Aumento de salario minimo causa mais desemprego e mais pobreza - George Reisman (Mises)

Aliás, não só o aumento, mas a própria instituição do salário mínimo exclui dezenas, centenas, milhares, centenas de milhares, talvez milhões, do mercado de trabalho, ou seja, confirmando o que diz o articulista abaixo, do Mises Institute, dos EUA.
Por outro lado, um salário mínimo nacional homogêneo, como existe no Brasil, desprezando as desigualdades regionais e os diferentes componentes de custo de vida em cada uma das regiões não é apenas excludente socialmente, é também estúpido economicamente, pois que tendo de ficar no meio termo entre SP e os confins da Amazônia, sendo inadequado para ambas as regiões, muito pouco para a primeira, muito para a segunda.
Já sabemos, por outro lado, o que ocorre com as taxas reais de desemprego, graças ao artigo de Leandro Roque, mais abaixo. O Brasil deve ser o único país do mundo em que o "desemprego" cai, ao mesmo tempo em que o seguro-desemprego aumenta. Mais uma jabuticaba.
O Brasil é repleto de irracionalidades desse tipo...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

How Minimum Wage Laws Increase Poverty by George Reisman  Mises Institute, on April 4, 2014 An Open letter to Thomas Perez, U.S. Secretary of Labor Dear Secretary Perez: Raising the minimum wage is a formula for causing unemployment among the least-skilled members of society. The higher wages are, the higher costs of production are. The higher costs of production are, the higher prices are. The higher prices are, the smaller are the quantities of goods and services demanded and the number of workers employed in producing them. These are all propositions of elementary economics that you and the President should well know. It is true that the wages of the workers who keep their jobs will be higher. They will enjoy the benefit of a government-created monopoly that excludes from the market the competition of those unemployed workers who are willing and able to work for less than what the monopolists receive. The payment of the monopolists’ higher wages will come at the expense of reduced expenditures for labor and capital goods elsewhere in the economic system, which must result in more unemployment. Those who are unemployed elsewhere and who are relatively more skilled will displace workers of lesser skill, with the ultimate result of still more unemployment among the least-skilled members of society. The unemployment directly and indirectly caused by raising the minimum wage will require additional government welfare spending and thus higher taxes and/or greater budget deficits to finance it. Your and the President’s policy is fundamentally anti-labor and anti-poor people. While it enriches those poor people who are given the status of government-protected monopolists, it impoverishes the rest of the economic system to a greater degree. It does this through the combination both of taking away an amount of wealth equal to the monopolists’ gains, and of causing overall production to be less by an amount corresponding to the additional unemployment it creates. The rise in prices and taxes that results from raising the minimum wage both diminishes the gains of the monopolists and serves to create new and additional poor people, while worsening the poverty of those who become unemployed. Furthermore, the higher the minimum wage is raised, the worse are the effects on poor people. This is because, on the one hand, the resulting overall unemployment is greater, while, on the other hand, the protection a lower wage provides against competition from higher-paid workers is more and more eroded. At today’s minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, workers earning that wage are secure against the competition of workers able to earn $8, $9, or $10 per hour. If the minimum wage is increased, as you and the President wish, to $10.10 per hour, and the jobs that presently pay $7.25 had to pay $10.10, then workers who previously would not have considered those jobs because of their ability to earn $8, $9, or $10 per hour will now consider them; many of them will have to consider them, because they will be unemployed. The effect is to expose the workers whose skills do not exceed a level corresponding to $7.25 per hour to the competition of better educated, more-skilled workers presently able to earn wage rates ranging from just above $7.25 to just below $10.10 per hour. The further effect could be that there will simply no longer be room in the economic system for the employment of minimally educated, low-skilled people. Of course, the minimum-wage has been increased repeatedly over the years since it was first introduced, and there has continued to be at least some significant room for the employment of such workers. What has made this possible is the long periods in which the minimum wage was not increased. Continuous inflation of the money supply and the rise in the volume of spending and thus in wage rates and prices throughout the economic system progressively reduce the extent to which the minimum wage exceeds the wage that would prevail in its absence. The minimum wages of the 1930s and 1940s — 25¢ an hour and 75¢ an hour — long ago became nullities. To reduce and ultimately eliminate the harm done by today’s minimum wage, it needs to be left unchanged. The standard of living is not raised by arbitrary laws and decrees imposing higher wage rates, but by the rise in the productivity of labor, which increases the supply of goods relative to the supply of labor and thus reduces prices relative to wage rates, and thereby allows prices to rise by less than wages when the quantity of money and volume of spending in the economic system increase. If raising the standard of living of the average worker is your and the President’s goal, you should abandon your efforts to raise the minimum wage. Instead, you should strive to eliminate all government policies that restrain the rise in the productivity of labor and thus in the buying power of wages. If your goal is to raise the wages specifically of the lowest-paid workers, you should strive to eliminate everything that limits employment in the better-paid occupations, most notably the forcible imposition of union pay scales, which operate as minimum wages for skilled and semi-skilled workers. In causing unemployment higher up the economic ladder, union scales serve to artificially increase the number of workers who must compete lower down on the economic ladder, including at the very bottom, where wages are lowest. To the extent that occupations higher up could absorb more labor, competitive pressure at the bottom would be reduced and wages there could rise as a result. Abolishing or at least greatly liberalizing licensing legislation would work in the same way. To the extent that larger numbers of low-skilled workers could work in such lines as driving cabs, giving haircuts, or selling hot dogs from push carts, the effect would also be a reduction in competitive pressure at the bottom of the economic ladder and thus higher wages there. The principle here is that we need to look to greater economic freedom, not greater government intervention, as the path to economic improvement for everyone, especially the poor. Sincerely yours, George Reisman, Ph.D.

Salario minimo nacional: um equivoco economico, uma demagogia politica- o debate nos EUA

Este debate demonstra uma coisa importante: um salario minimo nacional e homogêneo é um erro.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

THE GREAT DIVIDE The New York Times,MARCH 22, 2014, 2:30 PM 

All Economics Is Local

By MICHAEL REICH and KEN JACOBS

In the face of congressional inaction, the debate on raising the minimum wage is moving to the local level. As more cities and counties consider setting their own wage standards, they can learn from the policy experiments already underway.

Since the mid-1980s, states in every region of the country have raised the local minimum wage, often numerous times. Twenty-one states (and Washington, D.C.) currently have wage floors above the federal level ($7.25), and 11 of these raise them every year to account for inflation. Washington State currently has the highest, at $9.32; California’s is set to increase to $10 on July 1, 2016.

More than 120 cities and counties have adopted living wage laws that set pay standards, many of them in the $12 to $15 range. These higher standards usually apply only to employees of city service contractors, like security guards, landscapers and janitors. In some cities, living wage laws cover workers at publicly owned airports or stadiums, as well as at shopping malls subsidized by local development funds. While the impact on the individual workers covered under these laws is often quite significant, their reach is rarely broad enough to affect the local low-wage labor market as a whole.

For this reason, cities and counties are now enacting higher local minimum wage policies that cover all work performed in the area. Cities as varied as Albuquerque, San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., Santa Fe, N.M., and Washington, D.C., have minimum wages ranging from $8.60 in Albuquerque to $10.74 in San Francisco. The District of Columbia, which is raising its minimum wage to $11.50 in 2016, wisely joined with two neighboring Maryland counties to create a regional standard.

Many more cities are getting ready to follow suit. Richmond, Calif., Oakland and Seattle are seriously considering setting their own minimum wage. The Richmond City Council just voted an increase that will go to $12.30 by 2017. Advocates in Oakland are aiming for $12.25. Seattle is discussing $15. Prodded by its new mayor, New York City is seeking the right to set its own minimum wage rate, instead of using New York State’s.

Stuart Isett for The New York TimesA Seattle group held a march last Saturday calling for raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

With the national debate stuck in the same old rut, states and cities have again become laboratories of democracy. Are they on the right path? For the last 15 years we have been doing research on just this question.

One city we have studied in detail, San Francisco, has passed a dozen labor standards laws since the late 1990s. After adding the effects of other local laws mandating employers to pay for sick leave and health spending, the minimum compensation standard at larger firms in San Francisco reaches $13. Our studies show that the impact of these laws on workers’ wages (and access to health care) is strong and positive and that none of the dire predictions of employment loss have come to pass. Research at the University of New Mexico on Santa Fe’s floor (now $10.66) found similar results.

These are not isolated cases. Research on the effects of differing minimum wage rates across state borders confirms the results of the city studies. But how can minimum wage increases not have negative effects on employment? After all, according to basic economic theory, an increase in the price of labor should reduce employer demand for labor.

That’s not the whole story, though. A full analysis must include the variety of other ways labor costs might be absorbed, including savings from reduced worker turnover and improved efficiency, as well as higher prices and lower profits. Modern economics therefore regards the employment effect of a minimum-wage increase as a question that is not decided by theory, but by empirical testing.

Our research and that of other scholars illuminates how businesses actually absorb minimum wages at low-wage industries. Higher standards have an immediate effect in reducing employee turnover, leading to significant cost savings. Minimum wage increases do lead to small price increases, mainly in restaurants, which are intensive users of low-paid workers. How much? A 10 percent minimum wage increase adds 0.7 cents on the dollar to restaurant prices. Price increases in most other sectors, like retail, are too small to be visible, partly because retail pays more than restaurants.

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Interactive Feature: Can You Live on the Minimum Wage?

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Even if Congress finally acts to raise the federal minimum wage, higher standards at the state and local level still make sense. It will surprise no one that living costs are generally higher in cities than in rural areas. They often vary among cities in the same state. The New York City metro area is 26 percent more expensive than upstate Utica; costs in the San Jose metro area are 30 percent higher than in El Centro, in southeastern California. Policy makers need to take these variations into account. This is not just a theoretical idea. It has long been policy in Japan. Minimum wages in Tokyo and Osaka are as much as 30 percent higher than they are in regions with the lowest cost of living.

Here’s another way to think about it. One measure of employers’ latitude to absorb higher wages compares the minimum wage to the median wage. From the 1960s into the 1970s, the minimum-median ratio in the United States varied between 41 and 55 percent. Since the mid-1980s, it has been much lower, varying between 33 and 39 percent. A minimum wage increase to $10.10 by 2016, as President Obama proposed earlier this year, would restore the national ratio to 50 percent. By comparison, San Francisco’s $10.74 minimum wage is 40 percent of the city’s median wage. In other words, although some of the proposed rates may seem high by national standards, they look more reasonable when measured against local wage levels.

Local minimum wages also represent a response to growing inequality within cities, in too many of which a growing army of low-paid workers — maids, gardeners, janitors, restaurant and security workers — provide personal services to an increasingly well-heeled minority.

The record is clear. Employers can afford to pay higher wages that raise families out of poverty and bear a closer relation to local living costs. And there’s a moral value, too. An increase in the local minimum wage restores, on a very personal level, some of our notion of fairness.

Salario minimo: a medida antipobre que governos equivocados amam implementar - Howard Husock

Eye on the News

HOWARD HUSOCK

Minimum-Wage Mistakes

Nelson Mandela’s lesson for Bill de Blasio

The City Journal, 7 February 2014

PHOTO BY YIMIX

At a Brooklyn church in December, New York’s then mayor-elect, Bill de Blasio, praised Nelson Mandela for the late South African leader’s refusal to tell citizens only what they wanted to hear. “Part of Mandela’s brilliance was acknowledging difficult truths and then guiding people through them,” de Blasio said. Now Mayor de Blasio is preparing his first State of the City address, which he’ll deliver Monday. He’s been pushing Albany lawmakers to let the city set its own minimum-wage level, and it’s likely he’ll raise the issue again in his speech. But if the mayor really wants to emulate Mandela’s truth-telling, he should look closer at the example of South Africa, which demonstrates the damaging effect of wage levels set higher than the labor market will bear. De Blasio might then acknowledge his own difficult truth, one pertaining to economics: minimum- and “living-wage” laws put the poor at greater risk of unemployment.

South Africa is by far the most robust and advanced economy in sub-Saharan Africa. Those who visit (as I did for two weeks last October) encounter a place which has not only made a stunning transition from apartheid, but which also boasts a rich reserve of natural and mineral resources, a solid legal system, an enviable transportation infrastructure, a robust free press, a well-developed banking sector, and a vibrant stock exchange. Its agriculture and viniculture are world-class. Young creative types flock to Cape Town, a city as beautiful and exciting as San Francisco.

Yet, cultural and economic advantages aside, South African unemployment is at desperately high levels. The official rate is 25 percent; unofficial estimates put it as high as 37 percent. Youth (under age 24) unemployment, officially reported at 49.8 percent, is palpable for the affluent visitor, as teenagers and young adults selling souvenirs pound on train windows. Street beggars are a common sight. Perhaps most dishearteningly, overall unemployment today is at least double what it was in 1994, when apartheid ended and Mandela assumed the presidency. The estimated rate then was 13 percent.

No single cause accounts for South Africa’s persistently high joblessness, though high crime and an overvalued currency have played a role in diminishing investment in the country. But the crucial factor—the one to which de Blasio should pay more attention and to which Mandela unfortunately paid too little—is what economists euphemistically call “labor-market rigidity.” Translated, this means union power. South Africa’s powerful labor unions are enmeshed in a cozy and longstanding alliance with the ruling African National Congress. They have used their influence to set legal wages at rates too high for small or new businesses to afford.

The relationship between the ANC and its union allies is not unlike the relationship between Mayor de Blasio’s Democratic Party and New York City’s public- sector unions—and the power de Blasio seeks to raise city wages likewise resembles the power the ANC already holds in South Africa. The South African government oversees and approves collective-bargaining arrangements between major employers and labor unions—and then, incredibly, enforces those same high-wage levels for all firms in the sector, even those not party to collective bargaining themselves. Imagine if New York City negotiated a “living wage” for workers at firms doing business with government—say, contractors providing building services—and then made that same wage apply across the board in the industry, even to small start-ups.

“There is little doubt that wage agreements, which are invariably above the inflation level, have created a relatively entrenched working class elite, at the expense of non-unionized workers,” says University of Cape Town political scientist David Welch. UCT economist Sean Archer notes the result: “It needs no economic savvy whatever to realise that this benefits unions and probably most large employers who bargain collectively, but it is highly burdensome for smaller employers and is the death-knell for the unemployed, who cannot bargain to work for lower wages.” A June 2007 National Bureau of Economic Research paper confirmed that picture: “We find, for example, a persistent union wage differential suggesting that unions are keeping wages higher for union members. This is good news for employed union members, but it poses additional challenges to addressing the unemployment problem.” The country’s “bargaining councils,” writes John Kane-Berman of the South Africa Institute of Race Relations, “violate both democracy and basic rights.”

Even the New York Times has acknowledged that minimum and “living” wage laws often hurt the people they’re meant to help. In a 2010 article about factories being shut down for not paying the minimum wage, and subsequent protests by employees put out of work, the Times headlined its coverage: WAGE LAWS SQUEEZE SOUTH AFRICA’S POOR. Put another way, when the government gets involved in setting wage levels, it cuts off the lowest rungs on the economic ladder, making it harder for the poor to find work. The benefits of such laws accrue mostly to those who already have jobs.

Now that sounds like a tale of two cities.

Howard Husock, a contributing editor of City Journal, is the Manhattan Institute’s vice president for policy research and director of its Social Entrepreneurship Initiative.

Salario minimo mais alto (ou nao) sempre reduz empregabilidade - Robert Murphy

Não, não é a "lei de Murphy", mas poderia ser: o salário mínimo, como já escrevi, é uma máquina de desemprego e de déficit público, além de ser fascismo econômico em seu estado puro.
Ele também desloca trabalhadores mais "caros" por outros mais baratos (um processo não necessariamente vinculado a maiores ganhos de produtividade) e, no médio e longo prazo, reduz o nível de emprego na economia.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Economists Debate the Minimum Wage 
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2014/Murphyminimumwage.html

If you have followed the economists' debate about the minimum wage, you might think that recent research overturns the traditional view that minimum wages do not cause substantial unemployment. But in this month's Featured Article, economist Robert P. Murphy shows that the traditional view still holds up. Even if a higher minimum wage doesn't reduce employment much, he notes that it will still likely increase unemployment, as a higher minimum wage attracts more workers who then displace current workers. He also shows that the modern evidence is completely consistent with the idea that a higher minimum wage will reduce the growth of jobs.

leia a íntegra no link acima...

Salario minimo provoca desemprego e reduz a produtividade - Mises and Cato Institutes

Muita gente, não só aqui, mas em geral no Brasil, acha qualquer proposta de eliminar o salário mínimo uma crueldade inominável contra os trabalhadores, apenas porque essas pessoas não pensaram naquilo que Bastiat chamava do elemento escondido na economia, o que não se vê.
As pessoas acham bonito, necessário e positivo um aumento do salário mínimo e podem apontar como um trabalhador ganhando salário mínimo fica mais satisfeito quando este é aumentado, preferencialmente acima da inflação.
O que essas pessoas não veem é a corrosão inflacionária desse salário quando ele não corresponde a aumentos proporcionais ou maiores de produtividade do trabalho, e todas as outras pessoas que PODERIAM estar empregadas, não fosse por um salário mínimo muito acima do que podem pagar, por exemplo, pequenas ou micro empresas e famílias individuais.
Esses aspectos são abordados nesta matéria do Mises Institute, que também fala de um outro efeito negativo, seu impacto prejudicial ao aumento da produtividade.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Welfare, Minimum Wages, and Unemployment by Greg Morin  Mises Instituto, January 16, 2014 Of the various flavors of government interventionism in our lives, the minimum wage is perhaps the most welcomed. It appeals not only to our innate sense of “fairness” but also to our self-interest. Its allure may erroneously lead us to the conclusion that because “it is popular,” ergo “it is right.” The more astute proponents of the minimum wage, however, immediately point to the obvious; namely, that an extreme minimum wage ($1,000 per hour) would be unequivocally detrimental. However, the proponents quickly turn to dismissing this fear by asserting that, empirically, no such job loss occurs when the minimum wage is slowly raised. This is akin to arguing that although fire can boil water, a small fire won’t heat it up. The support for this assertion is the oft-cited 1994 study by Card and Krueger[1] showing a positive correlation between an increased minimum wage and employment in New Jersey. Many others have thoroughly debunked this study and it is significant that the original authors eventually retracted their claims.[2] Youth and Entry-Level Unemployment The problem with such “studies” that purport to demonstrate only positive and no negative effects from a rising minimum wage is that it is quite easy to count individuals whose pay went up. What is more challenging, if not impossible, is to count the people that would have been hired but were not. Likewise, offsetting reductions in non-monetary compensation will not show up in a monetarily-focused analysis. However, empirical economic data is not entirely useless. Such data is more suited to qualitative rather than quantitative predictions (who is affected rather than how much they are affected). For example, basic economics predicts that a minimum wage will necessarily increase unemployment among those with the least experience. Indeed, if we look at the empirical evidence we see exactly that. Looking at the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics we find that the unemployment rate (June 2013) among 16-19 year olds is 24 percent and among 20-24 year olds it is 14 percent.[3] These values far exceed the unemployment rate (6 percent) of those workers with sufficient experience and skills to make them largely immune to minimum wage pay scales, namely 25-54 year olds. People whose productive value is less than the minimum wage are de facto unemployable. They are denied the opportunity to gain experience and skills, and their exclusion from the job market is a net loss to society. The minimum wage is just another weapon in the arsenal of the misguided progressive trying to “help” the poor. Their mistake in wielding this weapon is in presuming all workers are similarly situated; i.e., that the vast majority of hourly employees earn minimum wage and that they are uniformly composed of heads of households. In fact the opposite is true. Only 2.1 percent of hourly employees earn minimum wage and of that number over half (55 percent) are 16-24 years old.[4] How Welfare Brings Down the Asking Wage So, we know that a sizable number of minimum-wage earners are not in need of a wage that can support a household. But what of the minimum-wage earners who are? We are told repeatedly that minimum wage is not a living wage, so why are not more minimum wage earners simply starving to death? In reality workers earn two wages: one from their employer and one from the state. For example, someone making the current full-time minimum wage earns $15,000 per year, but they are also eligible for additional government benefits that bring their total remuneration to approximately $35,000 per year if they are childless, or up to $52,000 year if they have children.[5] In fact, earning more does not necessarily help one wean himself off this state sponsored support. As wages rise assistance can often decline so precipitously that even earning $1 more can mean a loss of thousands of dollars in aid. This creates a disincentive for the worker to improve and earn more; the perverse incentive here is that we are rewarding the very thing we are trying to eliminate (low wages). These wage subsidies serve only to pervert the normal incentives present in an exchange between employer and employee. Both the employer and the employee are aware of the subsidies, so each is willing to offer less and accept less rather than demand more and offer more. At first blush one might conclude the employer is making out like a bandit. But there is no free lunch — the subsidies have to come from somewhere. Taxes fund these subsidies. So the employer is not necessarily paying less if its taxes fund the very subsidies its employees are receiving. In fact many employers pay more on net. All employers pay taxes, but only some receive the benefit of subsidized wages. This is a net redistribution from one class of company to another. In essence we are forcing high wage companies to pay low wage companies to keep their wages low. The Minimum Wage Reduces Worker Productivity So considering that it is established that minimum wage laws and other forms of wage subsidization are detrimental to the stated goal of improving conditions for those regarded as poor, we must address the question perennially proffered by those who believe one’s salvation can only come via the state: “If not the minimum wage, what then can increase wages?” To answer this question we must understand there are only two possible routes to improving our wages/standard of living. The first method is the unethical route of using force (government) to extract what we want. The second method, however, is what every rational person would be left with were there no state influence corrupting the incentives that drive their decision-making: improve or augment one’s skills so that they align with those skills currently in greater demand. Self-improvement through education and/or work experience is the answer to the question: how do I earn more? Government sponsored interference in the market that results in fewer people gaining experience can only serve to frustrate one’s ability to engage in self-improvement. Elimination of the minimum wage is a necessary, although insufficient, first step to improving the economic value of the inexperienced or unskilled. Note: The views expressed in Daily Articles on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute. Cato Scholars on the Minimum Wage Debate The U.S. is once again embroiled in a tumultuous debate about the minimum wage. News of strikes and protests by fast food workers have brought the issue to the forefront of national discussion. Seventy-five economists, including seven Nobel winners, have signed a letter advocating an increase in the minimum wage. Thirteen states are increasing their minimum wages this year. Many Democrats believe raising the national minimum wage is a winning campaign issue for November. But, is raising the minimum wage actually good for the country, its economy, and its people, especially the most disadvantaged among us? "There’s no doubt that raising the minimum wage would reduce employment and slow economic growth. Worse, government wage-setting is immoral," says Cato senior fellow Doug Bandow. "The cost of higher wages will be borne in varying degrees by customers, workers, and investors... Most vulnerable are workers with the least education, experience, and skills, who tend to be young and minorities." Want to weigh into the debate? Join the conversation on Twitter using #CatoMinWage. “Minimum Wage and Unemployment,” by William Poole “The Minimum Wage: Immoral and Inefficient,” by Doug Bandow “Who Works at the Minimum Wage?” by Mark A. Calabria

Salario minimo reduz a pobreza? Discutivel, em todo caso...

Fui ler o estudo citado na matéria do NYTimes (vide dois posts abaixo) sobre redução da pobreza como efeito da elevação do salário mínimo, aqui linkado:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15038936/Dube_MinimumWagesFamilyIncomes.pdf

Minha tendência é a de achar que certos economistas são manetas, ou seja, só veem um lado da questão.

By the other hand, seria preciso medir os efeitos que essa elevação teria sobre a empregabilidade, ou seja, a capacidade de pequenos negócios e particulares continuarem a manter, ou empregar novas pessoas, quando suas rendas não se elevam por decreto governamental.

E se o desemprego aumentar?

As pessoas que antes estavam sob um salário menor, ficam sem qualquer renda, certo?

Seria a melhor solução?

Continuo achando que um país sem salário mínimo oficial se aproximaria do pleno emprego (isto é, apenas 3 a 5% de desemprego, que é estrutural) mais facilmente do que um cheio de regulamentações e obrigatoriedades.

Sinceramente, falando do Brasil: se houvesse total liberdade contratual, todos estaríamos melhor, contratando quem a gente quisesse, quantas vezes quisesse, mediante um pagamento livre e reciprocamente acertado, correto?

Liberdade é sempre a melhor solução, para todos.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Anunciando o novo salario minimo: um discurso alternativo ao oficial - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Um pronunciamento alternativo sobre o novo salário mínimo

Sugestão: Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Se eu fosse o responsável supremo da Nação, eu teria feito o seguinte discurso depois do anúncio do novo mínimo:

Brasileiras e brasileiros,

O governo acaba de anunciar os novos valores do salário mínimo e do salário-família. Não pude, ainda desta vez, conceder os aumentos que considero justos e necessários e que tinha, sinceramente, a intenção de dar a todos aqueles que dependem, de uma forma ou de outra, do valor do salário mínimo.

E não pude fazê-lo, meus caros concidadãos e concidadãs, por uma razão muito simples: o Estado brasileiro está quebrado. Pode parecer estranho eu dizer um coisa dessas, sendo eu o responsável por pelo menos uma parte desse Estado, mas esta é a verdade mais pura e cristalina que eu poderia trazer a vocês neste começo de ano: o Estado brasileiro, apesar de coletar quase dois quintos de tudo o que se produz neste país durante um ano, não tem condições de enfrentar novos gastos, dado o nível de comprometimento já alcançado pelas contas públicas, sobretudo no que se refere à previdência social.

Vocês sabem que os três níveis da federação brasileira arrecadam os mais diversos tributos, taxas e contribuições das empresas e dos cidadãos em geral. Todos reclamam, aliás, que o nível global de arrecadação está longe de corresponder à qualidade dos serviços prestados pelos estados e municípios, assim como pela própria União. Pois, bem, apesar disso tudo, os recursos auferidos ainda não são suficientes para cobrirmos todas as despesas previstas e, além disso, fazermos os investimentos que seriam necessários para melhorar a vida dos brasileiros e brasileiras, de todas as idades e condições sociais, especialmente os mais pobres.

Há uma imensa gama de serviços que não são prestados na devida forma ou que simplesmente não são prestados em absoluto a muitos cidadãos, em especial em cidades menores ou nas favelas, como segurança e justiça, por exemplo, ou ainda vagas em número suficiente nas escolas e hospitais. Já não me refiro aos investimentos ainda mais necessários, na simples manutenção de estradas ou construção de novas obras de infraestrutura, necessárias ao desenvolvimento sustentado do Brasil. Este é um fato meus caros brasileiros: o Estado deixou de corresponder ao que dele se espera, deixou de atender às aspirações dos brasileiros e converteu-se, ele mesmo, em fonte de problemas.

Como foi isso possível? A verdade, meus caros brasileiros, é que nós, líderes políticos, fomos, durante muito tempo, irresponsáveis com o nosso patrimônio. Não apenas gastamos mais do que seria recomendável, mas sobretudo gastamos onde não é o mais adequado, nos meios do Estado, em lugar de gastar com os fins do Estado, que são o bem-estar e a segurança das pessoas, o seguro à velhice e os investimentos.

O fato é que o Estado tornou-se hoje um peso para a economia e para a vida dos cidadãos. Esta é uma situação que compromete o nosso futuro e o bem-estar dos nossos filhos e netos.

Por que isso ocorre? As razões são múltiplas, mas elas podem ser resumidas em duas fórmulas: nós deixamos de fazer investimentos no plano interno e estamos perdendo, contra nós mesmos, a corrida por maiores níveis de produtividade humana, o que nos deixa para trás na competição internacional. Isto não se deve a nenhuma conspiração do mundo contra o Brasil, a imposições de firmas estrangeiras ou a problemas trazidos de fora, como o pagamento de juros ou da dívida externa.

A verdade, meus caros concidadãos, é que nós, todos nós, mas em especial nós líderes políticos, fomos irresponsáveis e permitimos que a inflação e o protecionismo comercial fossem roubando todas as oportunidades que nos foram dadas de construir um caminho de produtividade e de incorporação tecnológica. Daí esses extremos de riqueza e de pobreza e os muitos bolsões de miséria ainda remanescentes numa sociedade que, de outra forma, poderia ser muito rica e desenvolvida.

O fato é que todos os nossos problemas foram e continuam a ser provocados por nossos próprios atos e fatos: somos fabricantes da nossa própria miséria.

 Consciente dessa realidade, comprometo-me com vocês a trilhar, doravante, um caminho de trabalho e de reordenamento das finanças públicas. Vamos dar início a um processo gradual de redução da enorme carga fiscal representada pelo Estado: terá de ser feito ao longo de vários anos, mas comprometo-me a começar a trabalhar em prol desta meta desde já.

Comprometo-me também a parar de tentar encontrar lá fora a culpa ou a solução de problemas que foram criados aqui dentro e que têm aqui dentro sua única e exclusiva solução. Em uma palavra, vou parar de fazer discurso e tratar da realidade. Esta é uma promessa. Podem me cobrar...

Socialistas e social-democratas, no mundo todo, estao inviabilizando a economia de mercado, aumentando salario minimo...

Na Alemanha, na verdade, não existia um salário mínimo legal, e os salários são, até aqui, diretamente negociados em bases contratuais, individualmente ou coletivamente, o que justamente fez a fortaleza da competitividade alemã. Agora, como resultado do acordo entre liberais-conservadores de Angela Merkel com os social-democratas do SPD, vai ser introduzido um salário mínimo de 11 dólares, maior do que a média europeia, mas ainda assim inferior ao da França e da Espanha (inacreditavelmente, e ainda perguntam por que o desemprego na Espanha é de 25% da PEA, e quase o dobro entre os jovens).
Como evidenciado em matéria publicada pouco antes neste blog, a medida vai tornar a Alemanha menos competitiva, encarecendo seus bens e serviços, e provocar desemprego (na faixa de 400 a 500 mil, foi calculado).
Agora, os EUA se preparam para fazer as mesmas bobagens, sob os "socialistas" de Obama.
Como escrevi num recente artigo, ainda não publicado:

Salário mínimo nacional e compulsório é um alimentador da inflação, do desemprego e do déficit público. As pessoas estão convencidas de que ele “protege” os trabalhadores, quando na verdade destrói a empregabilidade de milhões de pessoas, inferniza a vida dos empresários, compromete o equilíbrio das contas públicas e cria um indutor inflacionário automático. Países que construíram sua prosperidade o fizeram sem esse constrangimento microeconômico e essa camisa de força macroeconômica. Todos os ativos estariam empregados se não fosse pelo salário mínimo; ele é anti-pobre.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The New York Times, December 29, 2013

Democrats Turn to Minimum Wage as 2014 Strategy

By JONATHAN MARTIN and MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage.

The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.

In a series of strategy meetings and conference calls among them in recent weeks, they have focused on two levels: an effort to raise the federal minimum wage, which will be pushed by President Obama and congressional leaders, and a campaign to place state-level minimum wage proposals on the ballot in states with hotly contested congressional races.

With polls showing widespread support for an increase in the $7.25-per-hour federal minimum wage among both Republican and Democratic voters, top Democrats see not only a wedge issue that they hope will place Republican candidates in a difficult position, but also a tool with which to enlarge the electorate in a nonpresidential election, when turnout among minorities and youths typically drops off.

“It puts Republicans on the wrong side of an important value issue when it comes to fairness,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s senior adviser. “You can make a very strong case that this will be a helpful issue for Democrats in 2014. But the goal here is to actually get it done. That’s why the president put it on the agenda.”

Top Republicans assert that a wage increase would dampen the economic recovery and indicated after Mr. Obama mentioned the issue in his State of the Union speech this year that they had no intention of bringing a minimum-wage increase to a vote in the House, which they control.

“Why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?” Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said.

In the capital, Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats are supporting legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2015. Mr. Obama is planning a series of speeches across the country focused on improving wages for workers, aides said, many of them timed to coincide with key minimum-wage votes in Congress. Income inequality is also likely to play a prominent role in his State of the Union addressnext month.

At the same time, Democratic campaign officials and liberal activists — conceding that Democrats face tough prospects in some Senate races — are working to put minimum-wage increases on the ballot next year in places like Arkansas, Alaska and South Dakota. The hope is to stoke Democratic turnout in conservative-leaning states where the party’s Senate candidates have been put on the defensive by the mishandled rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

But in a sign that some moderate Democrats are uneasy about inflaming their local business communities, the imperiled Democratic Senate incumbents in Alaska and Arkansas, Mark Begich and Mark Pryor, have yet to embrace the ballot measures.

States with contested House races, including New Mexico, will also see campaigns to bring minimum-wage increases to a referendum next year.

After being battered for nearly two months on the problems with Mr. Obama’s signature health law, Democrats see the minimum-wage increase as a way to shift the political conversation back to their preferred terms.

“The more Republicans obsess on repealing the Affordable Care Act and the more we focus on rebuilding the middle class with a minimum-wage increase, the more voters will support our candidates,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Democratic planning on the issue has picked up in recent weeks, as the 2014 elections approach and the need to counter attacks on the health law has grown more urgent.

This month, top aides to Mr. Obama including the economic advisers Jason Furman and Gene B. Sperling, Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and the legislative affairs office convened a meeting at the White House complex with an array of liberal groups to discuss the minimum wage. The gathering included representatives from Mr. Obama’s political arm, Organizing for America, unions and progressive groups like Americans United for Change and the National Employment Law Project.

An official from the National Employment Law Project presented a spreadsheet showing which cities and states were pursuing campaigns to increase minimum wages next year, according to a person who attended. The attendees also discussed the potential timing of a minimum-wage vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

A representative from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. urged the White House officials to coordinate with Senate Democrats on when to bring the issue to the floor so that the unions could “have time to mount a grass-roots” campaign stirring up support for the measure, an attendee recalled.

“The combination of the state ballot initiatives and at some point a big nasty fight in D.C. that will amplify some of the stuff in the states is going to create a feedback loop that will be really helpful,” said one Democratic official involved in the discussions.

Democrats prize the issue of a minimum-wage increase because it would help address income inequality, which is galvanizing liberals at the moment and is popular with swing voters they will need in next year’s elections.

Sixty-four percent of independents and even 57 percent of Republicans said they supported increasing the minimum wage, according to a CBS News poll last month. Some 70 percent of self-described “moderates” said they supported an increase.

“We’ve got a lot of folks who are registered Republicans for whatever reason here, but when you start talking about earning a dollar more an hour it means something to them, regardless of their party,” said Rick Weiland, the Democrat running for the Senate in South Dakota next year, who has embraced the ballot measure there.

Mr. Weiland said 62,000 people in his sparsely populated state would receive a raise if a ballot question that calls for raising the minimum wage to $8.50 an hour from $7.25 wins the approval of voters in November.

Liberal strategists would like other Democratic Senate candidates to follow suit, noting that Democrats were elected senators in two conservative-leaning states, Missouri and Montana, in 2006 when proposals to increase the minimum wage were overwhelmingly approved.

Of course, for the overall strategy to work for the Democrats they need Republicans to oppose an increase, and history suggests that is not a given.

At the meeting this month, Mr. Sperling, who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton, recalled that in 1996 Republican leaders decided that fighting an wage increase was not worth the political trouble and let a bill raising the rate pass after inserting provisions helping small businesses.