I mean, I probably would have linked directly to the letter from the 600 economists, which is more persuasive than a page from the administration’s department of labor.

In that case the worker would be worse off, but I'm not sure why the worker would take the job in that case

That’s not the point I’m arguing against. The point I’m arguing against (the point that people are making up above) is that EVEN IF minimum wage laws cause unemployment, we should still have them because being unemployed is better than working for unjustly low wages

But isn’t it better to be poor with some money than no money? If it were better to not work and have no money, people wouldn’t work these jobs

And real life people are trying to push the minimum wage up to $15 an hour without giving a thought to the effects on unemployment, evidently on the assumption that it doesn't matter because being unemployed is better than working for a shitty wage

I hedged because I don't have a grasp of what $4 an hour actually pays for. Of course living like that is unlivable

If the business goes under, do the laid off workers appreciate the fact that their wages just decreased?

The original comment I replied to made that assumption. The point I tried to make was that if the minimum wage decreases employment, then it probably does more harm then good. If the assumption is wrong, then there it no harm to the worker, but that’s a different question than the one I was talking about.

$4 an hour is a shitty, probably-unlivable wage. But it’s less shitty and more livable than a $0 per hour wage

...which is still better than being on welfare and being even more broke because they make literally nothing

I mean....that 20% would probably be better off

So I get the idea that the Koch Brothers are literally Satan, but this headline makes it sounds like they are trying to defeat her BECAUSE she is Latina. But really, they oppose her because she’s a democrat. So a more appropriate headline would be “Koch-backed groups support republican over democrat.” But of course,…

The weird thing about this case is that they’re NOT technically committing polygamy because he hasn’t tried to get a marriage license with the other wives. Co-habitation statues are no longer on the books, and it’s totally legal to be in a poly relationship. My understanding of the Utah law is that while its legal to…

Kthulu 2016

This is bad, but at least I’m glad he was honest. I’d rather have a candidate who just says when he doesn’t know something, rather than a candidate (cough cough Donald Trump) who would’ve bullshitted his way through an answer

This reminds me of a problem we have in Arizona (and probably many other places). We have a state-funded homeless shelter, and for a while, they would house sex offenders they didn’t deem a threat to the shelter. However, eventually the state said that if they wanted state funding, they couldn’t house any sex…

So let’s be explicit then:

I’ve read the other cases that are usually linked, and they don’t really convince me. The most “damning” case that people bring up is usually the Ramirez one, but that has absolutely nothing in common with the Turner sentence

I’d kinda forgotten that this article was about the law cause we’ve spent a while talking about the recall effort. I’m broadly skeptical of mandatory minimums in general, but I don’t really see anything wrong with this particular statute.

Maybe the sex offender laws are a better example where outrage over bad sentences lead to bad sentencing policy. The point is, that’s what will happen.