Minimum Wage should not increase to $15.

Thanks, Pro. Due to time constraints, I'm only going to be using this round for rebuttals. == Unemployment == A large part of Pro's case is based on the premise that an increase in MW will result in higher unemployment rates. However, his primary strategy for proving this is to throw tons of studies at me which show an unemployment effect. However, I can just as easily throw tons of studies right back at him to show that the unemployment effect does *not* exist: "John Schmitt (2013), conducted a literature review and found that the minimum wage has 'no discernible effect on employment' [1]. Card and Krueger (1994), looked at the 1992 rise in New Jersey"s minimum wage and found no evidence of negative employment effects [2]. In fact, they found, after comparing evidence from stores in eastern Pennsylvania where the MW remained constant or to stores that were already paying near wages near the MW, that the minimum wage actually worked to increase employment. Dube et al. (2010) replicated the findings of Card and Krueger and found no negative employment effects after adjusting for spatial heterogeneity [3]. Next, a meta-analysis by Doucouliagos and T. D. Stanley (2009) looked at 64 minimum wage studies from 1972 to 2007, and found that, after adjusting for public selection bias, that the evidence is clear that the minimum wage has no effect on employment [4]. Belman and Wolfson conducted a similar meta study on literature revealed since 2000 and, using 27 studies, found no statistically significant negative employment effects [5]" [6]. The academic literature on this topic is divided to the point that simply citing professional statistical studies is not useful in determining the impact of MW on employment. The fundamental problem with the idea that increased labor costs would result in more unemployment is that demand for labor is not elastic. Companies don't just hire employees simply because they can afford to -- they have the number of employees they do because they *need* that many in order fulfill consumer demand. Thus, when faced with an increase in expenses, 'killing jobs' is one of the *last* things an employer will resort to offset it. For that reason alone, we should be skeptical of any "evidence" of MW increases having an unemployment effect. And anyways, if I am able to successfully defend my case next round, then I would have affirmed that MW hikes result in a net profit boost for businesses, thus making the notion of the unemployment effect absurd. That all said, there actually is one particular study which I would like refute empirically, as it is mentioned numerous times throughout Pro's rebuttal -- Neumark and Wascher's study on teenage unemployment. This study has been demonstrated to have many severe methodological flaws in it, the most damning of which was brought to attention in a commentary written by Card and Krueger: "Neurmark and Wascher's conclusions hinge entirely on whether they hold constant the effect of a variable reportedly measuring 'the proportion of the age group enrolled in school.' When they include this variable, the minimum wage index has a statistically insignificant and positive contemporaneous effect on teenage employment... Neumark and Wascher's enrollment measure clearly is based on a false dichotomy. Not only may teenagers who work also be enrolled in school, but they usually are" [7]. Because this study is founded upon such a blatantly false assumption (among several others listed out in the commentary), its results and all the studies which cite those results should be dismissed. There is simply no reason to believe that MW hikes result in more unemployment. == GDP & Income Growth == Pro's graphs are misleading, as they only look at the nominal value of the MW. If we look at the real (i.e. accounting for inflation) value of the MW over time, we see that it has only *decreased* since 1968 [7]. Turn Pro's graphs against him because they show that the decreasing real value of the minimum wage is correlated with a declines in average income and GDP growth. Moreover, as Pro notes, there were two instances where the increase in nominal MW did result in economic growth -- BOTH of these were before 1968, when the real MW was increasing as well, thus strengthening the correlation between MW hikes and economic expansion. - I have refuted both of Pro's main harms against the MW. The rest of his case got absorbed into my own case's discussion of whether or not businesses' profits benefit from MW hikes. The resolution remains negated. - [1] http://www.cepr.net... [2] http://davidcard.berkeley.edu... [3] http://www.irle.berkeley.edu... [4] http://www.deakin.edu.au... [5] http://www2.gre.ac.uk... [6] http://www.debate.org... [7] http://scholar.harvard.edu...