---

NEW RESEARCH: MINIMUM WAGE HIKES IN CALIFORNIA LED TO LOWER COMPENSATION
by Kevin Ryan

The vast majority of research on minimum wage finds that it reduces employment. Indeed a paper published earlier this year reviewed all existing studies and found that a “clear preponderance” of evidence showed that minimum wage hikes lead to employment losses.

But occasionally a study will claim that an increase in minimum wage did not lead to lower employment.

New research may explain why.

An article published last week in the Harvard Business Review looked at data for a group of stores in California between 2015 and 2018, when the state’s minimum wage increased from $9 per hour to $11 per hour, a 22% increase.

Researchers found that the total number of minimum wage workers employed did not decrease… in fact it increased.

But they also found that each minimum wage worker ended up making 13.6% LESS money.

How is it possible that minimum wage workers ended up making less money despite the fact that the minimum wage rate increased by 22%?

“[Our research] suggests that as minimum wage increases, firms may strategically adjust their scheduling practices to reduce the number of workers eligible for benefits,” the study’s author’s found.

What the businesses did was to hire more workers but to reduce the number of hours that each employee worked in order to keep them below the level at which they’d be forced to pay them retirement benefits. Thus even though the workers’ hourly wage increased, the total hours they work decreased, and they were no longer paid retirement benefits.

“We found that for every $1 increase in minimum wage, the percentage of workers working more than 20 hours per week (making them eligible for retirement benefits) decreased by 23.0%,” the researchers said.

“For an average store in California, these changes translated into four extra workers per week and five fewer hours per worker per week — which meant that the total wage compensation of an average minimum wage worker in a California store actually fell by 13.6%,” and the workers were no longer eligible for retirement benefits.

So next time you see somebody boasting that an increase in minimum wage didn’t lead to layoffs, take a closer look at the data. Sometimes, even when businesses don’t lay off workers, they find other ways to reduce worker compensation in order to offset the pay hike and stay in business.

---

---

Fulton County Election Official Admits Chain of Custody Documents Missing for 2020 Absentee Ballots Deposited in Drop Boxes

In a stunning admission about the critical chain of custody documents for absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes in the November 3, 2020 election, a Fulton County election official told The Georgia Star News on Wednesday that “a few forms are missing” and that “some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.”

A Star News analysis of drop box ballot transfer forms for absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes provided by Fulton County in response to an Open Records Request showed that 385 transfer forms out of an estimated 1,565 transfer forms Fulton County said should have been provided are missing – a number that is significantly greater than “a few” by any objective standard.

On Sunday, The Star News published a story which included the files containing digital images of the 1,180 transfer forms that Fulton County did provide. Those digital images can be viewed here.

This is the first time that any election official at either the state or county level from a key battleground state has made an admission of significant error in election procedures for the November 3, 2020 election.

​​​​​​​...

---

---

‘Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) said the quiet part out loud on Sunday while she was discussing the House’s sweeping elections reform bill, H.R.1.

The Democrat-controlled House in March passed H.R. 1, a massive elections reform bill making it easier for Democrats to steal elections.

The House Democrats previously introduced the “For the People Act of 2021” which will ensure Democrats can count ballots for days and days after an election until they have enough votes to win.

The Democrats used Covid as a vehicle to successfully steal the White House and the Senate (and possibly the House) with ballot harvesting, ballot drop boxes, mail-in ballots and by counting ballots in secret for several days after Election Day in 2020 so now they’re passing legislation to make it easier to steal every election going forward.

H.R.1. has stalled in the Senate where the Democrats have a slim majority with a 50-50 senate and Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.

West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin has stated on the record that he does not support H.R.1 and he won’t end the filibuster so the bill is pretty much DOA in the senate.

AOC on Sunday suggested the Democrats can’t win honest elections and will use the courts to get their way during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We cannot rely solely on a wish of winning elections,” AOC said to CNN’s Dana Bash.’

---

---

---