I was so happy to read the Washington Post just now, because they have an article today talking about higher minimum wages and overall human happiness:
A higher minimum wage will cost some jobs but will also raise the standard of living for many millions of people. Such information is surely important, but it hardly answers the question that we should ask of all changes in public policy: Do they make the world a better place when both costs and benefits are considered?
Higher minimum wages make me happy, because I have often worked for the minimum wage, in the past:
Arguments about the minimum wage reflect the fundamental ideological divide over how to maximize human well-being within the context of market democracy. The first approach suggests minimizing the role of government, leaving the market economy alone to produce the optimal outcomes that many believe it naturally creates if allowed to do so. This strategy, favored by conservatives, and especially by the “market fundamentalists” of the Tea Party, follows Ronald Reagan’s judgment that “government is not a solution to our problems, government is the problem.” Hence, if we resist popular demands for more government services and protections — if we really do “free the market” — it will produce von Hayek’s vision of a “spontaneous order” that promises to create an efficient and just world.
Progressives, in contrast, focus on Franklin Roosevelt’s contention that if left to itself, the market creates so much want, insecurity and “economic tyranny” that the “pursuit of happiness” is really only possible when “the American citizen can … appeal to the organized power of the government.” This is, after all, what Thomas Jefferson famously claimed was a central purpose of government — to protect our right to pursue happiness. In this view, we need the “organized power of the government” as a necessary complement to efficient but pitiless market forces.
Can one approach be empirically demonstrated to contribute to greater levels of human well-being?
So these awesome people at the Washington Post crunched some minimum wage and human happiness numbers and statistics, and come up with the following:
The relationship is dramatic and clear: As the minimum wage increases, people are in general more satisfied with their lives.
Equally telling is the fact that the research finds this “happiness benefit” applies to everyone in society: the affluent and the poor, men and women, liberals and conservatives, people who belong to unions and those who do not.
Well, now I am extra happy I just read that, and the people who wrote the article (and did the research) are great.