November 18, 2018

by Steve Stofka

Near the top of the Democratic agenda in the new Congress is a minimum wage of $15. The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, but it will signal to the voters that the Democratic House is meeting campaign promises. The states with the most solid Democratic support are those on the west coast and northeast coast where the cost of living is much higher. A single minimum wage for the entire country is not appropriate. Republicans control the Senate and they are from states with much lower costs of living. They will reject an ambitious minimum wage that is one-size fits all.

Housing is the largest monthly expense for most families. Below is a graph of home prices in several western metropolitan areas (MSAs) and the national average of twenty large MSAs. Home prices in Dallas and Phoenix are a 1/3 less than Los Angeles and San Francisco. Housing costs in many smaller cities will be below Dallas and Phoenix.

Why isn’t the minimum wage indexed to inflation? Because politicians of both parties, but particularly Democrats, have used it as a wedge issue to gain voter support. If the House Democrats wanted to pass bi-partisan legislation on a minimum wage, they could use a flexible minimum wage that is indexed to the average wages for each region within the country. These are published regularly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same agency that publishes the monthly report of job gains and the unemployment rate. I’ve charted the annual figures for those same cities.

A $15 minimum wage is 40% of the average wage in San Francisco, and a bit more than half of the average wage in Los Angeles. It is almost 60% of the national average. The current minimum of $7.25 is 28% of the national average.

If the House passed a minimum wage bill that set the wage to 40% of the average wage for each region, Senate Republicans might at least consider it. In Denver and L.A., the minimum wage would be about $11.50. In Dallas and Phoenix, it would be about $10.60. Democrats could show that they are in Washington to pass legislation for working families, not pound some ideological stump as Republicans did for eight years with the repeal of Obamacare.

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Stocks and Taxes

There is a close correlation between stock prices and corporate tax collections. The tax bill passed last December lowered corporate tax revenues in the hope that businesses would invest more in the U.S. The divergence between prices and collections has to correct. Either tax collections increase because of greater profitability or stock prices come down.

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Income Growth

The financial crisis severely undercut income growth. Real, or inflation-adjusted, per capita income after taxes decreased for three years from 2008 through 2010, and again in 2014. It is the longest period of negative growth since the 1930s Depression.