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Articles by Eben Macdonald

Progressivism’s Failures: From Minimum Wages to the Welfare State

April 9, 2021

The empirical evidence shows that neither minimum wages or welfare reduce poverty. In fact, minimum wages tend to increase the cost of living while poverty rates have gone nowhere since the Great Society was introduced.

Original Article: “Progressivism’s Failures: From Minimum Wages to the Welfare State”
As I write, the Democratic Congress is contemplating various measures designed to alleviate poverty levels in the United States. They include: the doubling of the minimum wage; the expansion of child credits. Let’s review both.
The Minimum Wage Hike
Congress intends to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. This makes various assumptions: first, that minimum wage workers themselves are indeed poor. This is wrong: they come from families with a median

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Progressivism’s Failures: From Minimum Wages to the Welfare State

April 4, 2021

As I write, the Democratic Congress is contemplating various measures designed to alleviate poverty levels in the United States. They include: the doubling of the minimum wage; the expansion of child credits. Let’s review both.
The Minimum Wage Hike
Congress intends to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. This makes various assumptions: first, that minimum wage workers themselves are indeed poor. This is wrong: they come from families with a median household income of $66,000; for, their median age is twenty-four years old, and 60 percent are still attending school. Secondly, this policy makes the assumption that it will have no statistically significant impact on unemployment. This is also misguided. The City of Seattle enacted a $13 minimum wage in

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