Peter Power/The Globe and Mail
A roundup of the best economic posts on the Web
Minimum wages, employment and poverty
Stephen Gordon at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative uses some new figures to bolster his case that, "as anti-poverty measures go, increasing the minimum wage is pointless at best."
"...The employment effects of the minimum wage might be safely ignored if the gains from doing so - in terms of reduced poverty and inequality - were 'large enough.' But available evidence makes it clear that these gains are far too small to justify ignoring employment effects. Moreover, the data suggest that marginalised workers are most likely to pay the price of those job losses."
The ire of retirement
Paul Krugman wonders who the U.S. deficit commission was thinking about when it suggested raising the retirement age.
"Oh, and they're talking about raising the retirement age, because people live longer - except that the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren't living much longer. So you're going to tell janitors to work until they're 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever. Still, I guess this is what it takes to get compromise, if by compromise you mean something the center-right and the hard right can agree on."
CAW fires back at trade minister
CAW economist Jim Stanford takes issue with Trade Minister Peter Van Loan's figures on the auto industry in Canada (and Mr. Van Loan's dismissal of his recent report on the possible job losses resulting from a free-trade deal with the EU).
San Fran Fed says no structural unemployment in U.S.
Real Time Economics has published a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that throws more cold water on claims by some analysts (and at least one regional Fed president) that U.S. unemployment is the result of a mismatch between skills being offered and those that are needed.
"If they are right, that means against concerns to the contrary, monetary policy remains an effective tool to help the economy generate better levels of job growth."