wage jobs very long.
All of this means that an effective wage hike will delay labor-market entry for teens, immigrants and other low-skilled workers who need access to that first step on America's mobility ladder. So, there is a downside to minimum-wage hikes.