big kahuna wrote:
According to the CBC, Ontario -- which had raised the minimum wage by 20%, to $14 hourly (Canadian, I'm assuming ;-) in January -- saw a loss of 53,900 part-time jobs from December, 2017. It gained about 8,900 full-time positions, for a net loss of 50,900 gigs. The linked article says "experts say it may be too soon to know how much the two are correlated." That's understandable, of course, given that December may have featured a number of temporary holiday-type positions, for one. For another, economics is a social science, with math envy, and is by its nature an inexact science in many regards. So no wonder "experts" don't know.
So what say you folks living in the fabulous Province of Ontario, eh? I didn't even know they were fooling around with the minimum wage there (and I live right across the river from the place and listen mostly to the two Canadian alternative rock stations, 89X and The River, hahaha!).
This is the most intellectually dishonest of pursuits. It boggles the mind. Can you imagine us deciding to purposely increase CO2 production and then note that the temperature went up, but then have our "experts" just say "it may be too soon to know how much the two are correlated." Sure, they might not technically know from a scientific data analysis point of view how much each data set is correlated, but they damn well would let you know -- from the get go -- what the underlying science had to say about the whole enterprise of jacking up CO2 production. On minimum wage increases we just get crickets chirping. This is shameful.