Labor costs are typically consume 30% of a restaurant's revenue. Increasing those costs by 50% and not expecting major consequences is a unrealistic.

Which parts of the studies above did you disagree with? What major consequences did you think Seattle suffered from?

Major consequences to the restaurants. As for the city as a whole, I'd expect to see no new businesses such as light manufacturing locating there unless they have to be there.

And Amazon announced they were locating a second headquarters elsewhere. You could argue that has nothing to do with minimum wage, and probably not since Amazon doesn't have their minimum wage operations in Seattle. But Seattle has done things like passing an unconstitutional income tax targeted at Amazon (now winding its way through the courts) that likely factor in to such decisions. Along with other heavy tax increases, like sales taxes, property taxes, and a proposed "head tax" that appears to be targeted at Amazon.

What are you suggesting those consequences would be?

Higher prices, fewer customers, more automation, fewer restaurants, less willingness to take a chance on marginal employees. More mom&pop restaurants with no employees. More off the books and illegal employees.

Personally, I don't go out to eat in Seattle anymore. Too expensive.

Meanwhile, Seattle Food Services and Drinking employment is at an all-time high.

April 1, 2015 - 135,100 employed

December 2017 - 149,600 employed https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU53426607072200001SA

The trouble with most such statistics is context. How much has Seattle's population grown in the same time period? Are there more or less restaurant employees as a percent of the population? Does Amazon's huge hiring surge of highly paid employees skew the results?

Nothing is ever static in economics, it's very hard to do A-B experiments.

Oddly, I didn’t find any of that nuance or context in your original comment. You presented absolutes and the data proved you wrong. Maybe the population has grown by more than 10% in 2.5 years like food service employment. At the same time, the overall unemployment rate has fallen since the wage hikes started.

> You presented absolutes and the data proved you wrong.

I could say an absolute statement that throwing more wood on the fire would make it hotter. If it also happens to drop into the lake, that doesn't prove me wrong. In any such statements, there's an implicit assumption that other effects stay the same, that I am not dropping the fire in the lake.

Seattle has undergone enormous change in the last 5 years due to Amazon. Ignoring that in any cause/effect analysis of the overall city invalidates the analysis.

No, the "trouble" is that exactly the opposite of what you warned would happen actually happened.

What happened was exactly in line with the papers I cited predicted. 1. Large profit hit, 2. small price hike, 3. no effect on employment (employment actually went up, possibly for other reasons).

The reason you believe what you believe is because you swallowed a lot of kool aid. The people concerned about 1 happening want us to think will 3 happen. In Seattle it didn't. In well run studies it didn't.

In propaganda and poorly run economic studies it does.

The title of the paper is: "All Employees: Food Services and Drinking Places in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA"

The minimum wage hike to $15 was only in Seattle.

> In Seattle it didn't.

The cite did not break out Seattle data from the region.

> In propaganda

It's propaganda to cite statistics for a region when only one part of the region is being discussed.

>The title of the paper is

Yeah, not that one. The one I cited by the UK low pay commission where it found a minimum wage hike was accompanied by a 11% drop in profits and a slight increase in prices (and even then only in the food service industry).

I doubt that anybody has studied the profit drop in Seattle. As an economist, it pays not to look too closely at certain topics and that is definitely one of those topics. It would not help your employability to study that topic at all.

Your employability goes up, however, if your research helps to find results that restaurant associations or "walmarts" with a bit of cash to splash around might find useful.

David Neumark and William Wascher are keenly aware of this, which is probably why they took Card and Krueger's landmark study and twisted it until it showed employment going down after a minimum wage hike.

Your cited numbers include the cities of Tacoma and Bellevue, which did not have the minimum wage hike. You cannot attribute them to Seattle.

>Minimum wage hikes are typically a pretty direct transfer from profits to wages, with a minor increase in prices:

This sentiment has always bothered me. It assume that whatever "profit" exists, must continue to exist, nay increase, and that it is a zero-sum game. One could argue that paying your workers more make them eligible to purchase your products ala Henry Ford and the Model T.

That wasn't sentiment it was just fact.

Henry Ford raised wages because his staff turnover was killing productivity and because he fell out with his shareholders and decided to spite them. The man wasn't an angel. He was an anti Semite and a Nazi sympathiser ffs.