From the tag line on the Forbes article: "Don Susswein served as the tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, and is now a Principal in McGladrey’s Washington National Tax practice.
Don Susswein is waving the conservative TP That's "TP" as in "Talking Points" (but any confusion with "toilet paper" is certainly understandable). In an article appearing on Forbes today, he bemoans how the ACA already is an increase to minimum wage, and how the increased cost to business for low-wage earners, coupled with a minimum wage increase, will lead to higher unemployment. He concludes:
Whether you think it is good or bad for lower wage workers to have a new disincentive to work, the ACA will apparently have other clearly adverse consequences for lower-wage workers, at least according to the CBO. For the majority who keep their jobs it will apparently come at a cost of reduced cash wages. For some others – who are currently employed at or near the current minimum wage — it will cause their jobs to be eliminated.
Whichever side you are on, these non-partisan conclusions of the government’s top economists cannot be ignored.
Note the tricky little reference in his closing line - "these non-partisan conclusions of the government's top economists cannot be ignored" - and then recall
this little nugget from yesterday:
All predictions, of course, amount to speculation of things that could happen in the economy, but in this one the speculating goes in a direction that is, to a surprising extent, in tune with Republican ideology.
[...]
The report also notes that the benefits of a wage hike are real, and substantial. 900,000 people would be lifted out of poverty. Ninety percent of the benefits in wage increases would go to those making less than six times the poverty level, with a solid concentration for those who make less than three times the poverty wages. And 16.5 million workers would see a pay bump at a new $10.10 minimum wage, with an additional 8 million experiencing a “ripple” raise above that rate.
[...]
According to Arindrajit Dube, an expert on minimum wages, the 900,000 may even underplay the benefits. “The CBO’s estimate is influenced by an over-reliance on simulation work, which underplays the actual, historical poverty reduction we see.”
[...]
So the CBO’s methodology is weighed to overstate the impact of a $10.10 minimum wage on jobs, while also understating the benefits. Even then there’s a clear tradeoff - a minor fall in jobs for serious real gains against inequality and wage security."
A CBO report that used decidedly controversial, new & untested work as a basis for its report is not one I could consider "non-partisan" - and the fact that the elements which Mr. Susswein selected for his "evidence" that the ACA and a minimum wage hike would have a huge negative impact on jobs
just happen to also fall in line with conservative TP, leads me to the immediate conclusion that the claim is bullsh!t - conservative TP has, quite literally, placed our economy in the sewer and struggled to keep it there for the majority of the nations and her workers, so anything based on their theories is not only "suspect" - it's quite possibly simply sh!t.
That's just my own conclusion, originally posted in a comment here. Reposting here as a brief diary for others to take a swat at, since I'm not an economist and didn't stay at a Motel 6 last night.