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Kari Hazzard
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Kari commented on the article |For all the (many, many) things Lieberman has done that draw progressives' ire, he's one of the most outspoken supporters of LGBT equality in the Senate and has been for a long time.
He was a cosponsor of the Matthew Shepard Act every single year it was introduced, from 2001 to it finally being passed last year. (The Republicans denied the bill a vote while they controlled Congress.)
He was a cosponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) every single year it was introduced, from 1994 to now. Even in 1995, where Ted Kennedy's version of the bill only got 3 cosponsors, Lieberman was one of the three. (Jim Jeffords also offered a version of the bill that year, which found 30 cosponsors.)
Currently, he's the primary sponsor of the Senate's version of the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act (DPBO) which would extend domestic partner benefits to federal employees,
I suppose the only negative mark on his record is that he voted for DOMA originally, but considering there was a lot of whipping on both sides of the aisle to vote for it, I wouldn't hold it against him now. It's not like that vote was close anyway.
Other than his vote for DOMA, Lieberman's record on LGBT rights is essentially spotless and far more consistent than most other Senators. Progressives don't like the fact that he's fiscally conservative or the fact that he favors hawkish foreign policy, but on this particular issue he's always been one of their greatest allies.
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Kari commented on the article |Correction: If Maine defeats Prop. 1 in November (which is likely) Maine will not be the first state to do so.
The first attempt to amend Arizona's constitution to ban same-sex marriage failed at the polls, the fact that they later passed a less-extreme amendment notwithstanding.
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Kari commented on the article |"But this is *never* the case"
I can think of a few industries where because of what the laborers are doing it will result in wage-inelasticity.
All we need here is an elasticity that is < 1 at the point that L* is at to establish that some minimum wage would help workers. That's not exactly a difficult criterion to establish in the real world.
At some age levels, I'd even imagine that there's near-perfect inelasticity. If you're an airline and you can't fly unless you have two pilots, you'd keep both pilots on until the opportunity cost of running the flight exceeds the profit of it with its now higher labor costs. It doesn't matter if the wage is really high; you either have those two pilots or you don't get off the ground. (Pilots are of course not minimum-wage earners and thus the law does not affect them, but at least in the theory discussion, that is irrelevant.)
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Kari commented on the article |
If W* is the equilibrium wage and L* is the equilibrium quantity of labor employed, W* x L* is the equilibrium benefit to laborers.
If we impose a minimum wage W' that is above W*, quantity of labor employed will shift down from L* to L' and obviously the wage that labor is employed at will shift from W* to W'.
In the minimum wage scenario, the benefit to employes is W' x L'.
If we have a wage-inelastic demand for labor curve, W' x L' may be greater than W* x L*. Under Kaldor-Hicks reasoning, the winners win more than the losers lose and thus we have a good reason to have a minimum wage.
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Kari commented on the article |
It tends to be based on the commerce clause.
If any state truly felt the federal government had no Constitutional authority to have a federal minimum wage they could challenge it in court. The fact that (to my knowledge) that's never been done indicates that states are OK with it.
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Kari commented on the article |
If you like untried ideas, have you heard of Negative Income Tax? It's a neat idea.
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Kari commented on the article |
Uh, no, I don't think that's somehow true and think having a minimum wage is more "moral".
The only time a minimum wage is completely unjustified is in a perfectly competitive labor market, which doesn't exist in the real world.
If the industrial organization of the labor market is anything other than perfect competition, a minimum wage could create a pareto-superior labor market if certain conditions are met.
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Kari commented on the article |
I never said anything about unions, did I?
The government exists to provide law and order and to promote the wellbeing of society. Government intervention in markets can, in some cases, result in better societal welfare than in a completely laissez faire market.
If a minimum wage benefits certain employees more than it hurts the employees that become unemployed because of it, a minimum wage is actually a good thing. (I'm not convinced it *does*, but that's beside the point.)
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Kari commented on the article |
CTYankee Aeon: From the government's perspective, what you personally would prefer the situation be is not the only consideration.
In some labor markets, minimum wages can actually benefit the people who get the higher wages more than they hurt the people who become unemployed.
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Kari commented on the article |
Heck, not even Fortune 500 company is profitable. Just because a company is very large does not mean it's turning a profit on what it produces.
Being a large company just means there's more at stake there; it doesn't say anything about whether their bottom lines are positive.
The companies that are large and are not profitable are the ones that we usually hear demanding government bailouts.
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